Last time I was at O Fine Japanese Cuisine in Laguna Beach, our server asked me where I drove from. Irvine, I said. She brightened at that statement and told me that pretty soon, there'd be a O Fine Japanese Cuisine in Irvine, too.
“Where will it be?” I asked. When she said Quail Hill, I knew exactly what spot it would take. I confirmed my suspicions when I just happened to be in the area last week: It's going to take over the space Mitsui left behind.
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The opening date is slated for “Early 2011,” but that could easily mean summer. So if the master-planned Quail Hill community is craving a Heart Attack–a chile-relleno/jalapeño-popper hybrid, the pepper stuffed with cream cheese, shrimp and spicy tuna, then deep-fried in a tempura cocoon before being sliced into chopstick-retrievable rounds–it'll have to make the drive to Laguna in the meantime. . . .
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.