LOOKING BACK

Young Chang

NEWPORT BEACH -- A French onion soup would cost you 20 cents. A Caesar

salad was also 20 cents. A New York steak was $2.25, and the priciest

entree on the menu -- a rack of lamb -- sold for $2.85.

This was in the mid-1950s, when the Arches Restaurant in Newport Beach

had recently transformed from a coffee shop to a fine-dining venue.

As the restaurant closes in on its 80th year in January, and as it

celebrates the 20th anniversary of Dan Marcheano’s ownership Monday,

Marcheano is thinking about the older days.

Frank Sinatra dined there then. So did Humphrey Bogart. June Allison,

Gary Cooper and John Wayne, of course, joined the patron list, Marcheano

said.

Today, Sinatra classics are played on the restaurant sound system. The

very dark decor (you might blink a couple of times when you first walk

in) makes the dark red sofa-seats an even richer blood-cell red.

Christmas lights in the middle of the room somehow don’t look gaudy in

August, and artwork -- including a really busy one of the Arches with

Coast Highway traffic whizzing by -- lights up the walls.

“I wanted to be in a different era,” Marcheano said of how he

redecorated the restaurant in 1982.

It was a Friday -- Aug. 13. Now who else would take over the

restaurant business -- the toughest kind of business, the owner says --

on a Friday the 13th?

But the curse never fell.

From the coffee shop that opened in 1922 with a breakfast, lunch and

light dinner menu, Arches today boasts a seafood menu that includes

swordfish, salmon, halibut, even abalone.

“This is one of the few places I know that you can get a piece of

abalone,” said longtime regular Larry O’Rourke, a real estate broker in

Newport Beach.

In the ‘20s, the Arches served ham and eggs, sausage and eggs,

waffles, pancakes, your typical breakfast menu. The lunchtime crowds

enjoyed roast beef sandwiches, corned beef sandwiches, “and the different

type of sandwiches that people then would eat,” Marcheano said.

Over the years, loyal celebrity followings have included Cal Ripken of

the Baltimore Orioles (he apparently drops in whenever he’s in town),

Yankees manager Joe Torre and trumpeter Chuck Findley.

In preparation for the 80th anniversary, Marcheano plans a big thank

you.

“I’m going to let us get through February, then gonna do a weeklong

hello, how are you, thank you to Newport Beach,” he said. “But I’m not

gonna do a nickel hamburger. The lines would be up the block and the

police would have me as crazy.”

Caption:

Owner Dan Marcheano stands in front of the Arches Restaurant in

Newport Beach almost 12 years ago. In January, the restaurant will

celebrate its 80th anniversary.