The space near the Orange Circle that used to be Spiros, which turned into the high-falutin' seafood restaurant with a Michelin-starred chef called Ways and Means, has got a new tenant–a restaurant called Jason's By The Circle that's helmed by none other than Jason Kordas.
Kordas, if you recall, used to own Jason's Downtown in Santa Ana and has cooked for Bill Clinton and catered events at the Richard Nixon Library N Birthplace. Now he's back in the restaurant game with this place, which according to a comment on Jason's By The Circle's Facebook page, is anticipated to open this week, on August 12.
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And though it is uncertain whether he'll have the dazzling bastilla he offered at his Santa Ana restaurant, you can probably count on the dish you see above being on the menu.
He calls them “Caribbean Monkey Bites”, bananas wrapped in bacon and steeped in a spiced rum sauce. It was apparently a big hit when he served it at the Big Bite Bacon Festival at the Queen Mary a few weeks ago, and what's more appropriate to serve to the people of Orange than bananas.
513 E Chapman Ave, Orange, California, (714) 347-1130; http://www.jasonsbythecircle.com/
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.