Hoping for a Friendly Meetup at GuacAmigos

GuacAmigos

2607 Pacific Coast Highway 

Newport Beach, CA 92663

Katie and I are pretty much similar except for one glaring difference, I'm definitely a morning person and she would prefer to sleep in until 11am. I'm fine with it most of the time, but it does put a crimp into one of my favorite meals that we don't get to have enough, brunch. By the time she gets moving, gets dressed, stops at Starbuck's for her twice-daily dose of caffeine, and fight traffic to get where we are going, most restaurants are wrapping up brunch service and getting ready for dinner.

Katie made a real effort to wake up "early" on a recent Sunday when we actually made a jaunt out to experience brunch with our very good friend, Becky. Becky suggested that we try out one of her favorite places as of late, GuacAmigos in Newport. I had only heard of this restaurant when I read a blistering review about it in the OC Register. Brad A. Johnson called it one of the worst new restaurants to open in 2019. I was definitely intrigued to see if it was as bad as he made it out to be.

GuacAmigos comes to us from the duo of skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk and former Playboy Playmate, Nicole Dahm, who along with her sisters formed the famous Dahm Triplets, who were featured in numerous issues of the magazine at the turn of the century. They took over the old Joe's Crab Shack spot in April of last year. 

The Guacamigos team has made great strides in opening up this restaurant from the old days when it was Joe's. It's a lot less cluttered from what I remember, with very comfy booths lining the large windows overlooking beautiful Newport Harbor. I was a little afraid that this being a celebrity-owned restaurant that there would be way too much memorabilia busying up the place. There is a surfboard from Kelly Slater, a snowboard from Saun White, plus other action sports items from others, including Tony Hawk himself, but they are spread out enough, and I think most visitors might not even notice them.

The brunch menu is pretty compact here, with only six entree options available, plus 2 kids meals. Prices are not too crazy when you consider the rents in this area of town. Nothing will set you back more than $17. Drinks are about the same, but there is a  cocktail appropriately called the High Roller, which goes for $40. A little rich for my blood, but let's take a look at what we did end up having on this Sunday Funday.

The obligatory Chips and Salsa shot is up first. The chips were pretty light with a slight dusting of chili powder. The salsa was very mild and needed to have a little more chunk to it for my tastes, along with some spice. Not awful, but nothing that blew us away.

One of the things that almost every employee pushed for us to get was the Tableside Guacamole ($15). We would have probably have gotten it anyway, even without the gentle upselling suggestion. With this one, they roll out a cart and you build your own guacamole with the provided 12 ingredients and 2 avocados. Both Katie and Becky let me be the shot caller in building our guacamole. I went with red onions, garlic, jalapenos, bacon, cilantro, and red pepper. The grilled pineapple intrigued me, but I left it out. The result was a pretty solid version of guacamole. I should have added a bit more bacon and red pepper for a slightly spicier zing.

Both Katie and Becky got the Cali Classic Breakfast Burrito ($13), but with different meats in them. Becky got hers with sausage, while Katie went with chicken tinga. The burritos also came filled with hash browns, cheddar cheese, and sour cream and salsa served on the side. I did not really question Becky about her burrito since we were catching up on how things are going for her, but Katie felt hers was just okay. She liked that they held it on the flattop for a little bit to give the tortilla a little crunch. The inside was a little overwhelmed by the amount of potato included here. She'd probably also get bacon next time, as the tinga lacked the pop of flavor she was hoping for. Kind of just an average breakfast burrito.

I'm crazy for Chilaquiles ($14) and was excited to have them here at GuacAmigos. They start this off with a layer of seasoned tortilla chips and then add ranchero sauce, black beans, chicken, sour cream, a small scoop of guacamole, and two sunny-side-up eggs. Again, this was not anything that blew me away, as it was a pretty pedestrian version of my favorite Mexican breakfast dish. The tortilla chips were pretty limp, the chicken was not present, and this needed a tad more spice to wake up my taste buds.

My opinion of GuacAmigos was not as dire as what I read in that scathing OC Register review, but they do have a lot of work to do if they want to compete with the other Mexican restaurants in the area. The food here was not even close to as good as what we have had at nearby Sol Cocina, Playa Mesa, El Ranchito, El Matador, Red O, and Mi Casa, to name a few. The nice views of the harbor will get people to visit once, but the food and a good beverage program are what they need to have people make return visits. Based on this visit, both of these things need to change. Add some spice to the food, upgrade the ingredients, and make the cocktails a little more affordable are a few of my suggestions. People online have not been kind about the service they have received here, but we experienced none of that. Everyone we encountered was very friendly and seemed to genuinely care about our visit, which was nice. Maybe the food at GuacAmigos was not the best choice to get Katie out of bed, but at least we had the chance for a long-overdue meet up with Becky and got to experience a beautiful view. No need to fret, Katie did get a three-hour nap afterward.

Out of five video games, (because owner Tony Hawk not only is a legendary skateboarder, but he's also put out close to 20 wildly popular video games since 1999), five being best to zero being worst, GuacAmigos gets 2 video games.

For more information about GuacAmigos, head to their website here: https://guacamigos.com/