GALLIVANTING GOURMET: A fantasy island with real good food

No, Margaret, there is no Santa Claus. There is no Tommy Bahama, and there is no Island that serves this cuisine. The other night we dined at the newly remodeled Tommy Bahama’s Island Grille and found ourselves at a Caribbean plantation house in a Newport Beach shopping center parking lot. Half the structure is a restaurant and the other half a retail store that sells the eponymous clothing one can wear to this and other fantasy islands.

Surrounded by tall palms and olive trees, the attractive edifice flaunts striped awnings, plantation shutters and a trellised veranda punctuated by large potted plants. Upon entering, you walk past the spacious eat-in bar area, which features French doors that are open wide on warm days. You may choose to dine in the main dining room or outdoors on the patio with the background trickle of the fountain and the murmur of the cars on East Coast Highway. On summer nights, this large area is certain to be packed.

Inside, what was once a large, noisy, brightly lit space has been divided into smaller sections with handsome wood partitioning, topped with carved open latticework, creating a quieter, more intimate atmosphere. Wood dominates this dark room, most notably, the beautiful floors and comfortable upholstered booths. Chairs are covered with a chocolate-colored, pineapple-and-floral-printed fabric. Fresh flowers and soft lighting complete the picture.

The menu presents some old favorites and some new specialties. They call it Coastal Cuisine, and it covers just about every coast you can imagine from California to Chile, from Jamaica to Hawaii and most points in between.

Because the lunch and dinner menu are the same, you have lots of options for putting together a meal, light or substantial, at any time of the day. Appetizers, sandwiches, soups and salads are offered, as well as traditional dinner entrées.

Choosing to make a meal out of the tempting starter plates, we passed on the crab cakes with Asian slaw and the marinated grilled artichoke while struggling to decide between the Catalina Crudo with Hawaiian Kampachi, tropical fruit salsa, watermelon and plantain chips, or the Loki Loki tuna poke. We opted for the tuna because it is one of their signature dishes.

A layered tower of tiny chunks of excellent silky tuna and creamy, perfectly ripened avocado was seasoned with salty capers, green onions and cilantro, all punched up with just the right amount of wasabi. An interesting addition was tiny slivers of crackly wontons that added yet another texture. The melange was served with crispy flatbread for scooping up this scrumptious concoction.

For the Harvest Salad, Tommy gathers all the ingredients in the kitchen and puts a little bit of each into this eclectic grab bag of a dish. We discerned onions, bacon, figs, blue cheese, long beans, grilled corn, spicy nuts, eggs and fresh baby greens, all tossed with light honey mustard vinaigrette. In fact, it was not only quite delicious, but also entertaining, as we called out each new ingredient as we discovered it. You can also get this salad as an entrée with the addition of roasted chicken.

Other entrée-sized salads include: char-grilled steak with baby greens, rare yellow fin tuna with Asian slaw or jumbo shrimps and scallops with baby arugula in a tamarind vinaigrette.

Another starter, the most famous of their signature dishes, is coconut shrimp — a generous portion of large, crispy, coconut-coated fried shrimp. Each crustacean sits in its own little puddle of papaya-mango jam. The menu calls it chutney, but it lacked the complexity of good chutney and just tasted sweet. The accompanying Asian slaw, however, had a piquant tartness that was fresh on the palate and wasn’t overdressed as slaw often is. It made a perfect pairing with the sweet shrimp.

If you are looking for something a bit heartier, try a pulled pork sandwich with blackberry brandy barbecue sauce, grilled chicken with avocado and mango aioli, or maybe the cheddar bacon cheeseburger. The most interesting sounding of the lot is the Lobster Cove grilled cheese stuffed with Maine lobster and four cheeses, and served with “from scratch” heirloom tomato soup.

Dinner-type entrées (also served at lunch) range from their new, lightly crusted halibut in a Pinot Grigio lemon beurre blanc, roasted arctic char with orange blossom honey glaze and seared, oven-roasted sea bass in basil, toasted walnut olive sauce, to a char-grilled center-cut filet with wild mushrooms, a 14-ounce pork chop with cherry chutney, a half roast chicken or Tommy’s baby back ribs.

The dessert selection is presented at your table on a large platter. Unique were the Balboa bars, described as “homemade” Heath bars served with vanilla bean gelato. There was a classic Key lime pie and a giant chocolate extravaganza: chocolate malted pie, inside chocolate cake with chocolate malted whipped cream. If you are dining with a teenage boy, this is the dessert for him.

Sticking with the Bahama blockbusters, we went for the piña colada cake, which had a lotta colada but a puny amount of piña. Topped with toasted coconut, the vanilla cake was filled with white chocolate mousse and just the merest trace of rum soaked pineapple. The texture was very light but overly sweet cream was the only discernible flavor. The portion was enormous, enough to sustain you for quite a while if you were washed up on Tommy Bahama’s Island.

WHAT: Tommy Bahama’s Island Grille (949) 760-8686

WHERE: 854 Avocado Ave (just off East Coast Highway), Corona Del Mar

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday:

PRICES:

Appetizers: $6-$17

Entrées: $11.50- $36

Desserts: $8-$10

WINE:

Bottles: $32-$64

By the glass: $8-$16

Corkage Fee: $20

ELLE HARROW AND TERRY MARKOWITZ owned a la Carte for 20 years and can be reached at themarkos755@yahoo.com.