Enjoying the Ride at Harley - CLOSED

Harley Laguna Beach

370 Glenneyre St. 

Laguna Beach, CA 92651

Birthday dinner time, and where should we head? This year, it was much easier to come up with some places because the April issue of Orange Coast Magazine listed the top ten best new restaurants in OC. When I read the list, I made a pact to try as many as possible within the next few months. The list includes some pretty pricey spots, so we'll see how many we make it to, but Harley Laguna Beach was the second one we could cross off the list.

The last time we had run across Chef Greg Daniels was when he was at Haven Gastropub in Orange. I actually owe Chef Daniels an apology for that review. My review took place in 2010, during the first full year of this restaurant review blog. Back then, I would say my tastes were a little conservative. Reading my review from nine years ago made me cringe quite a bit. I have grown as a restaurant eater and appreciate chefs who think outside the box. If you want to read that awful review, check it out by clicking on Haven Gastropub on the right-hand side of this blog. I'm definitely not going to link it because it's pretty embarrassing.

Harley is named after Chef Greg Daniels' grandfather. He named this restaurant after his grandfather because he wanted his guests to experience the sense of home and hospitality he felt when visiting his grandfather's house. Speaking of home, this address used to be home to one of our favorite restaurants, 370 Common. Chef and Owner Ryan Adams has since moved on to Parallel Pizza in Dana Point and Buttermilk in Downtown Orange, both of which are very good.

Harley sits on the corner of Glenneyre and Mermaid Street. Since taking over in November of last year, they have lightened the place up a bit, adding some visually pleasing lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling and an eye-catching shade of green to the walls of the dining room. Make a note that Harley is closed on Mondays, and they are only open for dinner during the week but feature brunch on weekends starting at 11 a.m.

Back to our visit on a recent Sunday evening. We arrived at a nearly empty restaurant and had our pick of seating options. There's the dining room, with its high ceilings and plenty of elbow room; there are a few cozy, out-of-the-way booths; and lastly, the option we went for, a chef's bar, where you have a prime spot to glance at the inner workings of a professional kitchen and watch your food being prepared. We could not pass up that opportunity.

The menu at Harley is designed so that most items are meant to share family style. There's a good assortment of at least 16 appetizers by my count, they have a $30 burger which made me do a double take, two pasta dishes, and one each of a chicken and seafood entree. Steaks and chops are the most significant part of the menu, are grilled over pecan and citrus, and come pre-sliced for easy sharing. Harley has also partnered with Stemple Creek Ranch and Electric City Butchers to provide a rotating list of options from their wood-fired grill. Let's check out what we experienced for my birthday dinner.

First up was the Grilled Avocado ($14). At first glance, this seems like a simple dish, but there was some complexity to it. The visually stunning avocado, with its grill marks clearly showing, was seasoned with coarse salt, rubbed with some avocado oil and lemon, and placed on top of ground-up avocado leaves and pit. The ground-up avocado leaves brought an earthiness to this that I was not expecting this plate to need. The avocado was warm enough that it was just on the verge of melting, which led to it spreading wonderfully across the lightly buttered thick bread.

A special treat from Chef Daniels was up next for us. I would not usually order fried Halloumi Cheese ($14), probably because this evening was the first time I had heard of Halloumi cheese. I have since learned that this cheese comes from the island of Cyprus, is traditionally made up of goat and sheep's milk, and has a high melting point, which allowed it to be brought out to us on fire, fueled with Blinking Owl Distillery's Aquavit. We doused the flames with the provided lemon and dug in. The nicely charred outer crust gave way to a very structured, creamy inside with a nice salty flavor. It might have been because of the lemon, but it reminded me of a very subtle piece of grilled fish, but that was just my experience. I'm odd.

Since the menu encourages the sharing of dishes, Katie and I decided we'd order a few items and split them. She loved this Cacio E Pepe ($20) more than I did. The pasta is made here and dressed with black pepper oil and pecorino cheese. The pasta was well crafted, but I needed a bigger pop of flavor, whereas Katie liked the subtleness of this and described it as total comfort food that she could see herself eating on a chilly winter evening. We will have to agree or disagree with this dish.

When ordering, we inquired about many unique cuts of steak listed on their menu, like bavette, flank, skirt, and velvet, but they were out. We finally decided on this Bone-In New York Steak ($78). This sixteen-ounce steak was dry-aged for 35 days and came from the Stemple Creek Ranch near Santa Rosa in Northern California. At Harley, it comes sliced with a red wine pepper au jus. I admit this was one of the cleanest pieces of beef I have had, and it was cooked perfectly to my desired medium rare. I needed it to pop more. The au jus did not do enough to elevate this steak for me. Maybe I've become too spoiled by the ribeye steaks I've grown accustomed to.

We rounded out our meal with Brocollini ($10) this evening. This was farmer's market fresh and nicely brought to life with the addition of roasted garlic and chili flakes. I decided to take more than my fair share of this since Katie was more partial to the pasta than this. It all worked out in the end.

We needed a sweet end for our meal at Harley and chose this Chocolate Flan ($12) from the four options. Not very sweet, this chocolate flan was plain tasting, and I needed the caramel sauce and the tart luxardo cherries to bring this to life. From reading online reviews and looking at pictures, I think the pineapple upside-down cake or the pecan pie would have been better options.

When they leave Harley, everyone is sent off with these Chocolate Chip Cookies. It's an homage to Chef Daniels's Grandma Mary. She'd always have her cookie jar full, and when leaving her house, everyone took one for the road. It was a very nice gesture, but these did not even make it out the door, as I had to eat them right away. They are classic chocolate chip cookies, just the way I like them—a little crunch on the outside and chewy inside.

There's no doubt that Harley is a welcome addition to the Laguna Beach restaurant scene. They are using some of the best quality ingredients we have encountered for a long time. There's also no doubt that Chef Daniels knows his way around the kitchen and has his techniques down. I can not fault how anything came out for us this evening, as it was all cooked wonderfully. For me, everything here was done safely. There was no risk, no big burst of flavors, like the apple tart with blue cheese ice cream we had at Haven (the one I criticized when I wrote my amateurish review ten years ago before I knew any better about the creativity that chefs must have). The steak here was good, but I needed more if I paid close to $80 for a steak that was only a pound, including the bone. In hindsight, I might have forked over the extra $40 for the $125 16-ounce ribeye. It may have wowed me as much as the one I had at Sellane Steak Tavern a few years ago. Even without the wow moments, I can see Harley being around for a long while, with their excellent service, small touches that show how much they want to take care of their guests, and their use of only premium ingredients. I'll bet that Harley will become many Laguna Beach residents' favorite restaurant spot for special occasions for years to come.

Out of five hogs (because when you think of the name Harley, it's hard not to think of the motorcycles, which are affectionately nicknamed hogs), five being best to zero being worst, Harley Laguna Beach gets 3.5 hogs.

For more information about Harley Laguna Beach, head to their website here: https://www.harleylagunabeach.com/