My husband, Bill, slipped into the new Sonoma Restaurant— which hasn’t really even opened yet…but will, tonight, Saturday.

He he talked to the owner, Raymond, who has had restaurants previously in Boston. Nice guy and the restaurant has a TOTALLY DIFFERENT and upscale look from what West of Five had before…

It has a VERY NICE bar and both a formal and informal side of the restaurant, since they have white tablecloth haute cuisine seating on the dining side and beautiful tables for seating on the bar side, plus many bar stools.

Nice balanced menu of meats, fishes, pasta and a big fat wine list….I think it will be a choice for classier dining in San Clemente right on the heels of classy The Melting Pot, located not a half mile away by the Krikorian Restauran, and White Horses down on Victoria Street near the San Clemente pier.

Olamendi’s Mexican Restaurant

Tonight we took my 86-year-old mother, Lillian, to Olamendi’s Express restaurant at 806 E Avenida Pico # A, San Clemente, CA.

Olamendi’s always has good food, their chips are very thin, crisp and tasty, their salsa is top notch and the carnitas pork is cooked in orange juice so that it is always tender and sweet. Mom and I had chicken tostadas and Bill had a carnitas tostado grande. All excellent and generous.

(Olemundi has another location on Pacific Coast Highway in Capistrano Beach, a place that is packed most evenings and which does a lot of wedding party business, too.)

After dinner, we drove a few yards over to the Golden Spoon yogurt restaurant where Lillian insisted that she buy a pint of Mounds bar flavor for herself and a quart for us. Their yogurt has only 68 calories and 15 carbohydrates per 4 ounces. Each visit they stamp a card you keep and on your ninth visit you can get a free quart, pint, sundae, or whatever.