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Orange Coast: Demystifying Wood-Fueled Baking at Restaurant Marin

A nice little article about one of our restaurants!

Baking to the rhythm of flames and coals; the roar and the whisper attune with browning bread and rising cake batter. Groundbreaking wood-fueled baking is at the heart of Marin Howarth and chef Noah Blom’s Restaurant Marin in Costa Mesa, where stunning layer cakes, pies, and artisanal breads reach perfection in a Wood Stone wood-burning oven.

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LA Times: Celebrated Taco Maria chef heads to Palm Springs

Desert tacos: Chef Carlos Salgado, whose Costa Mesa restaurant Taco Maria has been among the top five restaurants on Jonathan Gold’s best restaurants list for the last two years, is heading to the desert. Salgado was recently named a culinary partner at the Ace Hotel Palm Springs, and he’ll be responsible for revamping the hotel restaurant and bar. The chef took over for Brooklyn’s Five Leaves, the hotel’s former food and beverage partner. Salgado’s new menus will be available Feb. 1. 701 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, (760) 325-9900, www.acehotel.com/palmsprings

 

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Bennett: Think you know Mexican food? Think again

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Carlos Salgado doesn’t see borders. Or, rather, 2016 is the year he feels more comfortable crossing them.

It’s something he does both literally and figuratively as one of the main flag-bearers of Alta California cuisine, a creation of Mexican American chefs in Southern California who, in the last few years, have been fusing the skills and techniques honed in California’s fine-dining kitchens with the flavors and pride of their Mexican roots.

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LA Times: Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but I think the coming thing may be nasturtiums, and everything nasturtiums represent. Or wait: It could be vegetarian menus for carnivores. Or activated cashews, or $185 tasting menus that include spot prawns, seaweed and an interesting way to braise carrots.

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OC Register: Best Thing I Ate This Week: Restaurant Marin fries!

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When I reviewed Restaurant Marin in May, one of the things I liked most about this all-day gourmet diner was its no-tipping policy. But shortly after that review, it surrendered that idea and switched to the more familiar pricing strategy, which means lower prices for everything (even though it’s actually a wash if you’re a decent tipper).

And they’ve also just revamped the menu, adding all sorts of new items, including chili cheese fries.

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This Weekend’s Progressive Dinner at SOCO/The OC Mix

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Fun article we worked on with an up-and-coming website:

It’s been a few years since I’ve had the opportunity to participate in a progressive dinner – or safari supper, as they refer to it in the UK. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s basically a dinner party where each course is prepared and eaten at a different location, typically the home of a different host.

Not seeing an invite for a progressive dinner in my immediate future, I decided I’d create my own by visiting a variety of different restaurants in one evening for each course.

But where could I go to accomplish this without having to drive all over the place?

I headed over to South Coast Collection – or SOCO as it’s affectionately known – in Costa Mesa. There are lots of different types of restaurants to choose from at SOCO and The OC Mix, a shopping destination within SOCO. After conducting just a little research into what was available, it looked like the ideal place to hold my very own progressive dinner.

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Orange Coast: Main Course – Restaurant Marin

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After a round of great signature cocktails at Arc restaurant, we head next door for dinner at its sibling, 5-month-old Restaurant Marin. The contrast is a jarring shift in realms. Where Arc is primal and dark and brawny, Marin is dainty and buoyant and almost girlish. The magical thread stitching these divergent worlds together is the quixotic vision of Marin Howarth and Noah Blom, the hospitality power duo that defies the quaint stereotype of mom-and-pop operators. Marin is the new addition to their SoCo Collection family, and like Arc, it resembles nothing else in our local restaurant landscape. Here, in this 30-seat jewel box of a bistro, Blom and Howarth offer a morning-til-midnight diner serving lush renditions of comfort classics.

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