Bennett: An update of new-wave Asian Cajun at The Wharf

Old Towne, Orange. Anaheim’s Packing District. Main Street, Huntington Beach. DTSA.

Whether thanks to recent or continual development, Orange County’s historic downtowns are all flourishing destinations, filled with progressive chefs, young entrepreneurs and watering holes that bring the locals out at night.

That is, except, downtown Garden Grove. Despite charming brick sidewalks and plentiful parking, the city’s historic Main Street is a sleepy strip of underutilized storefronts that severely lacks the dining and entertainment amenities necessary to draw today’s cool-hunting crowds. (OK, that Elvis-themed Mexican restaurant that holds weekly car shows is pretty cool).

This hasn’t bothered Garden Grove’s prominent Vietnamese population too much, though, since Garden Grove Boulevard is now their own unofficial Main Street, littered with everything from traditional Vietnamese and Laotian food to Instagram-ready boba tea houses to Korean barbecue to pho to ramen to those ubiquitous Cajun crawfish restaurants, which hit the scene in the mid-2000s and have been proliferating the Vietnamese take on Lousiana’s rural boiling points ever since.

So it’s about time some of the glory of the new Garden Grove infiltrated the old. Enter: The Wharf, Main Street’s newest business and the first even remotely Vietnamese eatery on the block. It’s also the county’s latest Asian Cajun restaurant, brought to you by the owners of the Wild Crab, only a mile and a half down Garden Grove Boulevard.

But beyond the rarity of its location, The Wharf breaks the over-the-top nautical theme and all-shellfish-all-the-time formula that’s been followed by all the other Orange County seafood boil spots (yes, even the Wild Crab) in so many ways.

Occupying the space that once belonged to Main Street’s gem of a short-lived first gastropub, Brick House, The Wharf kept the former’s electric blue accent lighting, its dark wooden booths and communal tables — and also its liquor license. The result is a décor that’s more classy than galley, the vibe more sports bar than roadhouse and the menu much wider than just boiled seafood in a bag.

Of course, the Wild Crab’s famous combos are all still there, on a side of the menu loaded with by-the-pound options like Maine lobster, clams, crab legs and more. And if you’ve never experienced the visceral pleasure of donning a plastic bib in order to rip off shrimp heads, suck the guts out of broken crawfish bodies and dip the gummy meat of green-lipped mussels in a spicy red slurry of butter, garlic, cayenne, paprika and lemon pepper, it’s a definite must (just make sure you’re equipped to survive the following three days, when your breath and clothes will continue to bear hints of the pungent sauce).

However, the beauty of The Wharf is that while most of Orange County’s seafood boil restaurants have a few appetizer-size items like garlic noodles, French fries and steamed escargot scattered across an afterthought a la carte menu, it’s entirely possible to eat a satisfying meal here without ever needing a bib, much less the butcher paper table cloth that arrives when you’re first seated.

Instead, you can less gruesomely eat your way through an entire alternate menu of Vietnamese small plates (crispy fried quail, glazed lamb chops, deep-fried salmon belly), traditionally prepared clams and snails (grilled bloody clams, coconut escargot, stir-fried baby clams) and Vietnamese-style barbecue skewers, which for $3 come with three sticks of impaled and grilled options from octopus to fried fish balls to bacon-wrapped mushrooms and more (try them with the Cajun sauce).

Oysters — available by the dozen and half-dozen — are flown in from Canada, Northern California and even Louisiana daily (they’re $1 during happy hour too).

Then, there is the crawfish macaroni and cheese, a dish in a class all its own. Who wants to go through all the trouble of cracking open those little lobster-looking crawfish just to redeem a toe-size morsel of buttery tail meat, when the restaurant will do the hard work for you and then throw a hearty helping of it in a skillet with gooey gruyere and pasta shells like you’re some sort of deserving French king?

Or go decadent in another way with the seafood hot pot setup, one of the best deals in the house. It costs only $12 and has enough vermicelli noodles, shrimp, clams, mussels and vegetables for two to get full dipping it all in the fishy sweet-and-sour broth.

As for drinks, there are cheap bottles of house wine, a nice lineup of craft beer and even a Poke-tini, a cocktail named after Pokemon (Char-mango, Peach-kachu) in honor of the numerous Poke Stops along Main Street that keep strolling crowds outside buried in their handheld screens.

With a full bar, late-night hours and a menu that makes the seafood boil a component of the concept, not its centerpiece, The Wharf takes the new-wave Asian Cajun restaurant of the last decade and brings it into 2016. Some may say it’s more Americanized than the Viet-Creole fusion we’ve grown accustomed to, or scoff at its full detachment from both authentic Southern and Vietnamese cuisines. But with innovation comes scrutiny, and it was high time to refresh the format.

If nothing else, consider The Wharf a wake-up call that Garden Grove can and should look to its Vietnamese community if it ever wants to become Orange County’s next great downtown.

--

SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.