Seabirds Kitchen — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

Avocado tacos are the first thing to come to mind when I think of Seabirds, but my recommendations now have changed since it's been on weekly rotation for breakfast with my brother. Although he plans to eventually try everything off the entree menu, I've hopped around the appetizers and brunch menus to try something new with each visit. It's amazing that nothing has failed me yet, so I thought it was time share!

The coffee at Seabirds is bottomless with room for raw sugar and sweetened soy milk. However, the Birdy Mary and Cha Cha Kombucha (which is available on tap) may be great alternatives to start your day.

Made with Seabirds' house-made Bloody Mary mix, the Birdy Mary was garnished with fried pickles, a pepperoncini, green olives, wild rosemary, lime and a celery salt rim. A word of precaution would be to mix it up before taking your first sip. You may either get a mouthful of vodka or just the mix, which delivers quite the kick both ways to awaken any soul. If you like it spicy, this may be the blend you're looking for.

Moving onto entrees and other menu items conquered. Let's start with my brother's choices:

Chorizo Tamale: House made nut chorizo, cream cheese and spinach tamales, roasted carrot and habanero sauce, chipotle sour cream and cilantro; serve with black beans and rice (Gluten Free).

Biscuits, Gravy & Crispy Tofu: Rosemary cheddar biscuits, mushroom gravy, crispy tofu and steamed lacinato kale.

Green Eggs & Avo Toast: House scramble with pistol and sautéed spinach, whole wheat Ciabatta toast with smashed avocado, house-made lemon salt and charred broccolini. Served with fried potatoes, but GF options are available.

Here's what I've had:

Chilaquiles Stack: Fried tortillas, black bean smash, house scramble, pasilla pepper, house-made ranchero sauce, basil-avo sauce, corn pancake, butter and cilantro. Served with strawberry arugula salad (GF).

Purple Taquitos: Purple potatoes, chipotle sour cream, fermented curtido (Salvadorian sauerkraut), almond feta and cilantro. The small plate comes with 3 and it's gluten-free.

Butternut Enchiladas: Butternut squash, spinach, black beans and mushroom enchiladas topped with a roasted Pasilla pepper sauce, almond feta, Seabirds sauce and cilantro. Served with a strawberry arugula salad and sliced avocado. (GF)

The entrees and brunch options are pretty filling, but one day, I'll leave room for dessert! They've got seasonal selections based on ingredients, which varies from pies to crumbles....

This was my second time to Seabirds Kitchen. The first time I came with my sister to try this vegan restaurant. Seabirds used to be a vegan food truck. Eventually they opened a physical restaurant at The Lab. I was so impressed with the food the first time. I had to take Dr. P back to try this place.

We sat at the outdoor area for an early dinner. Because we had our puppies with us. Our waitress brought two cups of water for the pups.

Dr. P got a beer, and I ordered a lemonade. There’s strawberry in the lemonade, and unlimited refill, too.

This was the vegan grilled cheese I have been drooling just thinking about it. How did they make vegan grilled cheese taste this good? It’s even better than the real grilled cheese. The basil avocado sauce made the dish! If you can only order one item, I would highly recommend getting the grilled cheese.

The fries was so good with the seasoning salt. Their homemade ketchup and sauce was perfect with the fries.

They have 3 different types of tacos, and we tried all of them. My favorite was the grilled mushroom taco. Dr. P’s favorite was the kimchi taco. Their taco is full of flavor. Very filling also.

We were so full at this point. So only had a few bites of the Holy Smokes Bowl and took the rest home. Love this vegan bowl filled with healthy and nutritious veggie goodies. The sauces are so good.

Even though we were full, the waitress highly recommended their fresh berries pop tart. We couldn’t resist and order one to try. It tasted like a fresh berries pie with lots of yummy tart berries inside the pie dough.

We enjoyed our vegan dinner at Seabirds Kitchen. Dr. P doesn’t really like any vegan restaurant. This is the first vegan restaurant he loves and said he wants to come back again. We should be...

So this was definitely worth a try! I got the Nachos and my partner got the grilled “cheese” and tomato soup. The best thing was definitely the soup, hard to go wrong with tomato soup! The grilled cheese was decent but the green stuff inside of it (perhaps a pesto?) made eating the grilled cheese and the tomato soup together taste more like pizza. The grilled cheese was crispy and well cooked but the green sauce in it was unnecessary to me. As for the nachos- well I brought my own chips since I have issues digesting corn but I bit into one of the chips just to see if they were something special and unfortunately they seemed to be stale- to be fair I did say I was going to be using my own chips and maybe they gave me the last bit of the batch knowing that I wouldn’t eat them. (It was nice of them to separate the ingredients for me) The jackfruit and salsa and cheese was meh, it had a kick but overall was pretty flavorless. For the price it’s definitely not worth it. The blueberry lemonade was very syrupy, I was told they use agave syrup which would account for the syrupy taste. Overall I was unimpressed. It’s not the worst vegan place I’ve been by far, but still not...