A Guide to the Best of Southern California : PLACES : Back to the Past

WANDERING DOWN the street in Old Town Orange makes one feel a bit like time-traveler Marty McFly of the “Back to the Future” movies. The one-square-mile central business and residential area looks like a small Midwestern town of the 1930s and ‘40s. The central plaza and fountain are encircled by the town drugstore, complete with old-fashioned soda fountain where you can sip a malted (members of the local high school’s graduating class of 1943 still meet there for breakfast the first Saturday of each month), old-style barber shop, ‘30s-era drive-through (though that service has been discontinued) liquor store and plenty of antiques shops.

Orange was founded in the 1890s, and the intersection, marked by brick sidewalks and white-pillared bank building, hasn’t changed much since. And the few contemporary additions--such as Felix’s Cuban Restaurant, with its outside tables overlooking the plaza that allow you to relax and watch the world according to Orange go by--actually add to, rather than detract from, the ambience.