James Beard Rising Star alumnus Tim Hollingsworth will open a wood-fire dining concept at OCVIBE, the $5 billion, 100-acre mixed-use district under construction in Anaheim, California, the development announced Thursday. The unnamed restaurant is slated to begin welcoming guests in late 2027, joining a culinary lineup that already includes chef Roy Choi and chef José Andrés.
The Concept
At its core, Hollingsworth's restaurant will center on a wood-fired kitchen producing pizzas, meats, and seasonal vegetables over open flame. A visible raw bar and pastry station will flank the dining room, reinforcing the open-kitchen theatrics that have become a signature draw for upscale-casual concepts in competitive urban and mixed-use markets. The design brief draws from Southern California mid-century architecture, intended to evoke the familiarity of a neighborhood restaurant while accommodating the higher volume traffic generated by a district anchored to a live-entertainment venue.
Hollingsworth spent more than a decade at The French Laundry before building his own Los Angeles footprint. His 2010 James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year award remains a credentialing touchstone; the classical technique he developed in Napa has since evolved into a contemporary American idiom well-suited to the broad, occasion-flexible audience OCVIBE is pursuing.
Why It Matters
"Tim's lifelong connection to Orange County — from childhood trips to Anaheim to the OC guests who have made the drive to his restaurants in Los Angeles — makes him a natural fit," said Anthony Olheiser, Senior Vice President of Hospitality at OCVIBE. The comment underscores a deliberate localism strategy: rather than recruiting purely on name recognition, the district is leaning into chefs with demonstrable ties to the Southern California market.
Hollingsworth's addition brings OCVIBE's confirmed signature dining count to five chef-driven concepts. The broader F&B footprint is substantially larger: Katella Commons, the district's 50,000-square-foot market hall set to open in early 2027 alongside a 5,000-capacity concert hall, will house 21 chef-driven kitchen stalls and six bar and lounge concepts. Combined with the standalone restaurants — including José Andrés' venue inside the SENA hotel — OCVIBE is targeting more than 35 distinct food and beverage experiences at full build-out.
Development Timeline
The project, privately funded by the Samueli Family, remains on track for a phased opening. The concert hall, Katella Commons market hall, and The Weave office building are all slated for early 2027. Standalone restaurant openings, including Hollingsworth's, will follow in late 2027. Full district completion is projected for 2033, at which point OCVIBE will encompass more than 2,000 residences, three entertainment venues, and 20 acres of open space.
For mixed-use developers, the hospitality-anchored activation model OCVIBE is executing reflects a broader industry thesis: that chef-driven F&B programming drives dwell time and repeat visitation more reliably than retail alone. The addition of a credentialed, story-rich operator like Hollingsworth to a roster alongside Choi and Andrés signals that the district is competing for the same discretionary dining dollar as established Orange County and Los Angeles restaurant corridors. Operators and foodservice investors tracking experiential dining trends will find the OCVIBE rollout a useful benchmark for how large-scale mixed-use projects are using culinary curation as a leasing and traffic strategy. Additional coverage of chef-driven development deals offers further context on how this model is scaling across the U.S.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
