Long Beach’s The 908 sister restaurant, The Goldfinch, has opened in Irvine’s new dining complex Eighteen Main, located in a hub of businesses, luxury apartment buildings and a hop away from John Wayne Airport.
When co-owners Todd Miller, Ciaran Gough, and Juan Carlos Guerra began looking for a space to house their next restaurant in 2021, the up-and-coming complex offered steady weekday business from employees working nearby. The corner spot is spacious and clearly visible from the street.
The challenge was drawing in the local community in the evenings and weekends.
“In Irvine it’s so big you have to drive 10 minutes or more to really get anywhere, so why not have people drive here,” said Gough. “We want this to become a dining destination for people.”
And they had a simple plan — really good food and drinks, consistently. The free parking helps, too.
The menu can be described as elevated American cuisine, from lobster rolls to the best-selling prime rib dip. But the menu also features a furikake-crusted seabass with sweet potato vermicelli, dashi cream sauce, and togarashi aioli, which doesn’t necessarily fit in the genre of American cuisine.
“We have an 80% idea of who and what we are, and we let the guest decide the other 20%,” Gough said.
Their seasonal menu is constantly evolving, and while the owners are not interested in being a restaurant with a large menu, their seasonal menu allows them to test dishes and add the successful ones into rotation.
The idea was born out of the Long Beach restaurant, but while they are sister restaurants, diners will have a different experience at each location.
“We look at restaurants as highly social,” Gough said. It’s why they don’t tell their serves to suggest dishes or push a script. Instead, they encourage their staff to take diners through the journey.
That philosophy also went into the design of the restaurant.
“We want people to have an elevated experience, but elevated and fun,” Miller said. “The lights aren’t dark and the bar is placed in the center of the restaurant.”
Like many restaurant owners trying to build during the panic, each week was a new crisis, Gough said.
Supply chain issues caused delays and backups, and simply made it impossible to buy some products. And everything shot up in price, too.
The group at times personally went around Orange County to find the right pieces for the restaurant and support other local businesses as much as possible. If they couldn’t order the exact bar stools they wanted, they hired a local business to create them as closely as possible.
“Overall when we looked at the rendering, it’s very close to what we envisioned,” Miller said.
And they planned ahead. The kitchen is built intentionally larger then they may need it at the moment so years down the line when the restaurant is constantly busy they won’t be stuck in a tiny kitchen they can’t expand.
A large kitchen also gives staff the room for one of the restaurant’s biggest goals — consistency.
“We want to make sure you can execute a dish on a Friday night when you’re hummin’,” Gough said. If the dish can’t be executed well consistently, it likely won’t make it on the menu.
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They also recognize that with a large portion of diners coming in from neighboring business, they may have a limited amount of time for lunch and consistency allows them to get in and out with a full, satisfied belly.
Although the space would lend itself to private events, the group plans to steer away from ever shutting down the entire restaurant for a single event so regulars never have to worry about being turned away.
Four other restaurants, SOL Mexican Cocina, Izakaya Osen, Porch & Swing and The Trough (coming soon), are part of Eighteen Main’s complex.
“We want to help create an area to visit,” Gough said.
Visit: The Goldfinch, 2000 Main Street, Suite 200, Irvine, CA 92614, (949) 379-8769 www.thegoldfinchrestaurant.com
