LAGUNA BEACH:

The historic La Casa del Camino hotel in Laguna Beach is known for its popular Rooftop Lounge, the only rooftop restaurant in the city with ocean views.

Now, the hotel has reopened its downstairs dining room with a new upscale Southern Californian tapas experience called Comedor, which is Spanish for dining room.

The reimagined restaurant that replaced the old K’ya Bistro has undergone a Spanish revival retouch with 1930s accents.

The menu is also new thanks to Chef Marcel Vigneron, known for his runner-up finish on Season 2 of Bravo’s reality series “Top Chef” plus appearances on Food Network’s “The Next Iron Chef,” “Iron Chef,” “America’s Best Cooks,” and other shows. He was also involved with the Los Angelesbased restaurants Wolf and Tacos Lobos.

The Review

Naturally, I was curious to see what Marcel had created, so I dined at Comedor with fellow foodie Della Lisi soon after the restaurant reopened.

The succinct menu features a dozen tapas dishes and five main dishes plus several desserts.

To start, we selected something I seldom see on a menu: carrot fritters with apricot, dill and raisins, with herbed yogurt sauce for dipping. These proved to be unique and satisfying, with the carrot-filled center blending perfectly with the other ingredients.

We also had the charred Spanish octopus with squid ink romesco. The presentation was beautiful, and the octopus was just the right texture.

For mains, Della chose the miso-glazed salmon with coconut forbidden rice. I was intrigued by the rossejat de fideos: paella-style vermicelli with lobster, shrimp and calamari cooked in a seafood broth.

When the food was brought to the table, Della exclaimed “your food is moving!”

Indeed, some of the fish seemed to be slowly swaying as it swam in the broth.

It was a delicious dish, but I wondered how Marcel achieved that effect.

“It’s a fun riff on a classic Spanish dish,” he told me when we talked later. “When you’re cooking that dish, it’s like a pasta dish with angel hair. I toast the noodles, but instead of boiling them I cook them in a flavorful broth, almost like a risotto. The noodles absorb the broth, which is a Japanese dashi broth with fish flakes. The heat that is radiating off the noodles is shaking or moving the bonito fish flakes because the dish is so hot and the flakes are so finely shaven— they kind of dance, and it’s a fun little thing for guests to enjoy. I really like that dish a lot.”

“So do I” I told him, then asked about the octopus.

“I steam the octopus before we grill it,” Marcel explained. “It’s been cooking a long time in copper pots, then braised, sou vid, pressure cooked—we skinned that cat every which way you can. The steaming and roasting is my personal favorite. It gives the octopus good texture, and you get the smokiness of the squid ink romesco.”

Overall, said Marcel, “the menu was intended to match the hotel. I had a nice time with it. I wanted to play off of the Spanish elements of the hotel and pay homage to the culture.”

Comedor: 1289 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, (949) 376-9718, comedorlaguna.com