RESTAURANTS : 21 Screens--and Almost as Many Places to Dine Out

To sample all the dishes at the new Spectrum Entertainment Center, you’d better come hungry.

The complex eventually will have five full-scale restaurants and a full-scale food court with nine diverse concessions, not to mention the food inside its 21-screen movie house--egg rolls, fresh pizzas and other cinematic snacks that the Edwards Cinema people suspect will put popcorn on the back burner.

Some of the places are familiar, with solid reps: Pasta Bravo, Wolfgang Puck Cafe, Diedrich Coffee and several more. Others will be making their local debuts. In previewing them, I’m relying on the good graces of public relations and my own instincts.

Restaurants

Bertolini’s Trattoria

Just when you thought there wasn’t room enough for another Italian dinner house, here comes Bertolini’s Trattoria, an Atlanta-based chain with roots in Las Vegas.

The ruggedly handsome Bertolini’s is doing land-office business in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace on the Vegas strip, where it is situated near Spago Las Vegas. The concept is well worn: thin-crusted brick-oven pizzas, assorted pasta and risotti, a few choice grilled meats and a large selection of homemade gelati, Italian ice creams. Bertolini’s is banking on its record of success in diverse locales. We’ll see how enthusiastic the reception is here. (714) 450-0600.

Champps

What I could best determine after walking into the huge, unfinished Champps was that the concept is a combination of restaurants like T.G.I. Friday’s, a state-of-the-art sports bar and a live entertainment restaurant rolled into one.

“The food is much better here than at a Friday’s,” one manager said.

Champps is a Minnesota-based chain that bills itself as high-volume, casual and vibrant. There are huge TV screens, live music and well-traveled fare--pastas, burgers and lots of creative salads. The atmosphere is all-American, with oak paneling, comfortable lighting and a team of young, athletic servers. (714) 453-9333.

P.F. Chang’s China Bistro

The P.F. stands for Paul Fleming, a successful restaurateur already affiliated with the snazzy Ruth’s Chris Steak House franchise. The China Bistro part offers the foods of China, from major regions like Szechuan, Canton, Peking and Shanghai, on a menu that was, in part, developed by Philip Chiang, who hails from a successful Chinese restaurant family (his mother, Cecelia Chiang, owned the Mandarin in Beverly Hills).

The Fashion Island prototype is an upscale and beautifully designed restaurant. Knowing Fleming and his penchant for excellence, I expect this one to be a showplace. I especially liked Peking ravioli and spiced minced chicken at the first restaurant. This one, as with the first, spotlights fine wines by the glass, specially blended teas and a selection of most un-Chinese desserts--flourless chocolate cake, for instance. (714) 453-1211.

Wolfgang Puck Cafe

Yes, America’s most recognized chef is back, with his second pizza and California cuisine cafe in the county. (The South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa was Puck’s first O.C. location. He is scheduled to open a third restaurant at Fashion Island in Newport Beach at the end of the month.)

Many of us know the drill, and it is a good one: terrific wood-fired pizzas, Chinois chicken salad with crispy noodles, great rotisserie chicken with garlic mashed potatoes, warm chocolate souffle and designer Barbara Lazaroff’s (Puck’s wife) surrealistic take on restaurant interiors, which aren’t half as wild as some of the dresses she wears. Opens Tuesday at 11 a.m. (714) 453-9393.

Sloppy Joe’s Bar

Sloppy Joe’s, which is to open by Christmas, takes its name from a bar in Key West, Fla., where Ernest Hemingway did his serious drinking. (All his drinking was probably serious.) Today, there are branches in Orlando, Atlanta and Honolulu. The menu describes the Sloppy Joe’s concept as “great rock ‘n’ roll, casual island cuisine.” Yeah, mon.

Glancing at the menu, I see dishes like conch chowder, jalapeno conch fritters, Caribbean quesadilla, Jamaican chicken sandwiches and grouper, grilled and served as a sandwich. There’s live entertainment, Hemingway memorabilia and, naturally, key lime pie for dessert.

Food Court

Ben and Jerry’s

This is the second O.C. location for the well-known, multinational commercial ice cream giant (the other Orange County store is in Irvine’s Alton Square, and the company has plans to open three more county locations in 1996).

Ben and Jerry’s has become a household name with super-premium ice creams like Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia and their newest entry, Chubby Hubby vanilla malt ice cream with chocolate-covered pretzel pieces. But the hope in the front office is that their six low-fat ice creams and soon-to-be introduced line of all-organic sorbets will be big sellers here. I wouldn’t bet against it. Opens Friday. (714) 453-9722.

Blueberry Hill

When I asked owner Beverly Scheftz why Blueberry Hill was chosen over all the other hamburger joints, her reply was direct: “We’ve got the best burger in the world.”

There are 11 Blueberry Hill’s in Canada, and this is to be the company’s first foray onto American soil. Burgers are handmade from a secret recipe and come on egg dough buns studded with sesame. You can have your burger (either six or eight ounces) with up to 10 toppings, including avocado, alfalfa sprouts and others, at no extra charge. Fries and onion rings are prepared with cholesterol-free canola oil, said Scheftz, who proceeded to tempt me with fries smothered in sour cream and hand-grated Cheddar cheese. (714) 753-1515.

Diedrich Coffee

Diedrich is a separate cafe, not really a part of the circular food court area. The cafe doors open directly onto an outside patio, and there are tables inside.

Diedrich needs no local introduction. This well-known Orange County coffee company, which roasts coffee in enormous metal roasters that are also sold commercially, owns plantations in Guatemala and sells the widest variety of coffees around. Maybe Starbucks has made inroads lately, but Diedrich remains the county’s own home-grown coffee chain. (714) 450-1143.

Twin Dragon

This will be run by the same people who run Magic Dragon in Anaheim, where they prepare the usual Chinese food court lineup: orange chicken, barbecued pork, kung pao chicken, Mongolian beef, fried shrimp with spicy sauce, chow mein, fried rice and more of the basic, Americanized stuff. Opens in two weeks.

NY Upper Crust Pizza

Local success story NY Upper Crust Pizza belongs to the Cusumano family, particularly to Joe and wife Christine. The chain already has branches in Laguna Niguel, San Juan Capistrano and Costa Mesa’s Triangle Square.

Cusumano is proud of his product, which he insists is quite unlike pizzas made at most chains.

“We use first-quality stuff like whole-milk cheese from Wisconsin, Roma tomatoes, fresh vegetables,” he says. “Sauce and dough are made from scratch on site.”

There are the double-crusted masterpieces that Cusumano calls stuffed pizzas, also traditional Italian toppings, ranging from eggplant Parmesan to pesto. Opens in two to three weeks. (714) 453-9494.

Pasta Bravo

Healthy pastas are the order of the day at Pasta Bravo, which originated right here in Irvine and is now marking its eighth location. Prices are low. Everyone of the six pastas range in price from $3.25 to $6.95, and all but the tortellini are made on the premises. One of the biggest sellers is angel hair pomodoro, made without butter, cream or salt. Indulgent palates can glide toward rigatoni with creamy marinara, made with that cardiological culprit Alfredo sauce. (714) 727-4757.

Rubio’s Fish Tacos

Who knew how much we liked fish tacos before the Rubio’s chain came along? The Irvine opening is No. 22 for this San Diego company, which has built an empire from stuffing taco shells with deep-fried Alaskan pollock and grilled mahi-mahi.

Personally, I like my fish taco San Felipe style, with shredded cabbage, a squeeze of lime and lots of pico de gallo . The chain’s well-crafted salsas go well with the tacos, which are served on soft corn tortillas. Heart-smart types will also have the option to choose a healthy Mex burrito, made with all-breast-meat grilled chicken. (714) 727-9527.

Sabatino’s Deli

And baby makes three. Three Italian restaurants in the Food Court, that is, to give you an idea of just how popular this cuisine is in relation to everything else.

If you’ve ever bitten into the sumptuous sausage served at Sabatino’s Shipyard Sausage Co. in Newport, then you already know that this is O.C.’s foremost Italian sausage. The sausage is made using a secret recipe of Italian goat’s milk cheeses, fennel, lean pork, spices and more. On a bun with some roasted peppers and onions, it is an epiphany. The new deli will also sell salads--an anticlimax for a sausage junkie like me. Opening within a month. (714) 450-1450.

Surf City Squeeze

Anyone for a smoothie? There are now more than 120 franchises in this fast-growing chain, which is already ensconced in MainPlace/Santa Ana.

Tom Horowitz, the company’s vice president for real estate, couldn’t provide me with an exact count but said that “we’re opening them every day.”

The smoothie in question is a non-dairy, low-fat drink based on a vanilla-flavored smoothie mix, a blend of either fresh fruit, frozen fruit or some combination of the two, and ice. The price for a 14-ounce smoothie is $2.45, $3.50 for a 20-ounce drink. In addition to those, made with your choice of berries, peaches, banana and the usual suspects, there are fresh juices, plus a line of “functional drinks” bolstered by nutrient supplements and herbal elixirs. (714) 453-0403.

The Irvine Entertainment Center is located at the El Toro Y, where the Santa Ana (5) and San Diego (405) Freeways converge. Take the Alton Parkway exit from the 5, the Irvine Center Drive exit from the 405.