S'Wich Bistro
16277 Laguna Canyon Road
Irvine, CA 92618
There are certain restaurants that I have a hard time making a visit to. Due to my real life job, it's usually impossible for me to get to restaurants that are open only during the weekdays for breakfast and lunch. These are places that are primarily set in business parks and areas that would not normally get walk-in customers after regular business hours. This is why we had to wait until my vacation to visit S'Wich Bistro in Irvine.
S'Wich Bistro has been on my list since they opened their doors in March of 2017. Set between Inka's and Yasai Japanese Grill in the Irvine Oaks Executive Park, this restaurant owes a lot of their success to the people of Blizzard Entertainment, which is in the business park adjacent to this one. The captions to their Instagram pictures are filled with love for the employees at this video game developer and publisher who they say have supported them from day one.
It's not just the neighboring employers who have taken notice of S'Wich Bistro. They have gotten attention for their breakfast burritos, which the OC Weekly has called the best of this year, and are made even better with the inclusion of both sausage and their trademark candied bacon. Lunch has not gone unnoticed either. Very tough restaurant critic, Brad A Johnson from the Orange County Register has put their burger on his annual top 10 list this year, calling the burger here, "fantastic".
With all of this high praise, I couldn't wait to give them a try, and it just so happened that Katie had taken a vacation day as well, so we motored on over to S'Wich Bistro. We purposely got here after what we presumed would be a busy lunch rush at about half past one. There were a few stray stragglers, whom we perceived took a late lunch here, but we had no problem finding a seat once we placed our order at the counter.
The menu is comprised of a quartet of salads, warm and cold sandwiches, a section of the menu dubbed "favorites", five burgers, and sides. Almost all of the sandwiches and burgers hover right around the $11 level. If you want to get breakfast here, make sure you show up between 8 and 11am, as that's when they stop serving the first meal of the day. It did not take more than five minutes for our food to arrive at our table, as more customers trickled in behind us. Here's how everything turned out for us on this afternoon.
Katie wanted to eat a little lighter since we would be walking a portion of the San Diego Creek Trail after lunch, so she opted for this Tuna Melt ($10.50). They use white albacore here and add tomato, herbed aioli, and what I perceived to be little bits of celery for texture. This usually comes with cheddar cheese, but Katie subbed it out for Swiss. I tried a bite of this, and even though I'm not a big tuna guy, even I have to admit this was a pretty good tuna melt. The tuna was definitely fresh and dressed nicely with the delicious aioli. I liked the crunch from the toasted bread and celery. The Swiss cheese made this a little lighter than the cheddar would have, which was a big plus in Katie's book. I liked the potato chips, which are made here. Most had a very solid crunch to them, but there were a few clunkers in the bunch that needed to be left in the fryer a bit longer.
Since the burger here was on Brad Johnson's top ten list, I had to give one a try at S'Wich Bistro. Looking at the menu I knew the Loaded Burger ($12.50) was the one calling to me. This burger came with blue cheese, that house glazed bacon that got the OC Weekly love on their breakfast burrito, arugula, caramelized onion, and wink wink sauce, which is their nod to thousand island dressing. With all of these big flavors colliding together I thought it was going to be overpowering, but all the flavors stayed in their lane. The beef patty was juicy and seasoned well, the blue cheese was present and came in manageable waves, the bacon was as advertised, very addictive, and the caramelized onion added a touch of sweetness. The potato bun is also worth mentioning here, as it had a nicely toasted outer ring and a soft inside. I did take a lot of the arugula out of this though, enough to make a salad it seems. It could have been a bigger burger for the price, but due to the smaller size, I found myself savoring it more towards the end. The fries were pretty good for frozen fries. Good sized and fried nicely.
While we were ordering, there was a basket of Homemade Toffee Chocolate Cookies ($1.99) next to the register. It's hard for me to resist cookies, so I got one. The woman that took our money told us that the toffee maker, who is a friend of the owners reluctantly make these cookies for them at S'Wich Bistro. They were pretty good, although I like a crisper cookie. The toffee was a nice touch, but a little more chocolate would have made these even better.
When I was leaving S'Wich Bistro I was a little sad. I knew that with their limited hours and my vacation ending at the end of the week, it would be a long while before I'd get the chance to come back here and try more of their menu, including their hyped breakfast burrito. Service was awesome here. The woman behind the counter was so nice and made sure we were happy with our food and had everything that we needed. It's easy to see why the employees of the surrounding businesses have gravitated to S'Wich Bistro. The burger and the tuna melt were both very good and piqued my interest for more of their menu including their Pastrami Swiss Sandwich, the Oink Oink Melt, and the Pastrami and Swiss Burger. Those will have to wait until after the holidays are over though, as it was time to get back to work.
Out of five video games, (because of the link between Blizzard Entertainment and this restaurant is undeniable), five being best to zero being worst, S'Wich Bistro gets 3.5 video games.
For more information about S'Wich Bistro, head to their website here: https://www.swichbistro.com/
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