Bluewater Grill Seafood Restaurants has set a Feb. 9th opening date for the 7th and 1st Riverside County location of its popular seafood restaurants, combining hyper-fresh sustainable seafood and shellfish with monthly chef’s tastings, wine pairings and neighborhood happy hours.
The long-awaited Bluewater Grill Temecula replaces Fish House Vera Cruz at 26700 Ynez Road in Temecula, and joins Bluewater restaurants in Newport Beach, Redondo Beach and Tustin, Calif., and Phoenix, as well as new over-the-water locations on the Avalon waterfront on Santa Catalina Island and in the former Hotel del Coronado boathouse on Coronado Island.
The new, completely remodeled restaurant will bring Bluewater’s successful blend of chef-driven and classic sustainable seafood dishes to Temecula Wine Country, offering daily lunch and dinner menus and a full-service seafood market and retail counter. Owners and founders Jimmy Ulcickas and Richard Staunton have pledged to customize the regularly reprinted menus to take full advantage of the company’s first wine-focused location.
According to Ulcickas, the conversion of Fish House Vera Cruz to a Bluewater Grill is a natural for Temecula. “Bluewater Grill is the perfect conversion of the Fish House Vera Cruz to a more modern and contemporary casual seafood concept. We’ve worked closely with the City of Temecula to completely remodel the dining and outdoor patio space and add a full-service bar to create a stylish new standard of fish house restaurant.”
The company is currently hiring servers, bartenders and kitchen personnel and has retained qualified existing employees who made Fish House Vera Cruz a favorite in the valley. Potential applicants are asked to go to www.Bluewatergrill.com/jobs and fill out an application.
The new restaurant will also follow the Bluewater formula of printing new lunch and dinner menus regularly to be able showcase the freshest seafood and shellfish, and offering a separate kid’s menu certified by the National Restaurant Association’s Kids Live Well program and a popular weekday small plates menu of $4, $5 and $6 drink and appetizer specials.
“While we serve up to 40 varieties of seafood and shellfish, if it isn’t the freshest possible, we won’t put it on the menu,” added Ulcickas. “That has been our philosophy since Day 1, and we’ll continue that commitment to the freshest fish, ingredients and cooking techniques in Temecula.”