Restaurateur’s Nouvelle Idea Is ‘Breakfast Club’ for Rising Stars

Danny DeVito is a regular. So is O.J. Simpson. And Donald Bren.

Super model Lauren Hutton has dined there. So has super actress Bette Midler (when she was filming “Beaches” at Crystal Cove). And baseball great Reggie Jackson.

And so will former President Ronald Reagan, come spring, when a benefit for his presidential library is held at the Newport Beach version of Five Feet, the Laguna Beach restaurant on the tip of every savvy tongue.

If you’re a place-watcher, keep your eye on Five Feet and its sister restaurant, Five Feet Too (site of a 1989 visit by Vice President Dan Quayle) in 1990.

Owner-chef Michael Kang, a culinary Wunderkind born in Taiwan and raised in Orange County, has almost as many plans cooking for his nouvelle Asian-American bistros as he has spices on his kitchen shelves. There’s the Reagan library fund-raiser that the 26-year-old restaurateur is coordinating with Orange County Republican Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes. There’s the Oscar night party that has locals betting the Newport Beach bash will become Orange County’s answer to super-agent Swifty Lazar’s Oscar party at Spago in Beverly Hills. And there are plans in the works for a fifth anniversary blowout at the Laguna Beach restaurant on Aug. 12.

But the most significant plan, Kang thinks, is the one for a Breakfast Club--a kaffeeklatsch-cum-think-tank--he is organizing with Peter Zeughauser, general counsel for the Irvine Co.

“Peter and I have drawn up a list of about 60 people we think will be this county’s old guard in 10 to 15 years,” says Kang, who studied at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Santa Monica. “It’s premature to mention names. But 40 of them have already verbally committed to the club. They’re younger people with something to say, people who care about local concerns such as the environment and transportation and hope to help make a difference.”

Orange County is chock-full of clubs with “strings attached,” Kang believes. “There are private clubs that are all about political status. There are private clubs that are all about social status.

“But my friends and I are ‘anti’ that kind of thing. We want a place where all kinds of people--from young artists to top execs to female rights activists--can come together and discuss issues.

“Orange County needs an intellectual breeding ground that is free of pretentiousness.”

Members will pay annual dues (the amount of which is yet to be established, Kang says, “but the fee will be low; I don’t plan to make money on this”), and members will be allowed in the Newport Beach restaurant between 6:30 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Kang understands that his Breakfast Club says more about his needs than Orange County’s. “The Chinese are into ‘essence of life,’ ” he says, “which means I should have control of my life, not society.

“So I decided that if I was going to work here, I wanted to make a contribution, bring in something new--be it food, art or thought--update the county as I influence it.”

Kang said he calculates every move. “I’m very careful to be one step ahead. I am never in the mainstream. I guess that comes from being raised in a rich and affluent area (Kang went to Corona del Mar High School). After that, you can’t stand to be in the mainstream.”

Proof that he’s a free-thinker: ultra-nouvelle menu items such as “blackened sashimi.”

“That dish is a contradiction in terms,” Kang says, laughing. The paper-thin, raw fish comes to the table black around the edges.

Other menu favorites: goat cheese won ton and Kung Pao calamari, a squid steak that has been tenderized with a thousand needles, what Kang calls “squid acupuncture,” and fried in a wok with chili, peanuts and caramelized soy sauce. “People love it.”

Other spots to watch in 1990: The Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, where on March 28 Nancy Reagan will speak to members of Circle 1000, a support group for the Hoag Cancer Center. The event, with 500 expected to attend, marks the third “Circle 1000 Brunch.”

Former speakers have been actress Jill Ireland, author of “Life Wish,” and Betty Rollin, who wrote “First, You Cry.”

The former First Lady, who has had a mastectomy, will speak of her own experience with the disease, says Joan Greatrake, Hoag’s director of special projects. Greatrake declined to disclose the amount that the former First Lady will charge for her appearance. “I’ve been asked by my superiors not to discuss it,” she said.

To attend, guests must make a minimum donation of $150. Donations up to $1,000 are encouraged.

The new Hoag Cancer Center will officially open on June 2 with a major donor-recognition luncheon, followed by a gala. Both events will be held in a tent erected next to the center. The gala is being planned by the Sandpipers, a Hoag support group.