Having an Ahba Moment

Ahba

31732 Pacific Coast Highway

Laguna Beach, CA 92651

The power of a picture is pretty incredible. Photos can bring down governments. They can make you fall in love. They can also entice you into checking out your favorite restaurant review site (Eating My Way Through OC) way more often. In my case, a well-tailored picture can pique my interest and get me to move a restaurant to the top of my restaurant wishlist.

That was the case when I saw a shot of a burger in a recent copy of Orange Coast Magazine. The delicious-looking burger came from a place I had never heard of before, Ahba, which is located in South Laguna. SoLag is an area I have not explored at all. I've seen it many times through my car window as I've driven past it on the way to one of  Downtown Laguna's higher-profile restaurants.

Ahba replaced Eva's Caribbean Cuisine, which had closed its doors over a year ago. A jolting reminder that I should not put off going to restaurants that I want to try, because you just never know when they will be serving their last meal. I was not going to make the same mistake again at the same address, so we woke up earlier than normal on a Sunday morning and headed over.

Ahba comes to us from the duo of Owner and Chef Nick Bennett and Chef de Cuisine Jayro Martinez. Ahba translates to father in Hebrew and is what all of Nick's friends called his dad while growing up, and the name stuck with him. Chef Jayro started in the culinary industry right out of high school and worked catering gigs and kitchens around LA soaking up as much as he could at each restaurant he worked at. He opened Mh Zh, which was named the best new restaurant of the year by Thrillist and garnered all sorts of attention while he was at the helm. It's also where he met Nick. Chef Jayro then moved to OC to be near his girlfriend and linked up with Social in Costa Mesa. Now he's reunited with Nick, working his magic at Ahba.

Ahba is open six days a week, closed on Mondays. They serve breakfast and lunch from 8 to 2, open again at 3 for a two-hour happy hour, and then start dinner service at 5pm. The short and sweet menus are Mediterranian skewed, but you're not going to see middle east stalwarts like shwarma or falafel here. I'd classify this food as American, with slight touches from the Mediterranian region. Nothing on the breakfast/lunch menu crosses the $15 threshold, while dinners range anywhere between $10 to $29 for a ribeye, which is a pretty good deal for a steak near the beach.

Definitely going to come here for dinner in the future but on this visit, we were here for breakfast and were met with a full restaurant at just before 11 on a beautifully sunny, but chilly Sunday morning. They hastily made a spot for us on the side of the restaurant, at an odd little table with a window looking inside the drink station. We quickly persued the 15 item daytime menu and made our selections once our server brought back the iced teas we had ordered. Let's check out the spread at Ahba.

Katie starts us out with her Egg Sammie with Avocado added ($14.50). This sturdy egg sandwich came with bacon, arugula, white cheese, aioli, and of course a fried egg. She loved the insides of this sandwich. The way that everything played off of each other to form a very comforting, yet lighter than your average breakfast sandwich made this a winner. She did comment that the bread used here was a little tough to get through, especially around the crust. This came with a simple salad, with a light dressing that was fine, but nothing earth-shattering.

Katie rounded out her meal with these Rosemary Hash Browns ($6). I don't know what it is, but I really enjoyed the presentation with this. The dollops of the red ketchup and the beautifully browned hash browns were eye-catching and got a lot of love on my Instagram post. Not just a pretty picture, these hash browns had a nice undercurrent of rosemary running through them while being crunchy and not too greasy. A nice improvement from the usual humdrum hash browns you get from your usual breakfast joint.

Apple Pie French Toast ($12) caught my attention when I saw it on the menu, as I think it would do with most anyone perusing the offerings at Ahba. I had to give it a try. Three slices of french toast were topped with spiced cubed apples and a smear of homemade whipped cream. This missed the mark for me. It was not sweet at all, and really needed some syrup on the apples, or maybe a side of maple syrup to tie everything together. The whipped cream was fine, but since it was homemade, it lacked the punch of sweetness that I was hoping for. 

It was the burger that brought me here, but for some unexplainable reason, I was not in the mood for a burger. I'm always in the mood for burgers. What is happening to me? Who am I? Anyways, I went with this Harissa Toast ($11.50) instead of the burger. I stand by my choice. A thick slice of bread was topped with two strips of crisp bacon, a sunny side up egg, caramelized onions, tahini, and harissa, a North African chili paste. This was delicious and satisfying. I loved the different textures, and flavors coming through in different bites. I did not get enough heat from the under applied harissa, but the rest of this made up for it, especially the runny egg yolk. Like Katie, I thought the crust of this bread was a little tough to get through, but I managed with a little help from my knife and fork.

Maybe subconsciously I knew that I did not need to order the burger on this visit because I knew we'd like this restaurant enough to make a return trip very soon. With the exception of the french toast, we both really enjoyed this unique and unpretentious brunch spot. With this restaurant being located a great distance away from the busy downtown area, it makes a trip here feel more like a hidden gem, even with all of the people here during our visit. I'd also be remiss if I did not mention how nice everyone was during our stay. I thought that since our table was outside, and tucked into a little corner, we would have been forgotten, but the opposite was true. We had great service from both our server and the food runner on this late Sunday morning. It really seemed like everyone we encountered really wanted us to be here and have a great experience. The picture of a cheeseburger brought us here, but the great service and unique food will bring us back.

Out of five skimboards, (because skimboarding was started in the 1920s by Laguna Beach lifeguards), five being best to zero being worst, Ahba gets 3.5 skimboards.

For more information about Ahba, head to their website here: https://eatahba.com/