Knife Pleat

A high end fine dining restaurant. Excellent service and very tasty foods. Parking: Multistory car parking in South Coast plaza

I was excited to spend a birthday lunch here but should have read the reviews more thoroughly. We were underwhelmed. The food was good but not great. Spent over $400 (and they tell you at the end that gratuity has been automatically added - something like 25% or more, I believe) . The service was a little on the pretentious side with multiple people coming to the table serving each person and multiple people coming to remove each plate. A bit much for an intimate setting. At times there were three servers at the table and it became so distracting. And yet, it took more than five minutes to try and get anyone’s attention for some bread and butter. My friend was watching me raise my arm and looking for literally anyone to notice me. I finally called a server that was at another table. We agreed it’s not a place we’d revisit. There are much better places for that price range that we enjoy in OC.

I've been to Knife Pleat half a dozen times for dinner and generally, it's been quite good to excellent depending on the day. Some dishes fail to impress but generally speaking most dishes are exciting, novel, and suffice to say extremely tasty. The desserts in particular have been incredibly creative and interesting. I also find it refreshing to get so many vegetables in a meal of this caliber! Wine pairings have been excellent as well, and the head bartender is very, very skilled. The service is good. All the servers have been incredibly friendly, but the service has felt very rigid and unrefined at various points. What I mean by this is that they are trying very, very hard to do things the "correct" way that it feels very unnatural at times and a bit starling, like when they circle around the table and all stand behind each guest, pause for 2 seconds, then place the dishes down at the same time. I do greatly respect their ambitions, (I think they're going for 2 stars), but this sort of thing I just find silly and unnecessary, even if it was a 2 star. My biggest complaint is just how outrageously priced it is. $295 for 6 courses is deep into 2-star pricing territory. You add in a wine pairing and the mandatory 23% service fee and you're looking at almost $600 per person. I would truly love nothing more than for them to grow into this price point, but as it stands, the meal is quite overpriced.

We've been dining at knife pleat since it opened and I want to love it but I'm done after another overpriced dinner with an automatic 27% tip. i usually tip 20-30% when warranted but i'm old fashioned and want to pay accordingly. I wouldn't mind the cost if it were not for the sub-par service again, $75.00 corkage fee and all around poor service. I must admit they appear to be trying to live up to a michelin star but over the past year i think the service has gotten worse. There is a new Som that is the only person I think has the experience of a fine restaurant. The others on staff are NOT michelin level by any means. The food is ok but nothing special or memorable. The best meal we've had at Knife Pleat was the night the chef from Gucci Osteria visited and prepared some of his specialties. Save your money and go to Populaire Modern Bistro down stairs !

This is a 1 star Michelin restaurant located in South Coast Plaza. We came here for afternoon tea, which comes with 7 savory items, 8 sweet items, and a choice of a tea. Cost is $115 plus 23% service charge and $5 order fee. The presentation of the tower for the afternoon tea items was beautiful! My favorites were the beet-cured salmon, Maine lobster eclair, and the chicken barquette. These were so flavorful! The Persian cucumber and radish & watercress were just ok - it had too much cream cheese/butter. The caviar deviled egg was solid, but wasn’t astounding. My least favorite was the truffle brie since I personally don’t like brie. The chocolate desserts were my fave! The other desserts tasted pretty standard. I tried the Phoenix Jasmine Pearls tea. I was expecting a stronger chestnut taste, but it just tasted like regular green tea. Also got the Yves Saint Laurent cocktail, which was sweet and tasty.

Food is unbelievable

An absolutely lovely place for a truly exquisite meal.