Telefèric Barcelona has opened its first Orange County restaurant at Fashion Island, taking over the Newport Center Drive space that used to house Hopdoddy Burger Bar. The Spanish restaurant group's ninth location worldwide brings tableside jamón carving, a live paella station and an attached market shop stocked with imported Spanish goods to the open-air shopping resort.
The Newport Beach spot opened this week at 311 Newport Center Drive, according to the Los Angeles Times, and is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Co-owner Maria Padrosa told the paper that Fashion Island feels just like Barcelona, and she described the new restaurant as being at its beginning, with plans already in place for Olé! flamenco and tapas evenings. Her brother and co-owner, Xavi Padrosa, called the Newport Beach setting unique, noting the space is more intimate than the company's Long Beach location.
Precise timing on the opening comes from the Orange County Business Journal, which reported that Telefèric Barcelona officially opened its Fashion Island restaurant on August 20, taking over Suite 311 after the Padrosa family remodeled the former Hopdoddy Burger Bar space into an open-kitchen Spanish dining layout. The new dining room features Spanish artisan tiles, ceramics and furniture, per the Los Angeles Times, echoing design touches from the family's restaurants back home.
A Menu Built Around Paella, Jamón and a Tennis Scholarship
The menu leans on Catalan and Basque staples, including pan con tomate, crab croquetas and gambas al ajillo with garlic-infused prawns, the Los Angeles Times reported. Made-to-order family-style paellas come with several options, including versions with poached lobster, gulf shrimp and octopus, as well as combinations built around smoked pork chop, pork belly, roasted chicken and piquillo peppers. Diners can also order Jamón Ibérico de Bellota alongside Barcelona-style gin and tonics.
That prized ham comes from free-range Iberian pigs fed an acorn diet in Spain, yielding cured meat whose fat contains more than 50 percent oleic acid, the same monounsaturated fat found in olive oil, according to The Reluctant Gourmet. Strict USDA rules require whole cured hams to be processed at specialized government-approved facilities in Spain before they can be exported to the United States. The culinary program behind the ham and the rest of the menu is overseen by Executive Chef Oscar Cabezas, a Barcelona native who previously cooked at the three-Michelin-starred Arzak in San Sebastián, according to Town & Country Village. Cabezas works directly with the Padrosas to train local kitchen staff and adapt traditional recipes for California locations.
Xavi Padrosa's own path to Newport Beach started with a tennis scholarship that first brought him to the United States, before he convinced his family to launch their Spanish restaurant concept stateside, per What Now Orange County. The family-owned group traces back to 1992, when Soledad Urabayen and Ramon Padrosa opened the original Telefèric Barcelona in Sant Cugat near Barcelona, a restaurant that featured a small toy cable car suspended above the dining room, the Los Angeles Times noted. Telefèric Barcelona now counts two original locations in Barcelona among its nine restaurants worldwide.
Decade of U.S. Growth Now Spans Three States
The Newport Beach debut lands during the tenth anniversary of the company's U.S. expansion, which began with a flagship opening in Walnut Creek in 2016, per What Now Orange County. Since then the brand has expanded to Palo Alto and Los Gatos, according to the Los Angeles Times, while also branching south along the coast. Telefèric Barcelona opened another Southern California outpost at Westfield UTC in La Jolla just a month before the Newport Beach location debuted, as Axios San Diego reported, with that location anchoring a new luxury culinary wing at the mall.
The company is also pushing beyond California entirely. Telefèric Barcelona signed a lease in late 2024 for a 6,676-square-foot space at Scottsdale Fashion Square, marking its first location outside California and placing the brand alongside other upscale dining concepts undergoing a multimillion-dollar mall redevelopment. Diners familiar with other Telefèric Barcelona locations will recognize the interactive touches carried over to Newport Beach, including tableside jamón carving, paella cooking stations and wine served from a traditional Spanish porrón glass pitcher, elements the restaurants use alongside live flamenco nights to build an energetic atmosphere.
El Merkat Brings a Spanish Pantry to Fashion Island
Attached to the restaurant is El Merkat, a market shop stocking Telefèric Barcelona ingredients and paella kits, according to the Los Angeles Times. El Merkat offers imported olive oils, tinned seafood, hand-carved jamón and Spanish wine, and its paella kits include everything needed to make the dish at home, including a traditional pan. It remains to be seen how quickly local diners take to the market component, an open question for the family-run group as it continues its expansion.
A Historic Shopping Resort Keeps Adding Marquee Names
Fashion Island itself has deep roots in Orange County history. The 75-acre Newport Center shopping resort originally opened on September 9, 1967, on Irvine Ranch land that had once hosted 50,000 Boy Scouts for the 1953 National Boy Scout Jamboree, according to the Fashion Island Historical Timeline. It was designed as an open-air garden center with ocean views, resisting the enclosed indoor mall trend that dominated the era.
The center has been on a tear attracting high-profile food brands this year. Newport Beach recently learned that NYC-founded Levain Bakery is planning its first Orange County shop at 315 Newport Center Drive, part of a broader wave of premier food and beverage tenants expanding into the shopping resort, which draws nearly 16 million visitors annually. That growth is paired with new housing nearby: the Irvine Company broke ground in May on a five-story, 184-unit residential building at 800 San Clemente Drive, converting an underused parking garage and pushing the adjacent Villas Fashion Island complex past 700 total apartment units. The added density is expected to generate steady foot traffic for restaurants like Telefèric Barcelona as Newport Center continues to reshape itself around both new residents and destination dining.
