Concept Hits High Tide at Chimayo at the Beach
Face it--Huntington Beach isn’t known for its restaurants. So Chimayo at the Beach practically had the title of best restaurant in town the day it opened.
It does have all the right elements: a hot concept, a killer location (opposite Huntington Pier), stunning design and a well-trained staff. It’s a spinoff of Chimayo Grill in Fashion Island, of course, and experienced Orange County restaurateur David Wilhelm and longtime assistant Thomas Tran have put together a beach-appropriate menu of Southwestern and seafood dishes.
Chimayo occupies the beach level of the building that houses the restaurant Duke’s. From street level, you can easily see the Duke’s facade, but not Chimayo’s dining room. All that indicates its presence to passersby is an iridescent blue sign, which is easier to see by night than by day.
Once you’re inside Chimayo, though, you’ll be impressed by the look of the place. The cross-beamed rattan ceiling gives you the feeling of standing inside an overturned boat. Art glass lanterns splotched with bright colors hang over the tables from long metal rods. One wall features a huge Gauguin-esque mural to stir dreams of the South Pacific.
Like the menu, the design also incorporates Southwestern elements. The booths are upholstered in Southwestern patterns, the plates are earth-toned, the napkins the color of a desert sky on a hazy day. Desert plants and Native American pottery are placed in prominent spots.
In the current weather, most diners understandably prefer to sit indoors, but there’s a large patio right on the sand. Of course, you can always wait at the fruitwood bar and peek at the ocean through the windows. There you may want to wet your whistle with classy cocktails such as the guava margarita, basically a smoothie for grown-ups.
The menu’s appetizer (“antojitos and spicy cravings”) section is appealing. One of the kitchen’s more creative ideas is the rare ahi roll with avocado, red onion and a cilantro-red chile dipping sauce, where the nearly raw tuna and the vegetables are wrapped in warm flour tortillas.
A particularly good one is the scallop, papaya and Bermuda onion ceviche, served in an oversized martini glass with a side of warm tortilla chips. The contrasting flavors give your palate a workout. But I must say I find the three-cheese pumpkinseed-crusted chile relleno ponderously heavy. And the queso fundido, a blend of melted cheeses with chicken sausage, mushrooms and chiles, cloys after a few mouthfuls.
The soups and salads can be very good. Sweet corn and bean soups are served together in the same bowl, forming a
yin-yang pattern of pureed sweet corn and smoky, cumin-infused bean puree. The Mexican Caesar (a curious name, since the Caesar salad originated in Mexico) is a nice hunk of romaine in a Caesar dressing spiked with green chiles, topped with chile-crusted focaccia croutons.
“Warm spinach salad with mushrooms, tomatoes, corn, tumbleweed onion and Cheddar cheese with a honey-mustard bacon vinaigrette” is as complicated as it sounds, and as filling--unreasonably filling for a salad. The one mesquite oven pizza I’ve tried here was a soggy one with an over-sauced barbecued chicken topping. It put me off trying any of the others.
The entrees are evenly divided between seafood and meat. The best seafood dish is the fresh fish of the day wrapped in a banana leaf and baked in the wood-burning oven, a process that produces an uncommonly moist, tender, flaky dish. Sea bass is especially good treated this way. I had mine with a spicy ancho chili sauce, and it was great.
Barbacoa salmon, grilled in a corn husk, is not quite as tender as the fish baked in banana leaf, but it’s delicious anyway with its two sauces: green chile pesto and a festive-looking corn and red pepper salsa. But my grilled mahi mahi on black beans with mango salsa was overcooked, as were the grilled prosciutto-wrapped scallops (I liked the garlic mashed potatoes the latter were served on, though).
The best meat dish is probably the Mexican “bricked” chicken, which is weighted with a brick to flatten it on the grill. It’s much like a Tuscan pollo al mattone, but with a crisp oregano crust instead of the Tuscan rosemary and olive oil coating. Another good meat entree is sabana, a flattened filet mignon. This would be just an ordinary steak except that it’s basted with an inspired adobo sauce and served with a good avocado relish and jalapeno-Cheddar scalloped potatoes.
The original Chimayo Grill has terrific desserts, such as a warm bittersweet brownie sundae and a malted creme bru^lee with raspberries. The desserts here don’t compare. The warm chocolate, berry and pecan bread pudding is soggy. And pay no attention to the name: The Tahitian vanilla bean and orange creme bru^lee is nothing out of the ordinary.
Your best shot is called strawberry margarita, vanilla ice cream and corn bread shortcake. The corn cake is great, and so is the whipped cream, even if the strawberries are likely to be underripe.
Altogether, though, the surf is definitely up for Chimayo at the Beach.
Chimayo at the Beach is expensive. Appetizers, soups and salads are $4.50 to $11.95. Seafoods are $15.75 to $18.95. Meat and poultry is $13.95 to $22.95.
BE THERE
* Chimayo at the Beach, 315 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. (714) 374- 7273. Open 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sun., 5-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5-11 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.- 11 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. All major cards.