By Tony Cheong
So I pick up the OCN recently and superwoman Loreen Berlin has beat me to the punch and featured the latest eatery to open in Garden Grove: Motorsport Café.
“What gives?” I asked my editor.
By Tony Cheong
So I pick up the OCN recently and superwoman Loreen Berlin has beat me to the punch and featured the latest eatery to open in Garden Grove: Motorsport Café.
“What gives?” I asked my editor.
He laughed. I think he likes a bit of competition.
Well, I can’t compete with Loreen when it comes to cranking out stories; she seems to be everywhere. But … she’s a reporter and photographer, not a food critic, so her story wasn’t about the food, and that’s where I snuck in.
Motorsport, a car-themed café that held its grand opening Friday to coincide with the weekly car show on Historic Main Street, is simple in the best sense of the word, like a Chevy you can count on, but with a classic feel, like a ’57 Thunderbird.
“My passion is classic cars,” said owner Al Shoga, whose other job is pretty heady (he’s a doctor of internal medicine). “European cars, really.”
The café is still a project in progress, Shoga said.
“It’s a place to come get coffee and hang out,” he told Loreen in her story. “It’s very exciting but a lot of work to build up to my ideal that I have in mind.”
This business is fueled by a menu that offers a bunch of expressos, other coffees, teas, gelato, paninis, sandwiches, falafel, bagels and pizza, to name several offerings.
We went with the bang-for-your-buck lunch special: a sandwich, salad and drink for $4.99, and we also ordered the hummus dish, a whole wheat bagel and finished off with pistachio gelato.
I committed one Cardinal Sin: no coffee, which is probably the item that will fuel owner Al Shoga’s new business. It was mid-afternoon and I wasn’t in the mood so I asked around. Don’t worry: the beans are roasted right and the coffees are brewed brilliantly at Motorsport, I’m told.
And folks kept talking up the nutella panini, which seems to have become a favorite, but I was feeling basic, so I opted for the turkey sandwich on whole wheat. Everything was fresh and it was a solid sandwich which, along with the chips and Coke, was well worth forking over a five-spot.
The hummus is creamy but not soupy, and quite delicious. I’m not a big bread eater but I noshed through the pita, dipping it generously in the yellow-auburn hummus.
Now for the bagel. My regular readers know No Baloney Tony hails from New York City, where they’ve mastered that thick disc, so my standards are high. In California, I find (I know, I know, natives are tired of us Easterners criticizing your bagels and pizza) the bagels don't retain their freshness. They are doughie and tough. However, if you’re looking for a Frisbee to wing at someone’s head, you’ve got yourself a winner.
Our whole wheat bagel had the signature of a worthy bagel: I could chew through it without looking like a wild jackal. Delicious with the proper spreading.
Then it was onward, to what I’d been looking forward to all day. Listen: if you happen to be on Main Street and do nothing else, duck into Motorsport and treat yourself to a gelato. There are too many flavors offered to mention here. We went with the pistachio – they serve it in a cone if you like – and I’ll describe it in one word: fantastico!
Motorsport, as I said, has that classic car feel with an industrial foundation, down to the tables. On the walls are, of course, pictures of classic cars as well as classic celebrities hanging around classic cars. Yep, Elvis, Marilyn, Bogey and Jimmy Dean can be found at Motorsport on a 24/7 basis.
Will locals and tourists motor over to Motorsport? That remains to be seen, but I can say that if they don’t, they’re missing some sign-posts, are even making a wrong turn.
