North by Northwest at Plums Café

PHOTO by RICK POON

There’s a sharpness in the air around Plums Café, a clean scent that makes for the kinds of brisk breaths that usually only occur when flowers and trees all exhale at once. It’s hard to notice at first, but that crispness is part of Plums’ patio, a perpetually shaded place that’s touched up with potted pines and a few stray stalks of bamboo.

The scenery might make for a strange trade at any other nearby restaurant, but here it’s just a part of the local flora, another way for the place to transplant the tastes of the Pacific Northwest. It’s in true West Coast fashion that Plums’ styling goes even further by bringing its evergreen cues into the dining room. The restaurant occupies a relatively big corner space, opened up by warm woods and the gentle curves of track lighting. There’s a wall of exposed brick that cuts a hard edge, but that’s softened up by a few big canvases and a small metal forest hung near the kitchen. It’s with a sure eye that the restaurant has created such a cohesive and modern style—this is the kind of cleanliness that only shows up around here after a storm passes through.

But even with its rainy roots, Plums is still a neighborhood place in the most Southern Californian sense: too distant to be walkable but just central enough for a quick car ride. And so it’s no surprise that Plums is never empty, a restaurant that almost always seems stuffed with nearby diners.

Central to that neighborly enthusiasm is Plums’ excellent breakfast. Thanks to the restaurant’s cold-weather style, the menu brings a most welcome addition: fish. Unlike the café’s Oregon pepper bacon (heavy slabs outlined with black pepper), its seafood dishes (an alderwood smoked salmon hash, a Dungeness crab and asparagus omelet) still eat light and are packed with pure proteins that won’t send you to sleep an hour later.

The best of those fish dishes is the campfire trout. Before it’s given a quick pan fry, the trout is rubbed down with cornmeal, a smart step that adds a gritty crunch to the fish without having to drop the whole thing in the deep fryer. Plums then wisely lets the trout eat on its own—all that tops the fish is that simple coating of cornmeal, which works here to make an expertly delicate breakfast. Add in the accompanying eggs (order the pair poached for the perfect complement), and the dish becomes a breakfast so filling it’s about fit for lunch.

For starchier starts, Plums mines the Northwest again with its hazelnut pancakes, topped by a great Marionberry compote, a variety of blackberry so common in Oregon that the things can practically be picked off roadside vines. The pancakes are an empty-stomach staple, but the most intriguing entry on the breakfast menu is Plums’ Dutch baby, a deep-dish pancake baked for around 30 minutes until it rises up beyond the pan and curls into a bread bowl big enough to mix a cake. The Dutch baby isn’t sweet, though—it’s barely buttered and served with only powdered sugar and lemon, a faint flavoring that steers it closer to a croissant than a pancake.

Plums also goes beyond breakfast with an equally good lunch menu. Here, the options stay just as regional, with a grilled hearts of romaine salad (dotted with apples, hazelnuts and bleu cheese) and a seared ahi nicoise salad keeping up the light end. There are number of great sandwiches, too, but afternoon appetites should order the lamburger. Plums shifts its tastes to the Mediterranean with the lamburger, but that’s easily ignorable—mixed with feta, the burger itself practically falls apart, dropping tender little crumbles of lamb onto the plate for a pleasing post-burger finish.

Even if you linger long enough at Plums to see some of the crowds thin, there won’t be any time to catch your breath—there’s always another rush of eaters around the corner. But that’s when you take your meal to the patio. With a little nature among the concrete, the place feels as serene as a forest. And there you can get the freshest start—everything eats better in the pines.

PLUMS CAFE 369 E 17TH ST | COSTA MESA 92627 | 949.722.7586 | PLUMSCAFE.COM | OPEN EVERY DAY 8AM-3PM | FOOD FOR TWO $25-35 | FULL BAR

Tags: breakfast, costa mesa, Food, plums cafe, Restaurants