PALM SPRINGS, CA (The Hollywood Times) 8/21/26 – Liz Ostoich never set out to become one of Palm Springs’ best-known restaurateurs.
Before Farm, Tac/Quila, Clandestino and Front Porch, Ostoich was a land use attorney, a profession she entered because, as she explained during our recent Zoom conversation, it seemed like the practical path.
But practical was not necessarily fulfilling.
“I like food and wine and people and art, architecture, history, travel, all the fun things, all the creative things,” Ostoich told me. “I kind of just fell into being a lawyer because it seemed like it was the wise thing to do.”
Eventually, she realized the legal world was simply not where she belonged.
“When it got to a place where I just was unhappy, because it’s so black and white, and just not who I am, my husband said, ‘You know, you don’t have to do this anymore.’”
That permission changed everything.
Ostoich’s introduction to the restaurant business came almost by accident.
Farm already existed as a small restaurant when she stopped there for lunch one day in 2016. The owner told her she was ready to move on and then suggested that Ostoich should be the one to take over.
Ostoich went home and talked to her husband, Mark.
His answer was simple: “Yeah, let’s do it.”
There was just one minor complication.
“I jumped into that without knowing anything about the restaurant business,” she laughed. “I had never even worked in a restaurant before.”
For the first six months, she repeatedly wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake.
“I thought to myself, ‘What have I done? This is the day that nobody shows up, and I’ve just, you know, sort of bet the farm, if you will.’”
The gamble worked.
Farm recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and Ostoich now oversees four distinctive Palm Springs restaurants with Mark.
Tac/Quila followed in 2019, inspired in part by a talented chef who wanted to see more elevated dishes reflecting his hometown and Jalisco roots. The restaurant opened roughly 11 months before the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the hospitality industry.
Of all the influences behind Ostoich’s restaurants, the South of France holds a special place in her heart.
Farm is designed to give guests a little taste of Provence without ever leaving Palm Springs.
“We love especially Provence, but especially the Luberon Valley,” she said. “I wanted something in Palm Springs that was sort of Provence without a passport, where people could feel like they were dropped in the middle of a European city.”
And then there is the food.
“I love anything that starts with butter, cream and cheese,” she joked.
Her connection to Provence extends beyond décor and menus. Ostoich regularly takes members of her management team on international trips, both as a reward and as a way of expanding their perspective. After a Costa Rica trip, the next planned destination is Provence.
“I’m excited to share this with the team and let them see the inspiration behind Farm.”
What I especially enjoy about Ostoich’s restaurants is that none feels like a duplicate of another.
That is intentional.
Her design philosophy begins with a deceptively simple rule: pause and reflect.
“I believe in designing for a space,” she explained. “One of my kind of mottos is to pause and reflect. And so, I think you need to come into a space, sit there and feel it for a while before you make any decisions.”
At Farm, she works with the character of the building itself, which dates to 1936, incorporating California plein air paintings and a countryside aesthetic that feels connected to both California and Europe.
At Tac/Quila, the inspiration shifts dramatically to Mexico City in the 1950s.
Ostoich wanted to recognize that mid-century modernism — so closely associated with Palm Springs — was actually an international movement.
“We tried to bring in art from the 1950s and really give it that mid-century feel at Tac/Quila.”
Then there is Clandestino, whose visual identity emerged almost organically.
“I was sitting in there one day, and I was looking around, and I thought, ‘Huh, everything I’ve picked in this place has big eyes.’”
A dramatic mural became the centerpiece, while other artwork continues the recurring “big eyes” motif.
Clandestino was originally envisioned as something of an overflow or takeout extension of Tac/Quila, but that concept did not last long.
“We quickly realized that’s just not the case,” Ostoich said. “It’s got its own personality, and the chef there is off the charts.”
Front Porch offers yet another change of pace, emphasizing raw, fresh and health-conscious choices, a lighter counterpoint to Farm’s wonderfully indulgent butter, cream and cheese.
Ostoich and her husband have been together for 29 years and married for 25, and their long partnership extends naturally into their businesses.
“We have the same philosophies on most things, and that’s probably why we don’t have other partners,” she said.
Their responsibilities are clearly defined without being rigid.
Ostoich gravitates toward design, community involvement and serving on boards. Mark focuses more heavily on finance and business operations. Both participate in tastings.
And both loves collecting art.
“I look at each four of these restaurants as ways to have art galleries,” she said. “We have four art galleries, and so he and I do the treasure hunting together.”
Yet perhaps the most telling part of their partnership is not what happens in the office or during design meetings.
“We know everybody’s name,” Ostoich told me. “Every food runner, every dishwasher.”
That personal connection is at the heart of everything they do.
For Ostoich, hospitality begins long before a guest sits down at a table.
It begins with the people working inside the restaurants.
Her philosophy can be summed up in one word: love.
Ostoich and Mark are people of faith, and she describes their guiding philosophy as “love God, love people.”
“If you love people well, you’re never gonna go wrong,” she said.
The couple’s children are grown, and they now have grandchildren.
“And now we have almost 300 new ones,” she said of their employees.
Her goal is not necessarily to keep every employee in the restaurant business forever. In fact, it is nearly the opposite.
“Our whole goal is to help launch these people, because whatever their dream is, is my dream for them.”
If hospitality is their calling, she wants to help them grow within it. If the restaurant is simply one chapter on the way to something else, she wants to help with that too.
“I want them to live their authentic life and to do whatever it is they want to do.”
That philosophy translates into salaries, benefits, competitive compensation and opportunities such as international travel.
“One of the things that we’ve been blessed with is the opportunity to see the world,” Ostoich said, “and so we try to give that to them as much as possible.”
Ostoich’s commitment to people extends deep into the Greater Palm Springs community.
Her restaurants have become major supporters of DAP Health, particularly through Dining Out for Life.
For Ostoich, the reason for supporting healthcare access is not complicated.
“I think it’s a basic human right,” she said. “I don’t even think that this should be a question. This is something we should all have access to.”
She praised the extraordinary healthcare infrastructure DAP has created in the Coachella Valley and the organization’s decades of service to the community.
According to Ostoich, Palm Springs ranks second or third worldwide in Dining Out for Life fundraising, while her restaurant group is the number one fundraising restaurant group locally.
“Everybody’s important, and everybody’s health is important,” she said.
That same community-first mindset gave birth to one of Ostoich’s favorite ideas: Pay It Circle.
She started the initiative during COVID after looking around Palm Springs and asking a simple question: Who is hurting, and how can I help?
She hired a local videographer who had lost work and began visiting businesses that were still operating. She bought gift cards, purchased merchandise and used the videos to introduce people to small local businesses that badly needed support.
The name was intentional.
Most people know the phrase “pay it forward,” but Ostoich wanted something different.
“Paying something forward has a linear feel,” she explained. “Whereas Pay It Circle is sort of like a big hug.”
The goal is to keep support circulating within the community.
Guests support the restaurants. The restaurants support nearly 300 employees. Those employees support their families. The restaurants then turn around and support local healthcare organizations, charities and businesses, bringing the circle back around again.
“It’s my obligation to then help the people that help me,” Ostoich said.
“Trying to keep things within our circle here… it really just helps all of us.”
I ended our conversation by asking Ostoich what she hopes people feel when they walk through the doors of one of her restaurants, and what she hopes they carry away with them besides a full stomach.
Her answer captured everything we had talked about.
“You can have a meal anywhere, Valerie,” she said. “What I want is I want people to have an experience when they come in.”
That experience includes wonderful food, certainly, but also atmosphere, aroma, art, kindness and the feeling that somebody genuinely cares that you are there.
“I think that kind of starts at the top down,” she explained. “We need to demonstrate that love to our staff, and if our staff feels love, they’re going to demonstrate it to the guest, and then the guest is going to feel love.”
And, ideally, that guest takes some of that feeling back out into the world.
Ostoich calls it experiential dining.
“I want them to awaken all of the senses when they come in and not just have a good meal,” she said. “I want them to begin eating with their eyes when they walk in.”
“I want them to be delighted. I want the smells to be good, the aromas to be good, the visuals to be good, the kindness. I want the whole experience to be something that causes them to want to come back again and again.”
There are plenty of restaurants where you can get dinner.
What Liz Ostoich and her team have created in Palm Springs is something more ambitious: four individual spaces built around food, art, history, people and a belief that hospitality should ultimately make someone feel better than when they walked through the door.
And perhaps that is the simplest definition of the Pay It Circle of all.
Farm |Tac/Quila | Clandestino | Front Porch
Palm Springs, California
By Valerie Milano
The Hollywood Times
