Another Concept/Name Change At “Tustin's Most Cursed Restaurant Location”


If you've read this blog for the past couple of years, you'd know of my fascination about a particular shack on Newport & Walnut in Tustin. Every time there's a change in ownership and/or concept, I write about it. I am the unofficial historian of what comes and goes in what I joking referred to as “The Most Cursed Restaurant Location in Tustin.”

In just a few short years there have been, at my count, five different eateries opening and closing. Last year, a Korean barbecue restaurant called The Patio had just taken the place of another Korean barbecue restaurant, Hebaragi. In '06, it was Happy Snacks, which folded to become something named Seoul Korean Cuisin (not a misspelling on my part).

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The last iteration of eatery I chronicled there was called Cajun Bistro, which was a crawfish place in the mold of Boiling Crab. I even ate there, and wrote this little blurb on our VoicePlaces database not more than three months ago:

You've been here before. No, really, you have. Cajun Bistro is housed in a building that has had more name changes than Sean Combs. Chances are you've eaten in at least one of its iterations. Within the last few years, the shack at the corner of Newport and Walnut has been the location of two Korean barbecue restaurants, some eatery optimistically called Happy Snacks, and a long-forgotten thing called Seoul Korean Cuisin. Now it serves shrimp, crawfish and crabs in the style of Boiling Crab and its copycats, steeped in a Cajun spice-spiked sauce with lots of garlic and butter. You can't blame it if it tries harder than most to distinguish itself from the pack. Supplied aren't just the usual crab mallets and bibs, but also gloves and complimentary hot crusty bread–the perfect device to soak up that sauce. They'll even take an instant picture of you to tack onto their wall in the hopes it will stay up there in perpetuity, or at least until the place changes again.

Well now they're just messing with me. The shack has changed again, rendering that review moot. I actually noticed it a few weeks ago, but was swamped with other stories to give it proper attention. This time, it appears that what is old is new again. They're going back to calling themselves The Patio once more but serving “Asian skewers and seafood.”
There are pop-up restaurants that have more permanence than this place, but at least the sign-maker is keeping busy.


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