“Located in Newport Beach, California on the site of the old City Hall, The Mayor’s Table is Lido House’s signature dining venue. Featuring a focus on seasonal, chef-driven cuisine, including an open action kitchen, Mayor’s Table is both a premiere dining destination and neighborhood hot spot. The ideal setting to enjoy a leisurely brunch or a memorable night out with friends, Mayor’s Table is the perfect place for celebrations large and small.”
“In May the restaurant debuted an all-new dinner menu, complete with experiential and tableside offerings. This overhaul marks the most significant change to the Mayor’s Table menu since its inception in 2018. From the collaborative efforts of Chef-Partner Riley Huddleston, Executive Chef Jonathan de la Cruz, and Chef de Cuisine Nicholas Escobar, the Mayor’s Table culinary team proudly unveiled a bold seasonal menu showcasing their take on reimagined American cuisine.” Service is gracefully overseen (with a French accent) by hospitality veteran and General Manager, Quentin Gravet
“As Executive Chef Partner of Lido House, Riley Huddleston brings a decade of culinary power to Lido House, driving the hotel’s food and beverage concepts including The Mayor’s Table restaurant, Topside rooftop bar and lounge and Crew Coffee + Cremerie.”
“Earning his chops as a chef, mixologist, pastry chef and restaurateur in elite New York and Chicago establishments, Huddleston is known for elevating fare with provenance as the starring ingredient. Huddleston’s innovative culinary style blends classic French training with modern cooking techniques. At Lido House, expect precision and playfulness from a menu that fittingly take cues from the hotel’s enviable waterfront in Newport Beach, offering a refined yet stylish celebration of Southern California’s coastal lifestyle and cuisine. The Mayor’s Table, positioned to be a Newport Beach hot spot, manifests a pacific pub-style vibe offering inventive cocktails and seafood- oriented fare including an open action kitchen.”
Executive Chef Jonathan de la Cruz and General Manager Quentin take a break from service to join us.
Hi, I'm Chef Rudy Soremin. Places cruises ahead of culinary arts. The menu maker for a catch by Rudy, that's me, comes with us when I want the asking king crab for food use. I listen to Salkour restaurant show on AM A30 K-L-A radio. And welcome back. It is the SoCal restaurant show, and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 AM until 12 noon, right here on AM A30 K-L-A-A, the home of Angels Baseball 2024. And it can also catch us on the AM A30 Angels app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive, excuse me, the executive producer and co-host of the show. Sorry about that. And we do appreciate you being out there. And we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. A wonderful destination restaurant that I've had my eye on in Newport Beach for a while, but haven't had a chance to get there, is the mirrors table that is in Lido House in Newport Beach. And this is a very historic location where Lido House is, because this used to be the site of the Newport Beach City Hall. And now it is a destination luxury hotel with quite a lot of finery. And their signature restaurant there, their flagship restaurant, is the mirrors table. And you can kind of figure out where the name came from, because that is the site of the former Newport Beach City Hall, which moved, but quite elegant, definitely not your usual hotel restaurant. And joining us to tell us all about it is the executive chef of the mirrors table, Jonathan De La Cruz, and the general manager for the mirrors table, Quentin Grivet. Gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the show. In particular, thanks to executive chef Jonathan, who's filling in for his boss, Riley Huddleston, who is actually caught on an airplane right now and couldn't join us. So glad to have you both. Jonathan, let's start out with you if we could. In terms of the food menu at the mirrors table, just in general, what is the concept of what you and chef partner Riley had in mind to bring to the public for the mirrors table? Because as I said in the lead-in, a lot of hotel restaurants are pretty ordinary. The mirrors table is anything but ordinary. You look into your kitchen and you definitely know that. So kind of just give us your overview before we have Quentin talk about the design of the restaurant, which is pretty special too. Yeah, of course. So the best way to really look at the mirrors table and kind of think of our food concept is chef driven, right? So we don't categorize or put herself in any certain box. It's very much driven by the season, by the local community, by what the farmers have. So we take a great deal of pride in sourcing out pizza and produce. And it's not just vegetables and fruit. It's really, hey, what fish is in season right now is the California Spiny Lobster is a local hell of it. And that speaks a lot about our beef and our poultry program as well. So we change with the season. I think it's important to say each visit isn't necessarily always the same. You can come one month and really get something that's out of this world and come back for the next month and find out, hey, we're at the, for example, the tail end of the corn season. So the corn dish you love is now replaced by maybe this beautiful mushroom dish that, you know, is your next favorite dish. So very chef driven would be the best way to look at it. Well, and Chef Jonathan, something I noticed the night I was there is you probably have more locals that are dining there than hotel guests. So that just shows you're doing something awfully right. Yes, yes, we legal house and mayor state most situated amongst a lot of residential components buildings and it's just, it's really unique. Locals are really important to us. And, you know, as well as the hotel guests, but we do have a strong local following. Jonathan, something I also noticed the night I was there is there certainly were a lot of VIPs dining there that night. I recognized one of the most feared baseball agents that's out there feared by owners, but he was, you know, easy to recognize. And he looks like he's, you know, that didn't look like his first experience at the mayor's table. Also, you have a very prominent developer who is the owner of your property. And I noticed he was in that night having quite a lengthy conversation with Chef Riley. Do you see Mr. Olson on a regular basis at the mayor's table? Yes, Mr. Olson, who does live locally. We see him a good amount of the time throughout the week. He has a lot of his favorites on the menu. So we'll see him probably up to five days a week. And he's very involved and very supportive of us at Lido House. Well, and he was also Jonathan, which impressed me. He was touching tables. So obviously he knows a lot of the guest profile. And, you know, usually you do not see an owner of that level because Lido House is not the only property he owns or has developed or has managed doing that. So it was definitely a nice touch when you know the cast of characters. Now, I want to bring Quentin into the conversation because Quentin, you know, you can have wonderful food and a chef driven restaurant as the mayor's table is. But if you don't have service that matches that, that can be a little bit of a difficult problem. So in your role is general manager. How have you elevated the service standards at mayor's table because I know you come from a fine dining background and kind of ordinary and average is just not for you? No, and it's not for any one of us. I think the team is looking for the best. And that's like the first thing I saw when I come on board is the team looks for the best for all the locals and for the guests, the managers, from the managers to the service, the button and team, they all want the best, they all want the best from the food. And they are really vocal about it. They just want the best at all time, which is amazing to see. And it's amazing to have the same team for over the years. Most of the team have been there for more than a couple years, I will say, for the service. All the bartenders I hear from almost OGE, they have doing the opening of the of the restaurant or the hotel. So that shows a lot of what Chef Bradley, Chef Jonathan have been doing prior to me also. We have a really, really quality chef driven restaurant, but service goes along and that's amazing to see. Well, and also, Quentin, you spend most of your time on the floor. So you're watching everything very carefully and you're also very involved in wine service. And there's really a nice touch here that I will let you describe for Chef partner Riley. But you have a very special champagne that you pour that Chef Bradley actually goes to France, I believe, every other year to decide on the blend. So that's unusual. Tell us about that, because I think it's just part of the story of the mayor's table. Yeah, no, that is more than unusual, I will say. I'm French and I've never seen it before. So to go over that, we create our own champagne. It is amazing to see, to know, and when we have locals coming or any leisure guests coming to the restaurant, they're impressed just by saying we create our own champagne. We dedicate time to go to France, to the blend, to the design, so the adding of the sugar into the champagne, to create an experience that changed every year. And as the Chef mentioned, the food changed probably every month or every couple of weeks with the season, but our champagne changed every year by what Chef Bradley wants for the next years. We are on V3 right now, and V4 is upcoming, and it will be completely different than the two or three before that. So that's something amazing to see as well. We change everything all the time, just walk around. No, no, Quentin, definitely, absolutely amazing. Now, obviously, the supply of that champagne would change on availability every year. Typically, how many cases would you get? Because obviously, this is a very limited and special offering. I believe we did 3,600 the last year, and I think we have been a little for this year, just because of the demand, and we kind of get people coming by just for that as well. They want to buy cases for them to have at home. Piper has given the opportunity to have a special label with it that shows the name Chef, and also the grapes, and we're using when we are doing it, and why we're doing it. So all of that makes that dollar really special, and people are like, it's almost a trophy, and it's a good trophy to have at home that shows and represents why they came to Little House, or why they came to Meers table, to celebrate an anniversary, or waiting, or anything in their life, and they have that bottle to represent that at home too. Now, Quentin, that special champagne is a dealable both by the bottle and by the glass. All right, we make a good statement to have it by the glass, to have it to propose to everyone, and we try to give a little taste to our hotel guest as much as possible, to also share the story, share everything we do on a daily basis to make this place so special. Well, Quentin, again, that is a very unusual touch. When we pick up the conversation on the other side, we're going to bring Chef Jonathan back into the conversation to talk about the food, but I know Quentin, you're also very proud of the wine program you have, definitely a lot more than just that special champagne that's on the menu, so we'll hit that too. We are talking with both the front and the back of the house team at the Meers table, which is the high-end restaurant, the destination restaurant that is at Lido House, which is a boutique luxury hotel on the site in Newport Beach of the former city hall. It is the SoCal restaurant show. We'll pick up the conversation on the other side. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. Don't wonder far.
