Five Feet Too Now Not Just a Pretty Face

Many people swear by Five Feet Too, Michael Kang’s showcase Fashion Island restaurant, but until recently, I had never been much of a fan.

No one can deny that this restaurant has one of Orange County’s most striking interiors. The foyer boasts a collection of modern art that rivals that found in any local museum. The dining area is long, sleek and elegant. And then there is the restaurant’s all-steel open kitchen, where you can watch some of Orange County’s most unusual food being created.

Chef/owner Kang has won many people over with a brilliant sense of the visual; these are dishes that have always been pretty to look at. Now, some of them taste good too. This is a restaurant with a lot of good ideas, but one that had been plagued by shoddy execution. That time, it would appear, has passed.

Such resolutely Chinese dishes as dim sum basket, simply steamed dumplings with minced meat and vegetable fillings, can be very satisfying and suggest that Kang may be returning to his culinary roots. A dish called Chinese spicy Caesar salad, on the other hand, enhanced by a smoky wild boar bacon, demonstrates Kang’s ability to improve on traditional Western fare.

The menu’s conceits do not always work, though. One of the restaurant’s signature dishes, goat cheese won-tons with raspberry splashes, remains edible art better suited for the eye than the palate. The “goat cheese” filling is hardly goat cheese at all, and the use of raspberry, a fruit disliked by most Chinese, seems a mixed metaphor at best. Then there is a dish like Chinese chicken pozole soup, a bizarre soup, with an odd mixture of chilies and spices. Pozole, hominy in English, doesn’t appear in this soup at all.

Ignore the restaurant’s obvious connections to China, and you are bound to enjoy yourself more. Despite a hyperbolic quote the restaurant uses referring to itself as “the best Chinese restaurant in America,” I wouldn’t really call this place a Chinese restaurant at all. The good catfish and kung pao chicken served here are unmistakably Chinese, but such dishes as braised Sonoma lamb shank with garlic-chives mashed potatoes and smoked turkey sandwich with jalapeno Brie certainly are not.

Still, if you are heading to Fashion Island and you want an interesting meal, this distinctive, original location is surely the ticket.

Five Feet Too, in Fashion Island, 1145 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach. (714) 640-5250. Open daily, 11:30 to midnight. All major cards accepted.