For most of the last decade, if a neighbor asked where to take out-of-town family on a Friday, the answer sat on the same three blocks of Avenida Del Mar it always had. This summer that changed, and it changed in a specific way worth paying attention to. Between late April and late July, three separate operators opened three very different rooms in three different parts of town, and a fourth is already under construction. The center of gravity for eating out in San Clemente is no longer a single walkable strip. It is now a triangle.
That matters less as trivia and more as a practical shift in how residents plan an evening. The old shorthand of "let's just walk Del Mar and pick something" quietly stopped being the most interesting answer sometime around Memorial Day.
Three Rooms, Three Different Errands
The first corner of the triangle is the most visible. Zov Karamardian's family group, which has run its Tustin flagship since 1987 and expanded into Newport Coast and Irvine, opened its first San Clemente location on Avenida Del Mar on
