John Wayne Airport is the gateway for most OC bound travellers–the first impression they get of our area. But if it's also where impressions are formed on the OC dining scene, I am hoping visitors stay away from the info kiosks you see above, which are found at baggage claim.
]
Instead, I hope they just go straight to the info desk to talk to a live person, or even pick up one of those local restaurant listings masquerading as magazines. Why? Well to put it simply: these machines don't list any restaurants as existing in OC. Not. A. Single. One.
I just happened to find myself there (to rent a car) one day and thought I'd fiddle around with it. I selected the dining category and found that for every part of our county (Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, Southwest O.C., even around the airport) it popped back “Sorry, there are no advertised restaurants in this area”.
I can only guess that this can mean two things:
1) Restaurants have to pay to be listed (and from the looks of it, not one has).
or
2) The database was just down at the time.
Either way, it made me sad.
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.