More Than Just Fine Dining

While Costa Mesa is known as the home of one of the international shopping destination South Coast Plaza, this city also offers a wide variety of boutique shopping.

The surrounding area offers most of the top dining experiences in Costa Mesa. Palmer’s progressive new American cuisine has brought foodies to Bloomingdale’s from all over the county and Los Angeles, and it’s also known among the Orange County elite as one of the hottest happy hour spots in OC.

Accessible through the restaurant as well as Bloomingdale's is Palmer's innovative new wine retail shop, Next Vintage, where shoppers can search wines by price, region, winery, year, varietal and food pairings on a touch screen through wireless eWinebooks. Each cooking class offers wine pairings from Next Vintage’s formidable stock, with special pricing on the wines tasted at the class.   

Executive Chef Seakyeong Kim heads up the kitchen at Charlie Palmer Bloomingdale’s South Coast Plaza. Chef Kim began his culinary career in Seoul, Korea, at West Lake Restaurant, working his way up from line cook to head chef. After receiving his degree in food and cooking science at Sunchon National University in South Korea, Kim left for the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Prior to joining the Charlie Palmer Group he interned and worked at Gordon Ramsay in London.

Charlie Palmer started in a kitchen in his home area of upstate New York. After high school, he attended The Culinary Institute of America, heading afterward for Manhattan. He was hired at the legendary La Cote Basque, working under Chef Jean Jacques Rachou.

Palmer was recruited to Brooklyn’s famed River Café in 1983. He led the restaurant to a three-star rating by the New York Times and left River Café to open his own restaurant, Aureole, in 1988 at just 28 years old. Twenty-two years later, Aureole is still at the top of the Manhattan fine dining scene, having received a Michelin star every year since 2007.

A staunch advocate of locally sourced farm over factory-made food, Palmer’s brought his creative cooking style and business savvy to thirteen restaurants, boutique hotels and a growing collection of wine shops. Palmer’s partnership with Bloomingdale’s has been a smashing success, and Costa Mesa’s dining scene is one to be recognized with Palmer’s progressive restaurant and the talented Chef Kim at the helm.