Gourmet Food & Good Cocktails With A View To Match
There’s a dock out front, and if you like, they will bring the food out to you on your boat.
Or you can sit on one of its two sun-soaked decks – upstairs or ground level where you can al-most reach your toes out to the sand.
It’s Lighthouse Bayview Cafe and the name doesn’t lie; it’s a lighthouse-shaped building on the bay on the peninsula in Newport Beach CA. The view is fantastic and it has the food to match; don’t you just hate it when a great location has crappy food. You want to go but you never do because you always leave disappointed.
That won’t ever happen here, and Lighthouse now has its full liquor license so there’s cocktails (as well as wines, champagne and craft beers) to make this truly a place where you’ll kick off those flip flops and stay a while.
If you want a food recommendation, I cannot speak highly enough of the Braised Short Rib Grilled Cheese sandwich ($12.99) for lunch. It features muenster & smoked gouda cheese with ribs on sourdough bread that is toasted with parmesan. It comes with marinara sauce for dipping but take my word for it – don’t dip. Eat it without the dip to best experience the full deliciousness of that melted cheese.
Plus, it’s as thick as the width of your fist.
The marinara sauce is too good to let it go unused, so get something else and dip that into it (I did this with the grilled brussel sprouts, which might seem a bit odd but it worked out great.)
For dinner, how often do you get scallops? Bingo. Here, they have them perfectly sauteed and served with a delicious sweet corn relish and baby zucchini on the side ($29.99). You won’t chew this, you’ll just let it sit in the mouth for a few moments, then you will slowly reach for your wine/champagne/beer/cocktail and swallow the savory sensation of all of it.
All this, of course, is just enough to whet your appetite. There’s a lot more on both the lunch and dinner menus and Lighthouse also serves breakfast and a weekend brunch with bottomless mimosas ($10 extra). Of, if you prefer Bloody Marys, they are served in a giant mason jar ($12).
Cocktails include margaritas, a Mai Tai, a Dark & Stormy, Mojito, two Mules, a Lido Island Iced Tea (make sure someone else is driving the Duffy!) and a couple of unique creations that are really good, the Eastern Standard (Absolut Elyux vodka, lime juice, simple syrup, lime & mint) and the Thoroughbred (Bullet rye whiskey, lemon juice, clover honey syrup). Most cocktails are priced at $12.
Regardless of when you go – breakfast lunch, dinner or just for cocktails – or what you get or where you sit, you’ll want to toss out that mental anchor and stay a while.
Lighthouse Bayview Cafe Details Newport Beach, CA
Address: 1600 West Balboa Blvd., Newport Beach, CA
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
Happy Hour: M-F, 3-6 p.m., $5 beers and select wines
Bottomless Mimosas Brunch: Saturdays & Sundays, 7 a.m.-4 p.m. Mimosas $10 with the purchase of brunch
Website: lighthousenb.com
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We did – for quite a while in fact!
The Lighthouse Bayview Café | Newport Beach, CA | Waterfront Dining