RESTAURANTS : Magic’s Fine, but Presto! Your Appetite Vanishes When Food Appears

There’s no shortage of illusion at Magic Island, a one-time private club that recently has been opened to the public. Once inside its myriad of rooms, the magic is everywhere: balls changing into birds, birds changing into dogs, disappearing waiters. There is even the illusion of dining.

We enter the inner sanctum through a sliding Egyptian mummy case and are handed a white card with a printed itinerary: 7:30 . . . Magic Show in the Garden of Isis; 9 . . . dinner in the Garden of Nefertiti; midnight . . . more magic in Cleopatra’s Chamber. We walk down a long hallway, our pulses pounding, when our blood is chilled by a terrifying sound . . . a lounge pianist singing “New York, New York.”

Continuing to a dark staircase, we hurry upstairs to a small auditorium. The show is about to begin. After a brief warm-up by a nondescript emcee type, the featured act, Ron Jones and Flame, takes the stage. Jones is a wise-cracking Texan with a pocketful of tricks and a car salesman’s confidence; he has the audience in the palm of his hand--or rather, palmed--before you can say “one, Mississippi.” He swallows fire, transmutes rabbits, handles a card deck and does Houdini-like rope escapes, all the while maintaining a steady stream of patter. The crowd loves it.

Too soon after, we find ourselves milling around Wizard’s Lair, a large downstairs lounge where a variety of psychics ply their trade--numerology, Tarot, palm reading, astrology and graphology, better known as handwriting analysis. According to our itinerary, we still have almost half an hour before mealtime.

We figure we might as well make the most of it and head for the graphologist, a smart lady from Fullerton named Jean Lee, who dazzles us with her accuracy. Neither my wife nor I can believe our own handwriting can be so revealing. And I learn a valuable lesson: People rarely are bored when hearing about themselves.

By now, we are plenty hungry, so we decide to head for our assigned dining room. (There are several dining rooms, and only members are given the privilege of choosing.) But when we get to the podium, the maitre d’ gives us the bad news. Our table is not ready.

“If you don’t mind sitting in the back dining room,” he tells us, “you can be seated now.” We are too hungry to wait. But when we get to our table, no one greets us for several minutes, and eventually we realized why: Everyone who has seen our show is now in the other dining room, and the kitchen is swamped. We put our hands together and try to conjure up some service. Shazam ! It works.

Once we order, things begin to happen. Inside of five minutes, we get some unusual first courses. Champignons Monaco are said to be stuffed with sun-dried tomato and crab, but the tomato must be invisible, and the mushrooms are far from magic. Escargots Bourguignonne en feuilette --snails in puff pastry--are not at all tender, and the puff pastry reminds everyone of a biscuit-like Jewish cookie called kichel.

Salads are a big improvement. Spinach salad is not flamed table side, as advertised on the menu, and nobody minds (Ron Jones and Flame provided enough heat for one evening). The salad is appealingly sweet, with a heap of pine nuts on top. Everyone likes the watercress salad, which comes with a toasted chunk of goat cheese and hearts of palm piled up on the plate like Pick-Up-Sticks.

In between courses, a magician drops by. He does a few coin tricks on a little red velvet stage he has placed on our table. Then, one of my friends asks him an embarrassing question: “Do you think you can make the food taste any better?” The magician just smiles and abracadabra . . . he vanishes.

The main dishes arrive, and it becomes clear that none of the magicians are working the kitchen. The best of the group is the trois medaillons , three medallions of grilled meats, beef, lamb and veal, which are blanketed in separate sauces and ornately served with vegetables. The meats are tender and the sauces pleasant. Bouillabaisse a la Marseillaise is gigantic--a huge bowl filled with lobster, clams, scallops--just the things that Marseillaises never let near a bouillabaisse. Despite the misnomer, it manages to be pretty good. My dish is a best-forgotten ballotine de volaille , dry boneless chicken stuffed with an uninteresting mousse. Also worthy of disappearance is aiguillette de canard , a too-sweet breast of duck cooked far too long.

All the dishes on this impressive-looking menu are listed in French; someone there must think foreign words lend an air of distinction. I just find it perplexing. It is the type of thing one encounters in Midwestern cities with gourmet pretensions. That is one illusion that the Newport Beach crowd seems too well-traveled to be taken in by. The restaurant would be better off doing a smaller and simpler menu, in my opinion.

Despite that, we leave Magic Island with smiles on our faces. If you are like most people, you won’t really be going there for the food per se, but you may come away a little disappointed, rather like a child when he discovers that the nickel is nailed to the floor. The dinner does occupy almost half of your evening, and that is where the price of the entertainment is absorbed. Magic Island is expensive. You didn’t think the check would be in invisible ink, now did you?

Hors d’oeuvres are $5 to $11.50. Beluga caviar is available for $48 a serving. Salads are $4.25 to $7.75. Main dishes are $18 to $32. There is a credible souffle which must be ordered 45 minutes in advance. The wine list reflects a healthy mark-up.

MAGIC ISLAND

3505 Via Oporto, Newport Beach

(714) 675-0900

Open Wednesday to Saturday, from 6 p.m. Must be 21 or over. Also Sunday brunch, children welcome, 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

All major cards accepted