OC's Rock-Star Chef Takashi Abe Does San Clemente at Sea Smoke

In Full RetreatChef Cody Requejo shreds with both sushi knives and Stratocasters   A few weeks ago, in a review for Sea Smoke in San Clemente, I called owner Takashi Abe a “rock-star sushi chef.” It seemed an apt description for him, especially...

Stefani Peterson of the OC Register reported that a few weeks ago Takashi Abe's Sea Smoke in San Clemente closed permanently. Then our buddy at OC Register's Food Frenzy blog, Niyaz Pirani, revealed the shuttering of Q Restaurant, the crawfish and...

The six people who sat at a table in the back of the restaurant were obviously drunk on too much sake. Their increasingly rowdy voices were fast becoming slurred cackles of obscenities and snorts. With every f-bomb they dropped, the other...

“Omakase” is what you say to a sushi chef when you trust him to give you the best and freshest. It isn’t exclusive of sushi or sashimi either (cooked foods are fair game)—it just means, “Give me great things to eat, I’ll worry about the money...

No place else is as quintessentially OC as Huntington Beach. And no nightlife is quite like the kind going down on Main Street. Along the beer-soaked drag, Friday-night revelers, full of alcohol, merriment and greasy food, spill out from the bars....