Letters
“Andrei’s ... is an enigma. It’s lavishly constructed to honor a loved one we don’t know, never will, and aren’t sure why dining is a tribute to him. There’s a skilled chef directing a capable but inconsistent kitchen. ... Like the windblown dandelion in the restaurant’s logo, the experience ultimately is scattered.”
Gretchen Kurz
Orange Coast Contributing Editor
Defending Andrei’s After reading the review of Andrei’s Conscious Cuisine & Cocktails by Gretchen Kurz [Main Course, January 2010], I feel she was insulting the memory of Andrei, for whom the restaurant is named, and the family members who opened the restaurant. I am a regular there and know that every menu includes an explanation about who Andrei was and how he relates to the restaurant. It also seemed like a rushed, uneducated, and outdated critique of the restaurant. This article mentioned menu items from two seasons ago.
Deborah Allen
Newport Beach
Studio’s Service
I read your review of Studio [Main Course, December 2009]. We must have been there on the same night of your visit. Even though we were graciously welcomed by three staff members, we also encountered the same scant attention and waits for table service. The excellent food helped us overlook this.
The wine steward was disconcerted when he learned that we brought our own wine. After telling us in a demeaning manner about the corkage fee, we had to ask to have it opened, and ended up pouring our own wine throughout dinner. He reappeared at the end of the main course and proceeded to talk about customers’ poor wine choices. We brought his unprofessional conduct to the attention of the manager, who waived the corkage fee for our two bottles.
The clincher was that the pleasant server dropped a pepper mill on my toe, which was later confirmed to have been broken.
Donald W.A. Smith
Laguna Beach
Lauding Lucca
We are food snobs and Cathy Pavlos’ Lucca Cafe [Mouthful, December 2009] is one of our favorite places. The take-out dinners are fabulous and affordable. When we want a night out, the dinner menu is divine.
Katie Bernhardt
Irvine
Update
“Glee” star Matthew Morrison was nominated for a Golden Globe Award just two weeks after our December cover featuring him hit the newsstands. One day later, a copy of that issue turned up on eBay, offered at $19.95. That followed by only a few days the eBay posting of an October 2005 issue of
Orange Coast with “Lost” star Josh Holloway on the cover. Asking price: $24.99. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but we like to think it’s not just their stock that’s up, but ours.
Corrections
We incorrectly reported in our December cover story that the Fox TV series “Glee” takes place in Iowa; it is set in Ohio. Also, the name of orthopedic surgeon Ayaz A. Biviji was misspelled in January’s “Top Doctors 2010” story.
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