You feel like you've just arrived at a party when you enter BJ's
Restaurant and Brewery, at Beach Boulevard and Edinger Street in
Huntington Beach.
The music is lively, the hostess is smiling, the beer's cold, and the
pizza's hot. This place is fun!
One of the larger BJ's, it has an expanded menu that offers
sandwiches, salads, pizzas (of course), pasta, giant stuffed potatoes and
"pizookie," a dessert to end all desserts.
To the left is a peaked ceiling dining area with a dark red wood bar
and four big vats that dispense original beers brewed at other BJ's
locations with on-site breweries, General Manager David Willett said.
Booths and clothed tables fill this dining area.
There's a cozy room nearby with a fireplace and, to the right, another
area with windows overlooking a lagoon with ducks and swans paddling by
to the delight of diners with children.
We ordered BJ'S favorite specialty pizza ($6.85 to $18.95) that has
everything -- it's Chicago deep-dish style with a thick bakery crust
overloaded with meatballs, pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushrooms, green
peppers, black olives and white onions -- sizzling hot. It has a
spiciness from the sausage that's just right.
There are 20 toppings, some unusual, such as artichoke hearts, a
vegetarian variety or gourmet tri-pepper sausage -- a choice that's a
real challenge to your originality.
For a more complete meal, try a pasta with a soup or salad (dinner
$7.45 to $9.95, lunch $1 less). Choose clam chowder in a bread bowl for a
great beginning. Our server said she had it as a complete lunch. A
carved-out loaf of sourdough bread is filled with big pieces of clams,
potatoes, onions and New England-style creamy chowder (a la carte $5.95).
It is rare to have a soup like this as part of a dinner.
Meat lasagna ($8.95) is a good entree choice. Baked in a small
casserole, the pasta is less thick than most, layered with ground beef,
Italian sausage, pebbly ricotta and topped with mozzarella and Parmesan
cheese. Kitchen manager Jerry Vargas puts together an excellent blend of
tastes and textures.
For another visit, it was rotelli noodles with a vegetarian marinara
sauce of thick zucchini slices, broccoli and great hunks of fresh tomato
that clung to the spiral pasta. However, it was not heated up to par and
was sent back to the kitchen for extra warming. The round ravioli ($8.95)
was especially good, fat with a combination of Romano and Parmesan cheese
in a lightly seasoned, creamy tomato sauce.
