Lucca Cafe

This is my favorite place in Irvine. My wife and I go there all the time for dinner. Lunches and dinners are different concepts entirely. Dinners are nicer and served tapas(smaller plates) style.Food quality is just amazing. We both love their selection of cheeses and they also have great wine list, reasonable priced. Servers are extremely helpful and knowledgeable.Our favorite dishes are: Handmade Handkerchief Pasta, Roasted Baby beet salad, John Dory fish and Hangar Steak. Our favorite wine there is Treana Meritage that goes there for $46(great deal for restaurant).
I fully recommend this restaurant.

We were very disappointed in our brunch, particularly having read mostly positive reviews. It was overpriced and the quality was low. First, the turkey and tritip meats were so dried out and tough you could hardly eat them, and for some reason they don't believe in any natural juices, they just offer some very heavy side sauces to drown out the flavor. I'm not a chef, but anyone knows that if you don't baste meats or keep them moist somehow, they are going to taste dried out. We managed to order an omelet and a specialty egg dish, but the omelet chef was very difficult to communicate with and it was exhausting just to order. There were some mediocre salads that I could have made better at home, and a pretty lame antipasto that was all peppers and some dried out tomato concoctions, not very appetizing. I think I found one portobello mushroom - that was a highlight. The rest was all starch and more starch, 2 pasta dishes and, wow, potatoes. The desserts were terrible, including really strange tasting canoli and very odd pastries that tasted stale. On the decor side of things, couldn't they invest in the small amount of money it would have cost to put a few flowers on the table? Also, they leave the door shut between the patio and the main restaurant so you have to constantly battle the door to get more food and then get back to your table. Why keep the door closed???? Also, the noise of other diners is amplified due to the zipped in tent they have set up, so if you're hoping for a romantic setting, forget about it.