Bagels, Lox, 59th & Lex

Mention the corner of 59th Street and Lexington Avenue to most New Yorkers, and they’ll think of the original Bloomingdale’s department store, affectionately known as Bloomie’s. Here in O.C., 59th & Lex has a different connotation. It’s associated with Bloomingdale’s, all right, but it’s the name of a chic cafe/restaurant attached to the store’s Fashion Island branch.

Of course, the Newport Beach Bloomie’s can’t hold a candle to the original Manhattan store in terms of style or storied location. On the other hand, at Fashion Island a couple of patio tables shaded by white Bloomie’s umbrellas are poised just outside 59th & Lex, so you can dine alfresco when the weather is mild. Try that in New York this time of year.

Anyway, here’s the main thing: For anyone who wants an authentic New York lunch in Orange County, or just plain good food, this is the place to go.

The long, narrow room is curved slightly to conform to the contour of the building. Appointments include sleek Danish modern chairs with cushions upholstered in gray leather and a blue-tiled espresso bar. Reprints of New Yorker magazine cartoons that mention Bloomingdale’s hang above most tables.

Usually the management seats you, but one day nobody came forth, so I seated myself at a round parquetry table. Through the floor-to-ceiling cherrywood blinds that separate the restaurant from the department store, I had a catbird seat view of a Clinique representative doing a make-over on a fussy woman in a Donna Karan jacket.

If such ladies are the target market for this cafe, you wouldn’t know it from the menu. Yes, plenty of light, diety things come out of this kitchen. There are trendy salad specials and fresh grilled veggies anointed with a balsamic vinaigrette, for instance. But it’s hard to overlook all the robust East Coast stuff--the pastas, corned beef sandwiches and cheesecakes that are three time zones removed from what most Californians fancy for lunch.

One day I began lunch with a wonderfully sudsy egg cream, properly made with seltzer water, milk and more than one squirt of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup. Another day I started out with a terrific vanilla malt made with Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, Horlick’s malted milk and fresh whipped cream.

Every day there’s a soup or two. Recent choices included a spa-like roasted eggplant soup with surprising intensity and a light beef vegetable noodle soup that tasted like something you’d get at the famous Second Avenue Deli. The 59th Street sampler looks great on the menu, but this plate of fresh mozzarella, beefsteak tomato and baked goat cheese on a bed of field greens is lackluster. The greens are crisp, but the cheeses are bland, and the lemon vinaigrette splashed over the salad is watery.

The best dish I’ve eaten here comes from a section of the menu called Little Italy on Mulberry Street. Actually, the section lists only two possibilities: farfalle Caterina with the “world’s best” marinara sauce. The second entry gives you the choice of linguine or penne pasta, with Rao’s or Patsy’s marinara sauces, but Rao’s is no longer available. Fortunately, Patsy’s is terrific.

Farfalle Caterina is al dente bow-tie pasta and the perfect amount of toppings: roasted eggplant chunks, fresh spinach, whole-milk mozzarella and Patsy’s sauce. It’s a huge portion that will easily serve two. If only more of our Italian restaurants would do pastas like this one.

Sandwiches are served with real kosher-style half-sour dill pickles and scoops of a delicious potato salad made with red-skinned potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, celery and lots of creamy Dijon mayo. A good example is the triple-deck New York turkey club: roasted turkey breast, thick slab bacon and tomatoes on country white toast.

I’m less sure about the Reuben, which the menu tells us is from the original Reuben’s restaurant on 58th Street. The sandwich puts sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing and lots of lean corned beef on grilled rye bread that the restaurant flies in from New York, but I’m afraid it’s a heavy, drippy sandwich. On top of that, the Reuben was really invented in the Midwest.

But Bloomie’s burger is a great cheeseburger: eight ounces of ground sirloin with a choice of cheddar or Swiss. Smoked salmon on a bagel is a generous portion of buttery, lightly smoked Norwegian salmon (from the famous Paris purveyor Petrossian), sliced red onions and whipped cream cheese on a large, springy, sesame-crusted H&H; bagel (also flown in from New York), which puts any of our local bagels to shame.

The Newport Beach social X-rays go for grilled vegetables or a creditable poached salmon, served chilled with a dill-mustard sauce. But I have spied them slurping the foam off their earthy cappuccinos and guiltily finishing up that wedge of Junior’s cheesecake, another New York import that the cafe serves with raspberry sauce.

The other desserts here, particularly the insipid, overly sweet carrot and chocolate cakes from L.A.’s La Mousse, should be ignored. No self-respecting New Yorker would give them a second look.

I’m settling in with another egg cream and visions of Mantle, Gershwin, the Bronx and Staten Island too.

59th & Lex is moderately priced. Beverages, $1.25-$3.50; soups, salads and sandwiches, $3.25-$10.50; pastas, $5-$9.50; desserts, $3-$3.75.

BE THERE

59th & Lex, 701 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach. (714) 729-6600. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. All major cards.