Society Mourns Passing of the Rex

The restaurant was on the oceanfront. It was one that Winnie had passed a thousand times. Once he’d even stopped for a drink and to watch the sunset . . .

“The Golden Orange” by Joseph Wambaugh

When Wambaugh penned those words about one of Orange County society’s favorite watering holes, he was talking about the Rex--a cushy, beachside bistro that never hungered for customers.

In fact, Orange County’s only billionaire--Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren--thought the spot so hot he asked restaurateur Rex Chandler to bring it to Newport Center Fashion Island.

“Bren wanted that little jewel in his crown,” says an insider.

Reluctant, but flattered--especially when Bren offered to pay all of the restaurant’s building costs--Chandler opened the new Art Deco-themed Rex 14 months ago with a flurry of society bashes that bubbled with champagne and chitchat about Orange County’s newest place to be seen.

But last week, because of poor patronage, Chandler had to close his doors.

Now Orange County society is seething .

Says one socialite, a friend of Chandler who loved to “party with the girls in that lovely place”: “His landlord didn’t support him. It isn’t that his friends didn’t. We did. Donald (Bren) romanced Rex, then let him down. Rex doesn’t want to talk about it because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. But he and his wife, Susan, are crushed.”

Irvine Co. spokeswoman Dawn McCormick says her company did everything it could to help the restaurant stay on high ground. “It was strictly a numbers game,” she says.

Did the Irvine Co. pump money into the project? “We can’t (talk about) that. We have hundreds of tenants on the ranch, and if I spell out what we did for one . . . “ Pause. “With each tenant we are willing to listen and give advice.”

Rex Chandler is not returning phone calls. But on Saturday, his wife, Susan, said the couple thought the Irvine Co. was going to ante up the $300,000 they needed to get through January, a notoriously slow time in the restaurant business.

“They had promised they were going to take care of us,” Susan says. “We are extended to the limit. All we needed was to get a couple of banks off of our backs. We thought we could make it if we got through this month.”

She said the couples’ hopes were dashed at a meeting with Bren after he had returned from a Sun Valley ski trip. “He told Rex the Irvine Co. is not in the restaurant business or in the business of lending money,” Susan says. “He was our last resort.”

There were some hot tears shed at the old Rex on Wednesday night--the night the crew of the defunct Rex--along with Chandler, his wife Susan, and a flock of regulars (some of them from the Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas)--gathered to mourn the demise of a dream.

“We had a very special party,” says Barnard Rigolet, host of 21 Oceanfront. “I’ve known Rex for 20 years. He’s a fighter. It seems the timing was wrong for the new place. In this business it takes three years before you really open the door on a new restaurant.”

Explains Rigolet: “There’s a lot of old ghosts--memories--here at the beach and they set a happy pattern. It’s a place you want to return to.”

The new Rex was different from the old one, Rigolet adds. “It wasn’t as warm. When you have an Art Deco restaurant it has to be filled up to look warm.” (Bren liked the booth in the back, near the fireplace.)

At 21 Oceanfront, habitues can sit alone and still feel like they’re at a party. The sea is just outside the window.

From the new Rex, the ocean was barely visible above the distant rooftops.

But still, it was regarded as a fine place to dine. “We had a lot of lovely times there,” says Mary Ann Wells, who last month brought 46 guests to a brunch at the Rex on behalf of the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross. “And we don’t see the closing as a social embarrassment. Rex did the best he could. We’ve told him to hold his head high.”

One critic of the Rex, a woman with influence in Newport Beach social circles, thinks the Rex failed because it was too pricey. “We all went there originally,” she says. “But then we stopped. Every time I took someone there for lunch I spent $45 and that was just for salad and wine.”

A businesswoman from Newport Beach calls the entrance of the Rex, with its generous use of brass and glass, “intimidating.”

“I think a lot of people felt like they didn’t merit walking into such a fancy place. It was unapproachable,” she says.

In recent months, members of a new social club who call themselves the Islanders met regularly at the Rex. The club plans to stage benefits at Newport Center on behalf of causes for children.

“The closing of the Rex doesn’t mean the end of the Islanders,” says Wells, who helped Susan Chandler found the group. “We’re moving to the Four Seasons.”

After Chandler picks up the pieces--”he’s selling his meat and wine,” says a source (and he has returned some of the restaurant’s loaned paintings to their owner--a wealthy socialite who is a neighbor of Bren’s)--he plans to spend a few weeks in Colorado.

“He’s going to just take his time and think about all of this,” says a friend. “He has plenty of job offers. No one will ever say that Rex Chandler isn’t a fine restaurateur.”