Wolfgang Puck to Open Cafe in South Coast Plaza : Restaurants: Moderately priced eatery, noted chef’s first Orange County venture, will offer back-to-basics fare.

Wolfgang has landed.

Wolfgang Puck, Los Angeles’ most prominent chef, is set to make his long-awaited Orange County debut in mid-November with a moderately priced, 150-seat restaurant at South Coast Plaza.

Unlike his famed Spago restaurant in West Hollywood, known for haute cuisine and high prices, the Wolfgang Puck Cafe in Costa Mesa will feature back-to-basics fare geared to a thriftier crowd, with most entrees priced below $10. The menu will include Puck’s signature pizzas, along with salads, pastas and chicken dishes.

Puck said simple economics dictated that his first Orange County foray be a moderately priced restaurant. “With a major recession going on, people can’t go out as often to expensive restaurants,” Puck said. “What it boils down to is people want good value.”

Construction has begun on the cafe, which will sit between Bullock’s department store and the Bullock’s Men’s Store on the Bear Street side of South Coast Plaza. The restaurant will take over space previously occupied by Bullock’s, but the eatery will have its own entrance.

The cafe will borrow heavily from the whimsical design at a sister cafe that opened in June at Universal CityWalk, a dining, retail and entertainment district near Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

“This isn’t going to be like Spago, which is a 100%, full-service restaurant,” Puck said. “It’s a cafe, like the one at CityWalk.”

At CityWalk, the cafe’s offbeat tone is set by a whimsical mural that incorporates a cowboy roping a pizza and a drummer banging away on pizzas. From the outside, it looks less like a restaurant and more like an amusement park.

Puck hopes to replicate the lighter atmosphere in Costa Mesa, but the decor “will be a little more sophisticated than CityWalk because it’s in South Coast,” said Selwyn Joffe, chief executive officer of Wolfgang Puck Restaurant Co. in Santa Monica. The Costa Mesa and CityWalk locations were designed by Barbara Lazaroff, Puck’s wife.

Puck’s growing restaurant empire includes Chinois on Main in Santa Monica, one of the region’s finest eateries, and Spago, the trendy restaurant that “every visitor to L.A. wants to go to,” according to Zagat Restaurant Surveys, a popular guidebook. He also has restaurant interests in Tokyo and Las Vegas and is considering a venture in Mexico City.

Despite the weak economy and fierce competition in Orange County, local restaurateurs welcomed Puck’s arrival.

“It’s in the growing tradition of Los Angeles moving south to Orange County,” said Pascal Olhats, owner of Pascal, a highly rated French restaurant in Newport Beach. “We have room for more good restaurants in Orange County. It’s time that people recognized Orange County as a main area for dining.”

Puck’s Cafe is the latest in a string of newly arrived eating, drinking and dancing emporiums with an out-of-town flavor. Earlier arrivals included the Hard Rock Cafe, the Roxbury nightclub and Planet Hollywood.

The Orange County market is appealing to out-of-town restaurants and clubs because, despite the current economic slowdown, it is home to nearly 2.5 million residents with a median household income of $52,200. And Orange County draws more than 37 million relatively free-spending tourists and business travelers every year.

Puck’s Cafe is part of a growing trend in the industry, as restaurateurs attempt to sate the public’s growing hunger for quality food at affordable prices.

Michael Kang, who in late July closed his pricey Five Feet Too restaurant at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, now is reviewing several restaurant concepts that appeal to value-conscious diners.

Taco Bell, the fast-food leader, is attacking value from the other end of the price spectrum. The Irvine-based chain, known for its 59-, 79- and 99-cent menu items, is building two sit-down restaurant chains that will offer moderately priced Mexican- and Southwestern-style food.

The new Costa Mesa cafe is a joint venture between Puck’s restaurant company and Macy’s, the New York-based department store chain. Macy’s, which owns the Bullock’s stores in California, is a financial partner in upscale pizza outlets that Puck opened previously at Macy’s stores in San Francisco and at Minneapolis’ Mall of America.

Why did it take Puck so long to venture into Orange County? “You never know if it’s the right time” to expand, Puck said. “One good thing is that (Orange County) is not too far from us. And, Macy’s is going to help us pay for it.”

Will Orange County diners soon have other Puck-designed menus to choose from? “I believe we first make this one successful,” Puck said. “Then we see about another good location.”

Executives at South Coast Plaza, which already has about 30 restaurants, seemed excited about Puck’s arrival. “South Coast Plaza continually looks to offer customers very unique shopping and dining experiences,” said spokeswoman Jan Roberts. “This certainly is a unique restaurant.”