College roommie Diana joined the 30S today! Hippo birdie, Diana! You’re in good company! Diana flew down from Northern Cal on business yesterday and joined her high school/college friends Ansen, Sabrina, Sabrina’s fiance Jon (who just HAPPENS to be my friend James’ coworker, and altho James says they sit diagonal cubes from each other, they have never actually seen each other), Mr. W and me for dinner at a new bar/lounge/restaurant in Costa Mesa called Mesa. Now THAT…is a really swanky place and was buzzing even at only 3 weeks old. They’ve had no advertising, no website, not even a sign outside the building to announce its infant arrival, and it was good enough through word-of-mouth alone to draw in Germaine Jackson who was there with his wife celebrating her birthday last nite. The only reason we knew about it was cuz Jon is a partial investor in the restaurant. We all ordered the 4-course prix fixe summer tasting menu, which started with a complimentary basil/cucumber/nut bisque soup to whet the appetite (not normally included but we got special treatment because of Jon), then came course #1, an angel hair pasta in a brown truffle cream sauce over an easy poached egg which, when the waiters brought our bowls out, they shaved whole truffle coins over (I’ve never seen the elusive expensive truffle served in that quantity before). Course #2 was seared halibut (?) cheek topped with veal-stuffed raviolis. Course #3, I actually got a picture of because it was too pretty not to whip out the cameraphone for, except the photo didn’t do it nearly enough justice due to the dark lighting of the place:

This is foie gras and mushroom topped with a puff pastry, on the side of a New York steak topped with beignets of battered fried garlic whips. If you’ve never heard of garlic whips, don’t feel bad because last night was all of our first times, too. It’s apparently a mushroom that looks like an asparagus sprig, that tastes like garlic. Course #4 is dessert, chocolate mousse with a center of whipped peanut creme, topped with chocolate and a crispy peanut butter “brittle” made from carmelized peanut sauce. It was served alongside an espresso-sized cup of chocolate malt shake (it ain’t McDonald’s shake!) decorated with a tiny sugar spiral that looks like a spring sitting across the top of the cup, with a mint leaf caught in the coil. In between the malt cup and mousse was a cluster of brown syrupy sauce which we tasted with the tips of our forks and were all surprised to find it on the salty side. It had what seemed like coarse grains of salt with grated peanuts. After our inquiry, we learned that it is indeed sea salt, but really exclusive expensive sea salt that is made from the misty brine of ocean that floats through the air and collects on the nearby ocean plants and leaves, and then it’s collected, after it’s dried, grain by grain from the leaves by hand. (Doesn’t this sound like a Grimm fairy tale?) It was great to offset the sweetness of the shake and mousse and give the two smooth items some texture.
Overall, regarding the chef, I have never tasted such richness in so many different courses of food collectively at one time in one place. The guy is a culinary genius. Here’s another guy’s review on the place, the only one we could find on the internet, but this guy seems to know his food better than me.
The location was very cool, a former pool hall now completely rebuilt into a restaurant lounge divided into three sections: upon entry past the foyer, the left side of the large square room is an eclectic lounge sitting area with two cushion-surrounded fireplaces and the most amazing thing of all, you look up and see straight into the night sky with the glass ceiling panels folded aside like giant horizontal shutters; the center is the double-sided bar with a cocktail and wine list so varied and unique you’d want to try it all (I ordered a Bourbon & Cherries, made from bourbon, muddled cherries and mint, sweetened with grenadine); and the right side is the split-level restaurant area with two lengths of tables and large semi-circular padded booths along the wall so the patrons eat facing all the action in the room. The restrooms were also something to behold. There’s no “restroom;” instead you walk into a restroom area behind the open lounge area, and are confronted with two rows of four or five doors facing each other, like you’re in a broad hallway of a hotel. Each of these rooms is a restroom with its own sink, mirror, toilet. You know which “room” is free by a strip of light over each door; green is vacant, red is occupied. Music was as eclectic as the different heights of chairs and tables in the bar lounge, going from techno rave to orchestral to old style blues. It may have influenced our dinner table conversation to meander in the diverse way it did going from Transformers and 80s childhood cartoons to socio-political reform to healthcare in various socialist countries to ethics on wedding attendance and vacation spots.

To make myself feel better, I’m gonna say that our night was a microcosm sampling of who we are, people with a broad spectrum of interests, accomplishments, opinions, tastes and friends, all developed painstakingly through our last 30+ years of life.