Malibu Sea Lion’s Chris Polos Dies at 99 : Greek Immigrant Rose From Hard Times, Finally Got His Cafe

Chris Polos, a penniless immigrant from Greece who transformed a modest Malibu cafe into one of Pacific Coast Highway’s best-known restaurants at an age when most men would be contemplating retirement, has died.

The former owner-operator of the Sea Lion restaurant--named for the boisterous seals that once barked greetings to customers from their private pool near the entrance--was 99.

His son, Theodore, said he died peacefully at St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica last Thursday and until recently had continued to live in the apartment over the restaurant he sold only two years ago.

He was 13 and the Statue of Liberty only a year older when he arrived in Ellis Island in 1900 to start a new life in a new century. He came to work with his father and later his brothers and sisters. His mother stayed in Greece, he said in a 1983 interview with The Times, and although they corresponded, he never saw her again.

Hard Work in Chicago

Opportunities developed slowly. The family found that many of the streets in their first American city, Chicago, were not paved at all, much less with gold.

There was time only for work, not for school. Like the rest of the family, Polos’ father could neither read nor speak English, “so he peddled fruit and vegetables from a street stand,” the son said in 1983.

After two years at the stand, the 15-year-old Polos tried to move to California to start his own business.

But he hopped the wrong freight and ended up in Minnesota in the middle of a chilling winter. He hopped another freight, but this time instead of California he found himself in St. Louis, where he worked as a cook for a Marine Corps detachment.

Gaining Experience

It was the beginning of a career that eventually was to bring him the restaurant he had envisioned owning.

In the ensuing years Polos worked in candy stores in Iowa and Nevada, and at 18 he arrived in California, where he found a job in San Francisco--first with a German baker and then with a fellow Greek who ran an ice creamery. That job lasted only briefly, however, because the 1906 earthquake destroyed the store.

He became a waiter and then went back to ice cream and candy sales, accumulating with each job a bit more capital. He came to Los Angeles to work at what was one of the first three See’s candy stores.

With his modest fortune, Polos bought land in Escondido, raising avocados and lemons, and when those crops proved profitable, he bought an apartment complex in Long Beach.

Marriage and Family

At a Greek dance he met a young girl named Helen who eventually became his wife of 69 years. They began a family that at his death included his son; a daughter, Constance; seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

And then he found his restaurant.

In 1944 he bought the old Las Flores Inn on Pacific Coast Highway for what he described as “a sack of peanuts.” The Poloses remodeled, putting in windows that eventually offered a 300-foot-wide ocean view for their 700 daily patrons.

“Josephine,” the lone sea lion on the premises when Polos arrived, began to receive guests. Polos would gather up ailing seals that became stranded on the rocks outside the restaurant and add them to the pool while they recuperated.

His staff of 70 usually included some fellow immigrants and the fish-oriented menu began to attract film stars as well as tourists.

He had managed to become a millionaire, but not one interested in retiring.

“Retirement? When you’re in the ground that’s when you retire. . . .”

He came within two years of fulfilling that prophecy, selling to the Hungry Tiger chain in 1984. The restaurant was eventually taken over by the W. R. Grace conglomerate.

He did continue to live over the restaurant until he was hospitalized (complaining to the new owners daily about how they were running the place, said his son) and was on hand in February when a plaque honoring him was installed at the site.