The Morris Empire Just Keeps Growing

Bob Morris is one of the most successful restaurateurs in Southern California today--with the public, if not necessarily with the critics. His restaurants (now run by his Mor Food ‘n’ Fun Group, a subsidiary of thR. Grace Corp.) are three: R.J.’s in Beverly Hills, Gladstone’s 4 Fish in Pacific Palisades, and the Malibu Sea Lion U.S.A. in Malibu. (Offshoots of the original R.J.’s and Gladstone’s in Newport Beach are managed directly by W. R. Grace.) All three draw huge crowds, Gladstone’s most of all--Morris estimates that the place will serve about 1.4 million customers this year and gross in the neighborhood of $13 million. Traffic is so heavy in the place, he adds, that he is currently replacing the restaurant’s floor for the third time in eight years.

As if he isn’t busy enough, Morris has now announced his involvement in four, count ‘em four, new projects:

The first to open will be Cabo Cabo Cabo, a Mexican-style seafood place scheduled to debut in November in Century City between the Stage Deli and Langan’s. Morris stresses that he is only an investor in this one. Two other places are being developed through Mor Food ‘n’ Fun. The first of these is Malibu Deck, to open next spring on Pacific Coast Highway on the site of an earlier Morris restaurant, Jetty’s (destroyed in a fire several years ago).

“People in Southern California really don’t have a lot of places on the beach for eating outside,” Morris says. “The Malibu Deck will be designed for outdoor dining. (Of about 240 seats, 175 will be outside.) It won’t be all that pleasant, frankly, in bad weather.” With this in mind, he adds, he plans to be open only 220 days a year--every day from Memorial Day to Labor Day, weekends in other seasons. The food will include simple salads and sandwiches, seafood from a large ‘raw’ bar, and simply cooked fish and shellfish, much of it from live tanks.

At the same time, Morris is plotting what he describes as “a late ‘40s/early ‘50s surf cafe,” along Pacific Coast Highway on the site of the old Sunspot in Pacific Palisades, to open in late spring of next year. “Imagine a Hard Rock kind of menu, but with more salads and seafood and some good chowders,” he says. He plans to refurbish and open the Sunspot swimming pool and install a disco. A few of the Sunspot’s motel rooms will remain, and Morris hints that he might eventually install a small bed-and-breakfast operation there. The tentative name for the place is The Sip ‘n’ Surf. “That was a famous place in Santa Monica Canyon in the ‘50s when I was growing up,” says Morris. “I hope I can use the name. I want this new place to be able to make an old man like me think of his past.”

With his brother Bryant (who built Fisherman’s Village in Marina del Rey and similar developments), Morris is planning a four-acre waterfront restaurant complex in Honolulu, patterned after the massive Seafood Market restaurant in Bangkok. “The idea,” he says, “is that you take a shopping cart and pick out your own seafood and then pick out vegetables from a kind of huge farmer’s market.” Customers pay for their “groceries” on a retail basis, with a cooking charge added that varies according to how you want everything done. “It’s a very ambitious project, and you have to really know the seafood business to bring it off.” Morris hopes to open the place, which he will call Honolulu Fisherman’s Wharf, by late 1989. “It’s just a big, exciting thing that I’m pouring my heart into,” he says.

CHINESE FIRE DRILL: There was a midnight fire in the kitchen of the Mandarin, in Beverly Hills, two weeks ago. Nobody was hurt, but the kitchen was so badly damaged that the restaurant will be closed for a couple of months. Changes are promised when the restaurant reopens.

BASTILLE BOUFFE: L’Ermitage on La Cienega will observe Bastille Day, this Thursday with a four-course, $55-per-person prix-fixe dinner, accompanied by live French music . . . The Golden Truffle in Santa Ana offers special menu items in commemoration, Thursday through Saturday, and will offer a special afternoon Champagne tasting Saturday . . . And Champagne celebrates with a five-course meal (first seating, $48 per person; second seating $58-per-person with dancing).