Business & Tech

New Zagat Guide Gives Orange County Restaurants the Brush-Off

Apparently there are only 69 restaurants in all of Orange County worth blurbing about in the latest edition of the famed guide book.

The latest Los Angeles print edition of the famed Zagat restaurant guide book just came out, and it proves even further how irrelevant the once-influential tome has become in this age of Yelp, Urbanspoon, and your Facebook friend who just "liked" that greasy-but-oh-so-amazing taco stand down the street.

Zagat is especially mindless when it comes to Orange County. The burgundy-bound-book lists just an embarrasing 69 reviews of OC restaurants stuffed into a paltry 12-page section of its mostly LA-lovin' 348 pages.

Sixty-nine restaurants? Minot, North Dakota has more than that!

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And of those, it's shocking what Zagat left out. No verbage on either of the crazy-popular Brea or Santa Ana Bruxies, for instance, though at least they made the Zagat.com website.

New Zagat guides are mostly about who's in it and who got bumped. For the 2013 edition, seven new OC joints made the cut, including Broadway by Amar Santana and Mare Culinary Lounge in Laguna Beach; enoSteak in Dana Point; Juliette in Newport Beach; and the Mexican place, South of Nick's in San Clemente. (South of Nick's is a cousin, of course, to steak houses Nick's Laguna Beach and Nick's in San Clemente).

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There are also updated top-10 lists targeting a variety of categories. Overall, Il Barone Ristorante, Basilic, and Bluefin, all in Newport Beach, as well as Ramos House Cafe in San Juan Capistrano, each earned the right to call themselves one of the ten best eating spots in Orange County—well, y'know, according to Zagat. If you're reading this on your iPhone at In-n-Out, you probably disagree.

Getting the boot from the top-10? Two Laguna Beach places—Tabu Grill and Studio at the Montage. Booooo! Zagat voters have clearly not familiarized themselves with the Most Interesting Taco Bell in the World, either.

Broadway by Amar Santana in Laguna Beach, however, did earn Zagat's highest score for service, and Studio at the Montage won the highest mark for its décor.

And if you're wondering: The Most Popular, Bestest Orange County Restaurant Ever At Least Till Next Year title went to Costa Mesa's Marche Moderne.

OK—time for a Double Double and some animal-style fries ...


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