The cart rolls up to the edge of my table at Gem in Fountain Valley, bringing with it a swoosh of air tinged with saline. “Can I offer you an oyster?” a young waitress asks, her voice filled with glee.
“Tonight we’re featuring kumamoto and shigoku,” she explains, showing off a jewel-like display of oysters on ice.
It’s a luxurious gimmick, and I’m sufficiently baited. I point to a couple that I suddenly realize I need. “Would you like uni on top?” she asks, “Or Thai chili granita?”
Moments later as I’m swallowing an icy oyster, another cart rolls up. “Would you care for tea tonight?” An enthusiastic young waiter performs his best Vanna White impression as he waves a hand across a half dozen jars filled with various tea leaves, herbs and fruits.
I’m already sipping a glass of wine, though. “Tempting, but maybe later,” I say.
Gem is a new restaurant across the street from Mile Square Park on a previously dark stretch of Warner Avenue. I can’t remember another opening in Fountain Valley in recent years that has generated as much buzz as this place. It’s easy to see why. The owners invested a large fortune in the rustic-chic design, a high-ceilinged fishbowl filled with trees and a beautiful exhibition kitchen at its core.
It’s an enormous leap forward for chef Viet Nguyen, who also owns The Vox Kitchen two miles away plus a couple of Sūp Noodle Bars in Buena Park and Cerritos. Prior to Gem, Vox was perhaps the most ambitious non-Vietnamese restaurant in Little Saigon.
Gem leaves Vox in the dust. Nguyen’s glamorous new project romanticizes Saigon as much as it does Santa Ana. The chef serves a contemporary riff on Pacific Rim cuisine by way of California, a nod to the melting pot of cultures in which he came of age.
This translates into a delicious ceviche of shrimp and scallops bathed in coconut milk with fiercely hot Thai chilies and crisp green mango, served with shrimp crackers. And there’s a corn salad reminiscent of Mexican esquites but with a hint of what must be fish sauce. Protruding from this bowl of blackened corn is a perfectly roasted marrow bone.
Nguyen serves bucatini slathered with a sauce of salted egg yolk, which he tops with fresh crab meat. He makes Indonesian-inspired fried rice, or nasi goreng, which would be far more compelling if he were to serve it with a dab of much-needed chili sambal.
Singaporean chili crab gets the soft-shell treatment here while a “spicy laksa” is an elegant if not-exactly-spicy interpretation of the Southeast Asian curried noodle soup. Both are good.
Santa Barbara uni toast is very good, but you should know upfront what you’re getting is a ratio of 10 parts soft-scrambled chicken eggs to just one part uni.
There is much better burrata available than what’s being served here, which has a firmer texture more like buffalo mozzarella. And for bread service, they use mass-produced King’s Hawaiian dinner rolls. I suppose someone somewhere might be thrilled by that, but I’m not a fan.
Given the popularity of the steaks at nearby Vox, Nguyen has upped the ante here with Japanese Miyazaki Wagyu offered in three-ounce increments starting at $39. There’s also a 42-ounce Angus ribeye, a $110 proposition that arrives overcooked when I decide to splurge. (On a different visit, the Wagyu is perfectly seared.)
One expensive steak error aside, the kitchen performs at a more advanced level than the dining room staff. I think I recognize a few faces from the team at Vox, where service standards are drastically less polished than what they aim for here. I suspect most servers at Gem have never actually dined in a restaurant of this caliber, much less worked in one before — and they couldn’t be any more excited. At the very least, their enthusiasm is refreshing.
Gem
Rating: 2 stars
Where: 10836 Warner Ave., Fountain Valley
Hours: 6-10 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday
Don’t miss: Ceviche, salted egg yolk pasta, chili crab
What to skip: Burrata salad
About the noise: Comfortably loud
County health inspection: No major violations
Cost: Starters, $3-$19; entrees, $14-$24; steaks and large format items, $39-$110; corkage, $15; free parking.
Phone: 714-516-8121
Online: gemdining.com
What the stars mean:
0 = poor, unacceptable
1 = fair, with some noteworthy qualities
2 = good, solid, above average
3 = excellent, memorable, well above norm
4 = world class, extraordinary in every detail
Reviews are based on multiple visits. Ratings reflect the reviewer’s overall reaction to food, ambience and service.
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