Prawn toast; Photograph by Emily J. Davis
It’s a perfect winter-like day in San Juan Capistrano. Warm in the sun, chilly in the shade. Chatty shoppers and local dogs walking their owners bustle along the narrow sidewalks, making for great people-watching from my seat at Mayfield’s colossal window, wide open to the brisk air. Cocktails arrive and they’re magnificent. Only the ubiquitous face masks reveal this is not a typical late November day.
Mayfield is one of 2020’s restaurants that never knew life before the pandemic. Its existence has always included masks, curfews, distancing, and outright closures. Imagining this split-level space at its capacity is unsettling after months of dining inside 6-foot bubbles. George Barker can picture it, though. He has nursed that vision for five years.