My Newport Beach Restaurant Week adventure continued with an afternoon lunch at Bluefin Fine Japanese Cuisine. This restaurant, named after an endangered fish, is located in the high-end Crystal Cove neighborhood of Newport Coast. If you want to see where the money lives in the OC, take a drive through Crystal Cove and you’ll find them.
This is the first time I did a lunch for Restaurant Week, and I have to tell you, it’s a completely different experience. For one thing, the lunch clientele at Bluefin was all female. I was the only guy there! This has more to do with the neighborhood than the restaurant. You see, in the Newport Coast, and especially in Crystal Cove, the men are out making the money. The wives go shopping, and eat lunch at fine restaurants like Bluefin. Yes, it’s true. I was surrounded by the real housewives of Newport Beach!
Being surrounded by housewives with allowances bigger than most union workers isn’t such a bad thing. I’m sure if my wife wasn’t with me, I could have sweet-talk a group of ladies to pay for my lunch. As it stood, most through I was my wife’s gay personal assistant.
Anyway… On To The Lunch!
Bluefin is one of the many restaurants participating in Restaurant Week that offers both a prix-fixe lunch and dinner. The main difference is the price. Dinner cost $40, while lunch cost $20. The lunch portions are generally smaller too. Still, this is quite a nice saving as the regular price for just the Chef’s Omakase Sushi is $35. And you can get that, plus appetizer and dessert for only $20. For a restaurant like Bluefin, this is down right cheap. I’m sure the housewives tip more than $20 per table.
Our lunch menu started with Iro-iro seafood with chili sauce, and tuna and calamari sashimi salad with Korean dressing. I like the Iro-iro more than the salad. The chili sauce had a nice kick to it.
Second Course was the Chef’s Omakase Sushi, and sautéed halibut with soba risotto and white truffle Oil. Omakase basically means you let the chef decide what to serve you. This can be good or scary depending on how you look at it. Fortunately, it was a good experience for us. The halibut was really nicely done as well.
For dessert, we were served a Pear Crème Brulee, and a chocolate cake with raspberry sherbet. Both were awesome. I wasn’t expecting the Crème Brulee to have real pears pieces inside. The chocolate cake had a Japanese level of sweetness, which is preferred by my wife.
Overall, I would say lunch at Bluefin was pretty awesome, and well worth the money. After Newport Beach Restaurant Week is over, I plan to go there again with a group guys to see if we can get a free lunch out of the Newport housewives. Whether we do or not, I’m sure the video will be hilarious.
