- I spent $300 dining at Petrossian at Tiffany, a restaurant that specializes in caviar and Champagne.
- My daughter and I split the egg royale, potato mille-feuille, smoked salmon, and soufflé.
My daughter and I planned on having lunch at Tiffany & Co.'s Blue Box Cafe at South Coast Plaza, a glamorous shopping mall in Costa Mesa, California. Upon arrival, we discovered that it had been replaced by a restaurant called Petrossian at Tiffany.
This restaurant concept launched as a partnership between Tiffany & Co. and the famous caviar purveyors in 2022 and is supposed to be in residence for two years. It serves French-inspired cuisine and specializes in caviar and Champagne.
Looking at the menu, we knew this lunch would be expensive (it ended up costing about $300). But we'd never dined at a caviar-focused restaurant and decided to splurge on our mother-daughter meal.
Here's what it was like.
The restaurant introduced me to Petrossian, a gourmet food brand that's been in business for over a century
I knew nothing about Petrossian before my lunch, but the fine-foods company has been in business since 1920, when brothers Melkoum and Mouchegh Petrossian opened their first shop in Paris.
The brand, which is still family-owned, now sells caviar, smoked fish, truffle, and other products all over the world and has also expanded into restaurants, with locations in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and more.
The South Coast Plaza restaurant is helmed by Carlos Cabrera, a chef who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts Program and previously worked as the executive chef at Petrossian's West Hollywood location.
The restaurant decor is stunning, and the dining room is covered in Tiffany blue
Simply walking into Petrossian's small dining room was a treat. The walls are Tiffany blue, the jewelry brand's iconic robin-egg hue. It also serves as reminder that there's a Tiffany & Co. store next door to the restaurant.
Large, gold flecks reminiscent of fine jewelry hung in mobiles from the ceiling, and a row of white orchids separated the reception desk from the tables, giving the dining area a bit of privacy from the large department store surrounding it.
It was a lovely space to spend a couple of hours dining.
Petrossian incorporated caviar in some of its cocktails
I couldn't help but glance at the cocktail menu. I was immediately intrigued by the Tiffany Caviartini, a martini topped with an olive that's stuffed with caviar and crème fraîche.
Long a martini lover, I decided to order one for $36, making it the priciest cocktail I've ever enjoyed.
The server presented it with a single olive on a metal skewer that balanced across the rim. Made with Belvedere vodka, the Tiffany Caviartini was perfectly chilled.
Our first course included caviar-topped eggs and potato mille-feuille
After a long debate, we decided to start our meal with two caviar-focused dishes: the egg royale and the potato mille-feuille.
The egg royale featured soft scrambled eggs that were served in a shell and topped with crème fraîche, chives, and a generous portion of caviar.
The waiter handed us both a tiny mother-of-pearl spoon, explaining that it was the proper utensil for eating caviar as it doesn't add or detract from the flavor.
This delicious dish was worth the $28 price tag.
Next up was the potato mille-feuille. The trio of thinly sliced potato squares topped with caviar, chervil, and crème fraîche. The potatoes' outside layers were slightly crunchy, and the inside layers were perfectly creamy.
This dish cost $42, a price that's probably high due to the generous dollops of caviar on top of each delicious bite.
We enjoyed both dishes, but the egg royale was our favorite, and we fought over the last bite of it at the bottom of the shell.
I had the best smoked salmon I've ever tasted at Petrossian
We asked for our waiter's recommendation ahead of the next course, and he encouraged us to try the hand-sliced smoked salmon. It's one of the few dishes on the menu that doesn't have caviar in it, but since both my daughter and I love smoked salmon, we decided to try it.
The waiter set a round plate on the table that was covered in thin slices of salmon and decorated with dollops of crème fraîche, caper berries, pickled red onions, and wildflower petals. It also came with toast points on a dainty silver rack.
There's no doubt in my mind that it was the best smoked salmon I've ever tasted, so I didn't regret paying $42 for it.
For dessert, we went with a dark-chocolate soufflé
We kept the decadence going by ordering a dark-chocolate soufflé topped with crème Anglaise for dessert. After all, if we were going to splurge, we wanted to get the full experience.
Patrons usually have to wait a bit for restaurants to prepare a soufflé, and Petrossian was no exception. However, we didn't mind. We enjoyed the lovely decor and our mother-daughter time. And when the dessert arrived at our table, we were ready for it.
The waiter carefully created a small depression in the soufflé, allowing a bit of steam to escape before pouring the crème Anglaise on top.
We dipped our spoons in the soft chocolate and cream. Tasting this excellent dessert was a lovely way to end our dining experience, and at $22, it was the cheapest item on our bill.
The meal was expensive but one of a kind
The bill came out to about $300, which certainly isn't the amount I'd usually spend on lunch. However, each course was very memorable, and the ingredients tasted fresh.
Between the dishes' detailed presentations and the restaurant's charming decor, I left Pestrossian at Tiffany very impressed.