Cucina enoteca

It is a wine shop that got ambitious, a dining room decorated like a yard sale, and pasta good enough to make you forgive the parking structure.

By The Editors · August 2026

Cucina enoteca sits at the Irvine Spectrum, right in the thick of it, which means you will hunt for a parking spot and walk past the giant Ferris wheel to get to dinner. This is a Tracy Borkum restaurant, part of her Urban Kitchen Group, and the woman clearly believes a room should have as much going on as the plate. Mismatched chairs, shelves of bottles, plants, warm light, a little maximalist.

The reason to come is the pasta, made in-house. The short rib pappardelle is the one people describe with their eyes closed. There is a wood-fired pizza program, a meatball with a small fan club, and grilled octopus that shows up tender instead of rubbery.

The short rib pappardelle is the one people describe with their eyes closed.

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We ordered a salad we did not expect to remember and remembered it anyway: golden beets over beet hummus with goat cheese, toasted hazelnuts and a few blueberries hiding in there for fun. There is a whipped green dip, cool and garlicky, that arrives with warm flatbread and disappears faster than it should. And a crispy-skin fish over charred cabbage with a caper relish that we would order again tomorrow, no notes.

Yes, it is at the Spectrum, yes you will hunt for parking, and no, it is not cheap. Order a pasta, the beet salad, and a glass off the wall of wine, and you will leave happy and slightly over budget, which is the correct outcome.

Sources and further reading: Urban Kitchen Group (ownership and menus), Irvine Spectrum Center. Photography by Tide & Canyon.