Review #2: The Harbor House Cafe in Sunset Beach

"Serving surfers since 1939": The Harbor House Cafe. (562) 592-1425.
16341 Pacific Coast Highway
California, 90742

Getting there: Even though we took the car from Scott's place in Huntington Beach - probably about 5 miles away - it would have been a nice little bike ride to get there. Along the way, the PCH passes through a beautiful 300-acre wetlands reserve (known officially as the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve) where a biker can easily park and enjoy a quick stroll...

Once we got there, parking was really a pain in the patuttie since the cafe had practically no spaces (see pictures!). After going around the block several times, and then getting beaten out by an oncoming car ... we ended up going across the street to a strip mall parking lot. That was fine, but we had to cross a series of grassy knolls and crosswalks, one bridging the PCH (kind of a scary), to finally get over there.

Service: B+/A-. I give the place LOTS of extra points for simply offering free coffee in a coffee dispenser at the door. This is an extra nice bonus since the place is very popular and crowded, and more than likely you will have to sign up and wait a while before you get to go inside and chow down.

The waitress we had was nice and pretty efficient - but this wouldn't be an honest and fair review if I neglected to note that she DID forget to get us some requested hot sauce at a very crucial moment: just when we were on the verge of digging into our omelettes... Fortunately I was able to grab some from the next table without causing a stir.

Atmosphere: Very cozy, old-fashioned, and beachy (of course). Like I said, you can sit there and enjoy your jo while you are waiting - on a nice shady porch with wooden benches painted festively red ... Or you can run to the joint next door, like we did, to grab the LA Times and possibly play a game of Ms. PacMan!

Once your name is called, the hostess (ours was wearing a flapper costume/uniform - cute, but whatever) will probably lead you deep deep into the restaurant. Since the cafe looks like a tiny dot that would seat about 6 from the road, we couldn't believe how big the place was. As my boyfriend said, he thought we passed the steam room where they were shoveling coal, because we did go deep into the bowels of the restaurant.

Incidentally, in addition to the flapper hostess, I also saw a waitress with a homecoming queen crown on. (I guess this a place where your dreams can come true.... or at least the employees dreams can come true there.)

We ended up on this cute shady yellow porch with electric fans dangling from the ceiling. The cafe boasts having a heated porch, which we thought was funny, because it really should have been more air-conditioned. It was a pretty hot that day which resulted in that back room feeling somewhat uncomfortably hot and stuffy. There were strange decorations all over the wall - seemed like rows and rows of cards from an old type of game like bingo - that were whimsical but confusing...

Food: There was a huge selection that was very very good and served in large quantities too. Of the choice of 25 different omelettes alone, Scott had "the California Omelette" an AWESOME concoction with nice big chuncks of avocados, sausage, bacon and cheese. Apparently there were also tomatoes inside, but I didn't taste them - no loss on my part though (tomatoes, bleck!)... I had one of their many "light and healthy choices" with yummy turkey bacon and a stack of pancakes.

There was a lot of food - so much we had enough to take home for lunch. (And I was stuffed after both meals!) After we finished eating, we took a nice little walk over by Huntington Beach Harbor (strangely hidden behind the ugly strip mall and parking lot) where we discovered a whole exotic world of yachts, boat owners, Sunday drinkers, and gondolas. All-in-all it was a very nice breakfast outing.