American Farmhouse's Orlando Novoa Not Through Yet

If you don't get to American Farmhouse Tavern & Dining Hall for a meal before April 8, you'll have to travel to San Luis Obispo to enjoy Orlando Novoa's Santa Maria-inspired fare.

That's because the Manhattan Beach resident is selling his Sepulveda Blvd. location to a family of restaurateurs who want to open a second Cantina Real in the Beach Cities.

"We got 5 offers," said Novoa Tuesday afternoon. "I wanted to make sure it was passed along to another Manhattan Beach family. It was important to me to keep it a family-owned place."

For Novoa, the move is in keeping with what he's wanted for quite some time.

"My long-term goal has been to get downtown," he said. "I couldn't pass up an opportunity to partner with a group on a project downtown."

That project is in the works, and the 'downtown' is Manhattan Beach's.

Novoa won't reveal details other than the location is in the works and that he anticipates the establishment could open next summer.

He plans to "oversee most of it," but "have the right people in place" so he can work fewer "hands-on" hours than has been the case at American Farmhouse.

"It's going to be chef-driven," he said. "We're really trying to avoid a regurgitation of what's going on [downtown]."

The last day American Farmhouse will be open is April 7. Novoa hopes to have some sort of celebratory party at the restaurant but he's not sure if it will all come together.

Novoa hadn't planned to sell but unsolicited offers had been coming in since Christmas. "The timing was right," he said, noting that some offers, when he placed the business on the market, came from people from Chicago and New York.

He calls the sale to Cantina Real's owners, "Karma."

Novoa, a central California native who met his wife Kristen at Santa Maria High School, first happened upon the Beach Cities on a bike ride in 1994. He said to himself, "This is where I want to raise our family." He and Kristen moved to MB in 1996. 

Cantina Real on Pier Plaza in Hermosa Beach, where it's stood for some 50 years, was the first restaurant Novoa ever ate at in the South Bay. It was also the first restaurant he took his daughters, now 9 and 7, out to eat at.

Once an Explorer, Junior Cadet and Cadet [he comes from a law enforcement family], Novoa branched away from that pursuit, at first attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as an architecture student. From there, he went on to Cal State Northridge and an entirely different path evolved.

After investing "very well in equities," he "had the opportunity not to work" but "wanted to," so after working in food and beverage for an international hotelier and executing "complete build-outs" for several Los Angeles area Smart & Final stores, he started a small catering company based in MB in 2005.

That business led to opening American Farmhouse Grill in Goat Hill followed by the eatery's morphism into American Farmhouse Tavern & Dining Hall two years ago in its current location.

American Farmhouse's menu has exemplified Novoa's culinary skills, bringing his healthier versions of Santa Maria barbecue and central California tastes to MB.

He has a complete outdoor kitchen at his MB home on the eastside and expects he'll have one at the farmhouse-themed home he intends to build in the Hill Section someday in the near future.

To keep American Farmhouse's food authentic, he's used wood trucked down from the Santa Maria area to prepare his cuisine.

In SLO, his brother-in-law will run the restaurant. Novoa fondly said, he's "bringing it home."

"There's a lot of sentimental value in my food," he said. "Everybody understands the food up there."

He's sure, too, that patrons will appreciate the healthier "South Bay twist" of his fare.

Of his pending new restaurant, he says, "There's a vision," citing "years and years" of experience and an "overall big map" of what he sees in his future enterprise.

• Previously: Cantina Real Coming to Manhattan Beach
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