Cook's Corner

You would only know about this place from locals or specialist guidebooks. Cook's Corner is tucked away in a little corner of country and suburbia, at the junction of El Toro, Santiago Canyon and Live Oak Canyon roads, near O'Neill Regional Park. It is a biker's bar clinging to a slowly disappearing countryside as new housing projects creep up El Toro Road .

Despite the creeping sprawl of Orange County it is still standing firm and defiant against attempts to shut it down or develop sedate housing and shopping malls around it. A proposed shopping plaza to have been built across the road from the bar was stalled by lawsuits and despite the developer winning they have lost their will to build and now sold the land to a government agency that plans to preserve the 25 acres as open space.

Until the early 1980s, the place was a popular gathering spot for motorcycle gangs, including the Harley-Davidson-riding Mongols. The bikers were ranked according to their rides. Harley - Davidsons parked closest to the entrance. Japanese-made racers were banished to spots farther up the road.

If a Japanese motorcycle ventured anywhere near the U.S.-made hogs, it ran the risk of ending up in nearby Aliso Creek.

Nowadays, the segregation of motorcycles is not as strictly enforced, and riders are more likely to be weekend warriors: businessmen, attorneys and accountants who live in the surrounding suburbs. But the spirit still lives on and the Harley's line up every weekend so you can enjoy their distinctive roar with your beer and food.