Blue Cheese

With dining out becoming more and more of a luxury nowadays, we are always on the lookout for less expensive ways to enjoy Laguna’s most expensive restaurants. We all want to eat high off the hog but pay only chicken feed. Sometimes, the solution involves bellying up to the bar. One of the most pleasurable and delicious experiences we have had in this category is at Hush. Some people joke about the fact that the noisiest restaurant in Laguna is called Hush. On the Monday evening we went, however, it wasn’t very busy.

Restaurants come and go in Laguna, but there are a few that keep their customers returning time and again. Restaurateur David Wilhelm seems to have found the magic recipe at Sorrento Grill. The combination of ingredients includes an attractive design, a warm ambience, gracious, knowledgeable service and people-pleasing contemporary American cuisine. As you enter the two-story room, there is a stone staircase on one side leading to a dining balcony. Underneath the balcony is an open kitchen with counter seating and the famous martini bar. Tucked in the corner is a cozy fireplace and four tall tables with stools where you can drink or dine or both.

No, Margaret, there is no Santa Claus. There is no Tommy Bahama, and there is no Island that serves this cuisine. The other night we dined at the newly remodeled Tommy Bahama’s Island Grille and found ourselves at a Caribbean plantation house in a Newport Beach shopping center parking lot. Half the structure is a restaurant and the other half a retail store that sells the eponymous clothing one can wear to this and other fantasy islands....

cpt-gossipgourmet08Text13279VJ5 THE GOSSIPING GOURMET Step off Pacific Coast Highway and be transported to a little bar in Maui without five hours on a plane and with a chunk of change still in your pocket. Where does this sorcery transpire? — at The Cabana Bar and Grill. Even though it has the all the kitschy Hawaiiana of hula dancer light fixtures on the bar and palm tree upholstery on the banquettes, it still manages to achieve the casual, open, easygoing atmosphere of the real thing.

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