Old Vine Café is located in “The Camp” which is a trendy, “green” outdoor dining and shopping experience. I feel like I’m visiting the UC Santa Cruz campus with earthy gourmet cafes and outdoors stores thrown in to round out the liberal experience.
This meal was consumed at our place. The meat was purchased at The Meat House in Mission Viejo. Quality! We seasoned them per celebrity chef Bobby Flay recipes including olive oil, chopped garlic and herbs.
As usual the parking lot is a dis-ASS-ter. I pull the “Christmas Parking Maneuver” and within two minutes we’ve trailed a couple to their car and we’re “in business”.
We arrive at this yakitori restaurant about 4:30pm and several of the waiters are hanging outside puffing away at their “topel sticks”. I inquire as to when the grill portion of the restaurant (the ramen house is already open) opens and I’m told 6pm. Woof! As a result, we kill time via perusing and shopping at TJ Maxx, a privately owned pet store and a Jamba Juice.
We decided to venture out of our comfortable surroundings and finally get around to trying an interesting looking Italian restaurant in Huntington Beach. It’s located in an old mini-mall and is likely the smallest café we’ve been to in years.
