After 25 years, San Juan Capistrano’s Cedar Creek Inn closes. Its substitute simply opened. – Orange County Register

Effectively, it’s official.

After 25 years in enterprise in downtown San Juan Capistrano, Cedar Creek Inn modified its identify Friday, June 30 to Tavern on the Mission. Along with the brand new identify and signage, house owners David Wilhelm and Gregg Solomon have revamped the menu, with plans for an in depth renovation set to happen subsequent 12 months.

“It’s an iconic location that’s solely going to get higher,” mentioned Wilhelm, who bought Cedar Creek Inn in Might. After taking possession, the chef/restaurateur added new objects to the menu, together with a few of his signature dishes, like his buttermilk fried rooster with thyme gravy and his Comté cheese-topped French onion soup that makes use of beef and veal shares. Whereas “90 p.c” of Cedar Creek Inn’s menu will change underneath his tutelage — “we are going to function a few of my best hits, that are basic consolation meals with my very own twist,” he mentioned —  Wilhelm well saved intact such Cedar Creek Inn staples because the Monte Cristo sandwich and coconut cake.

The brand new Tavern on the Mission, the second iteration of Wilhelm’s Tavern model, will stay open all year long till a serious indoor and outside renovation occurs at a tentative date in early 2024 in the course of the sluggish months of the winter season. Wilhelm and Solomon plan on remodeling the house with a brand new vibe that may blur the strains between the inside and exterior seating areas. “I’d describe the upcoming décor as a up to date Santa Barbara Mission,” he mentioned. Company can stay up for open and ethereal interiors with cream coloured partitions and new flooring, ornamental lighting, seating preparations. “It’s going to be understated however very refined,” Wilhelm added.

The restaurant’s bar theme will lean into the town’s cowboy historical past with the addition of darkish leather-based buckskin cubicles and bar seats.

Extra importantly, your entire restaurant, which measures a whopping 5,000 sq. toes, will divulge heart’s contents to present a extra cohesive circulate. “Proper now there are three totally different bodily parts: there’s the bar, the patio, and the opposite aspect is the eating room,” he defined. “We’re going to open up the bar and we’re going to open up all of the doorways within the eating room in order that you can be sitting on the bar and also you’ll be capable to actually look all the best way throughout the patio and into the eating room.”

The roughly 3,000-square-foot patio can even endure a facelift, together with new seating, up-lighting for the ash bushes and landscaping.

“We’re going to scrub all the things up and make it quite simple, very modern,” Wilhelm mentioned.

That is Wilhelm’s newest restaurant in his spectacular portfolio, which incorporates Jimmy’s Well-known American Tavern in Dana Level and Tavern Home Kitchen and Bar in Newport Seaside, in addition to a secure of different notable eating places, previous and current, like Kachina, Chimayo Grill, Chat Noir, and Savannah Chop Home. It’s additionally a extra private restaurant as a result of it’s situated within the metropolis that he additionally calls residence.

Tavern on the Mission is the newest idea to return to San Juan Capistrano’s downtown space, south county’s budding culinary epicenter. Since 2020, the historic middle has seen an uptick in chef-driven eateries, most most notable Heritage Barbecue (which ranked No. 1 in The Register’s 75 finest locations to eat checklist), Breezy, artisanal bakery FKN Bread, Mission-adjacent Bloom Restaurant and Bar, and JD Flannel Donuts. These new eateries be part of a slew of long-standing taquerias, like El Campeon Carniceria and Las Golondrinas, and different established eating places. Including to the town’s rising meals pedigree is the Ecology Heart, a sustainable and natural 28-acre farm that sells homegrown produce and options recurring family-style eating occasions that train diners about sustainable, native farming.

Discover it: Tavern on the Mission, 26860 Outdated Mission Street (at El Camino Actual), San Juan Capistrano; open for lunch and dinner