The seafood shack of every Southern Californian’s dreams for the L.A. Times:
PHOTO by MARK BOSTER / L.A. TIMES
Bear Flag Fish Co. is the seafood wonderland we all long for on idle summer days, a fish market-cum-restaurant where brilliant slabs of tuna glint like rubies and the spindrift of crashing waves hangs in the air. It’s minimalism at its seafaring best — Bear Flag understands that often all a fish needs is a satisfying char and the salty rush of a beach breeze.
The restaurant sprouted from between the corporate cracks of Newport Beach’s Balboa Peninsula. Since it opened in 2008, owner Thomas Carson, a Newport native who grew up working on his father’s commercial fishing boat, has seen Bear Flag blossom. There are those who bemoan lunch lines now, but they inevitably wait it out, patiently eyeing the shoal of fillets being branded by the grill.
Bear Flag is a perpetual beach scene: flaxen hair bleached by days in the sun, skin as golden as freshly fried fritters. There may be talk of Lakers losses or the varying niceties of local cigar lounges, but conversation here always wades back into the water, thoughts on surf, sand and shore. The restaurant is Newport Beach incarnate.
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