Note: The following story was written before Shorebird opened. The restaurant began welcoming diners in February 2024. Learn more here.
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Heinrich Stasiuk loves Palm Desert. The owner and chairman of WildThyme Restaurant Group spent his honeymoon at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa and has since made regular jaunts to the area with his wife and family. Stasiuk’s passion for the desert now continues on El Paseo, home to the newest outposts of his restaurants Molé Comida and Shorebird Coastal Kitchen.
“I knew from all my visits that there’s nowhere else we wanted to be than on El Paseo,” says Stasiuk, who splits his time between Arizona and California, overseeing and developing WildThyme’s dozens of food and beverage locations. Opened in 2022, Molé’s Palm Desert location is a modern Mexican eatery. It will soon be joined by the seafood-centric Shorebird, poised to open on the corner of Highway 74 / Monterey Avenue and El Paseo.
The standouts on Molé’s menu include a guacamole trio featuring preparations topped with steak and crab, a towering shrimp chicharrón tostada, and an achiote-chile-basted snapper prepared zarandeado style with zesty garlic mojo sauce. “Everything we do,” Stasiuk says, “is fresh, made from scratch, with the highest quality ingredients we can find.” That includes the well-curated selection of margaritas. Each cocktail is mixed with freshly squeezed juice and garnished to impress.
Shorebird’s 6,000-square-foot elevated but unpretentious space on El Paseo will be the restaurant’s third outpost, following Newport Beach and Sedona. The heart of the kitchen is a wood-fired grill where fresh seafood like Chilean sea bass and Faroe Islands salmon are seared to perfection, Stasiuk says. The second floor boasts a Shorebird first — a progressive sushi dining experience. In the mood for land-based deliciousness? The menu includes high-quality cuts sourced from renowned purveyors such as Snake River Farms and Creekstone Farms.
Craft margarita options include prickly pear and jalapeño.
Guacamole three ways and everyone’s favorite tostada-style chips.
Stasiuk teases that Shorebird will also add a lavish weekend brunch option to El Paseo’s offerings, and he believes that the restaurant will ultimately be a great gathering place for diners for years to come. “I don’t think there’s any seafood restaurant quite like it,” he says, “and my hope is that it will become as beloved in Palm Desert as [Shorebird] is in Newport Beach and Sedona.”