Foodstuffs & Restaurants >>

• Best Restaurant in Orange County
  White Horses
  If you're looking for the best place to buy two tacos for a buck—plus free pineapple juice—then we'd give this award to Tacos el Chavito. But this title demands class, a place where you can dress up and play rich. And that place is White Horses, a stunning, cozy bistro at the bottom of Avenida... More >>
• Best Steakhouse
  Mastro's Steakhouse
  In every human lives a carnivore. When you decide to feed it the meat it craves, there's no better place than Mastro's. Their specialty? Steak. Beefsteak served sputtering in melted butter on a plate heated past the temperature of magma. Every slice you make will be an effortless task. The meat... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  Old Vine Café
  Old Vine Café has been open only a couple of months, but it's already besting veterans with its affordable gourmet entrées such as Spanish omelets (stuffed with artichoke hearts, red bell peppers, shitake mushrooms, proscuitto and Manchengo cheese) and a tapas-style dinner menu that guarantees... More >>
• Best Restaurant When Someone Else Is Paying
  Bluefin
  As of this writing, the omakase meal at Bluefin runs $75 per person. But don't count on it staying that way, especially now that this classy sushi bar is becoming better known outside its exclusive Newport Coast neighborhood. Omakase, a meal set in six courses, is the best way to taste the... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Cheapskates
  Nha Hang $1.99 Restaurant
  For cheapskates, it doesn't get better than this place. The entire menu fits on the back of their business card. And yes, with the exception of four items, everything on it is $1.99. There are three types of noodles (rice, vermicelli and egg) that swim in soups, get fried to a crisp, or jiggle... More >>
• Best Romantic Restaurant
  Chat Noir
  Red is the color of passion, and it's used in ample amounts in velvet and silk at Chat Noir. Dimly lit and as sultry as your date, the rooms are inspired by the Moulin Rouge as imagined by Baz Luhrmann (minus the grating presence of John Leguizamo as Toulouse-Lautrec). Snuggle over French food... More >>
• Best Restaurant for Tolkien Geeks
  The Hobbit
  You wouldn't want to work where two of the unluckiest Disneyland "cast members" do: inside a truck with a deep fryer parked at the end of Main Street. But their sweat and toil produce one of the best (if not the only edible) treats inside the park: the corn dog. Theirs is a thick and juicy... More >>
• Best Late-Night Dining
  Lee's Sandwiches
  Norms is always great, and the Shore House Café chain will make pancakes at all hours. But for the past couple of years, ever since a cute Vietnamese girl broke our hearts but left the cheap Vietnamese sandwiches called bánh mìs in its place, we've fulfilled our midnight munchie cravings at the... More >>
• Best Soul Food
  Rick's Secret Spot
  Rick's is in the unlikeliest of spots—on the San Clemente frontier east of Interstate 5, up a winding road, toward the back of an industrial park, a cubbyhole where the scent of sauces and meats smacks your senses like the summer sun dipped in molasses. Get there early— Rick prepares his... More >>
• Best All-You-Can-Eat Vegetarian Buffet
  Gauranga's Vegetarian Buffet
  You don't have to shave your head or drink the Krishna Kool-Aid to enjoy the dirt-cheap vegetarian feast every Sunday. Get in touch with the "source" as you meditate to instrumental music and, if you like, chant along. For just a $3 suggested donation, you'll be catered to by robed monks... More >>
• Best Vegan-Friendly Restaurant
  Native Foods
  Even in California today, being a vegan isn't easy. Many restaurateurs seem to think vegans are members of an esoteric religious cult who remain best ignored, not a hungry demographic deserving of at least a few centimeters of menu space. Thankfully, a handful of enlightened entrepreneurs in... More >>
• Best Raw Food Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Good Mood Food Café
  Leave your expectations at the door when you enter the tiny Zen space at Good Mood Food Café. Don't let the idea of "raw" discourage you, though—what you'll find here is scrumptious, unusual and energizing. Diners can munch on vigorous salads, their own sandwich creations, or such Good Mood... More >>
• Best Japanese Restaurant
  Honda-Ya
  Being that Honda-Ya is a pub, it's not open for lunch. But come 5:30 p.m., the beer starts to flow, and it doesn't stop till 1 a.m. The best seats are in the tatami room, where you sit cross-legged on a woven mat of reeds. Start the evening by ordering one of the Big Three beers: Sapporo, Kirin... More >>
• Best Two-Hour Wait for Food
  Anjin
  Japanese barbecue places can be tricky. One wrong move, and you end up at a bland, touristy teppanyaki like Benihana, where semi-impressive food tossing is abundant, but taste isn't. A general rule of thumb: Head where the crowds are. And Anjin has crowds. The wait can be almost unbearably,... More >>
• Best Chinese Restaurant
  369 Shanghai Place
  For a couple of reasons: First, the name. Maybe it signifies something in Chinese (mystic, no doubt, in accordance with the ways of Celestials), but we like it for its faithfulness to multiples of three. We also enjoy its unassuming location in a shopping plaza, which tricks you into believing... More >>
• Best Vietnamese Restaurant
  Brodard
  To pick one restaurant out of the hundreds lining the streets of Little Saigon is tricky. For one thing, with Vietnamese cuisine, there are subgenres. But we like Brodard because it's got a little of everything. Fried yams served with mountains of herbs. Plates of rice with grilled meats.... More >>
• Best Thai Restaurant
  Thai Nakorn
  Without so much as a plane ticket, you can eat Thai food at its most authentic, here in Orange County. The place: Thai Nakorn. Sure, there are plenty of other Thai restaurants to choose from, but none has a fan base so devoted that one patron actually offered to pay for a new restaurant when the... More >>
• Best Filipino Restaurant
  Kapamilya
  Orange County lacks the great Filipino joints our neighbors in Artesia and Cerritos take for granted. So where to go to satisfy your adobo addiction and other Pinoy pinings? Kapamilya in Fountain Valley, where the turo-turo is tasty-tasty and eight different almusals (the Filipino answer to the... More >>
• Best Indian Restaurant
  Dosa Place
  Dosa Place has made our Best of OC list for the past couple of years, and with good reason. It remains the county's sole restaurant to specialize in dosas: cheap, crepe-like leviathans accompanied by a spicy soup and made 17 different ways—stuffed with potatoes, melted with Cheddar cheese,... More >>
• Best French Restaurant
  Marché Moderne
  Even if it weren't in the toniest part of South Coast Plaza (above Tiffany's), Marche Moderne would still be one of the best French restaurants in the county. Impeccable service by actual Frenchmen, a gorgeous patio with potted fruit trees, and a food tour de France prepared by owner/executive... More >>
• Best Pâtisserie
  Café Blanc
  Do yourself a favor the next time you finish a meal at a fine restaurant: skip dessert. Then drive to Costa Mesa and go to Café Blanc, a pâtisserie (cakes and tarts), glâcerie (gelato and sorbetto) and confiserie (chocolates and candies) crammed in a space no larger than your average taco stand.... More >>
• Best Outdoor Dining
  La Galette Creperie
  There's a certain magic in San Clemente's rolling, Spanish-named streets, almost all of which end up in Avenida Victoria, the basin just across the street and sand from the San Clemente Pier. Enjoy this view from La Galette Creperie—along with the requisite hot chicks, fat tourists and... More >>
• Best Italian Restaurant
  Onotria Wine Country Cuisine
  Massimo Navaretta is a fixture on the county's dining scene, and many local eaters still fondly remember his late Scampi restaurant. They're all now at his newest place: Onotria, which continues to expand its culinary horizons every month with the freshest organic produce, artisan ingredients... More >>
• Best Mexican Restaurant
  Gabbi's Mexican Kitchen
  We're still waiting for a table at Gabbi's, the Old Towne Orange restaurant that hasn't had a slow night since its opening last summer. And as long as Gabbi Patrick continues to cook up a fine overview of Mexican regional favorites—Yucatecan sopes (called panuchos), fried cheese slathered in a... More >>
• Best Fusion Restaurant
  Cafe Hiro
  "Fusion" is a restaurant buzzword that's fallen out of favor. But for lack of a better term, that's what we'll call chef Hiro Ohiwa's food ("French and Italian-influenced Japanese" just doesn't roll off the tongue). Seaweed meets spaghetti; uni flavors the risotto; osso bucco collapses at the... More >>
• Best Restaurant Décor
  Mesa
  Imagine hundreds of ivy plants glued to one wall of Mesa, the latest decadent restaurant to hit the Lab/Camp complex. Imagine the bar roof allowing a view of the nighttime sky and retracting during balmy eves. Imagine large, luxurious dining booths. If you can't quite imagine this, then you must... More >>
• Best Service In a Restaurant
  Angelo's Burgers
  Girls in skirts and roller skates: What more does man need to go along with his dinner? Nowadays, this pleasure can only be found at Angelo's Burgers. More >>