Photo by thatguy542

​I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: this OC Mart Mix in Costa Mesa is quickly becoming an epicenter of interesting food. A few weeks ago a gourmet cheese shop opened there. Soon it will welcome an ice cream shop and a raw oyster bar. And now, SAFII reader thatguy542 clued me in on a new sushi restaurant that had its soft opening earlier this week (its grand opening is scheduled for February 14th) and, what's more, there's a new waffle joint opening right next door.

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http://www.cruisincrawfish.com/

​It was inevitable: Someone has launched a Vietnamese/Cajun crawfish business out of a food truck. Cruisin' Crawfish merges the previously divergent trends of the crawfish restaurant and the luxe lonchera movement. Please correct me if I am mistaken in saying this is the first of its kind in our area, as I would not be surprised if someone had thought of it sooner.

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This is a picture of a generic salad from none of the places mentioned in this article

​A few years ago, I wrote about the advent of Freshii, a Chipotle-style salad chain that was supposed to invade our county by the dozens and give us a reason to eat our vegetables. The Canadian chain had plans to open over 30 stores here within 5 years. There's also been news that similar competitors called Saladworks and Tossed would join them.

So far, Freshii's grand ambitions has produced only one store at The Bluffs which debuted sometime last summer. If you're judging by the number of stores actually open, Saladworks would seem to be the one winning the salad arms race. It opened its second store in Costa Mesa last December. The first one, in Orange, had been open for a few months before that. But that's better than Tossed, which has yet to make its appearance in OC.

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Edwin Goei

​The Tustin gas station restaurant is no longer in a gas station, but it's still in Tustin. As we reported a few months ago, Peter's Gourmade Grill, a burger joint that became successful despite of (or is it because of) its location inside a Valero's gas station near a freeway offramp, has now opened its doors in a more conventional location, down the block inside a former Masala Bowl.

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Dave Lieberman

​Good sausages take time to make, and apparently, so do good sausage shops. You may recall that we teased you about the prospect of the place two years ago. Now the second outlet of Sabatino's--the 20-year-old institution that has been supplying Newport Beach with its Sicilian family recipe for goat-milk-cheese-blended tube steaks perfected in 1864--has finally opened. More >>

Anne Marie Panoringan

That's me on the right, after drinking from that monstrous cup.

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Something made us turn the other way at the 405 Culver offramp and head towards UCI yesterday. Call it female intuition, but we found ourselves at University Park Center, watching the door to Class 302 swing open. It beckoned us.

Handmade flyers stated the two three main ideas customers needed to know: This was a "soft open", shaved snow would be served after their eventual grand opening, and (maybe most importantly) cash only. Now that we know the rules, what's next on the syllabus?
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Edwin Goei

​The OC Mart Mix is fast becoming a good, um, mix of eclectic food vendors. It already has Jeff Duggan's Portola Coffee Lab, We Olive & Wine Bar, and Savory Spice Shop, among others. Soon the meandering indoor swap meet will welcome a purveyor of ice cream called N'Ice and a raw oyster bar called Shuck. But today, Cheese Shop @ the mix debuts.
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Edwin Goei

​We Forkers love our Da Luau. Me for their $4.95 pancake breakfasts; Gustavo everything else. But so does our friend, ex-Food Frenzy blogger Niyaz Pirani, who confesses he's addicted to their island chicken a.k.a. mochiko chicken, fried nuggets of hen deeply seeped of shoyu and sugar and coated in a barely-there batter of rice flour with similarities to Japanese chicken karaage, but much sweeter, much more playful, something you eat out of a lunchwagon with rice before you go off to swim and frolic in the sand.

More importantly, Niyaz gave us a tip that the second Da Luau store is just about to open in the space vacated by Olamendi's.

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ProfessorSalt.com

Yamadaya's Kotteri ramen

​They're finally open! Back in November we reported that Yamadaya's first Orange County restaurant was opening by the end of that month.

They put up hand-written signs in their papered-over windows counting down the days. "8 Days," the sign promised, and stayed that way for over a month. A similar window-sign fakeout happened when they opened the Culver City store, so let's not take it personally, Orange County.

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Edwin Goei

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When we start calling Anaheim home to OC's own Little Manila, the epicenter of it all will be the plaza at the corner of Euclid and Crescent. When Jollibee and its sister Red Ribbon joined Kapit Bahay and LBC (the balikbayan box courier used by Filipino expats to send care packages to the Philippines), the 99 Ranch-anchored shopping center instantly had the greatest density of Filipino businesses and eateries outside Artesia/Cerritos.

Now more are coming to join them.
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