Glitzy Rex: From Caviar to ‘Closed’
Rex, a glitzy Newport Beach restaurant where high-rolling regulars kept vintage bottles of wine in personal lockers, has closed.
The restaurant had been at The Irvine Co.’s Fashion Island shopping mall for a little more than a year after moving from the Balboa Peninsula. Rex, on the ocean side of the mall next to several other trendy restaurants, leased 9,000 square feet on the top floor.
The Irvine Co., one of the county’s biggest landlords, said Monday that it had worked with the restaurant for several months to try to avert the closing. But the Art Deco-style restaurant closed after serving dinner Saturday night.
Owner Rex Chandler didn’t return phone calls Monday.
Expensive restaurants have suffered during the recession as companies cut back on expense-account spending and as even the affluent feel the pinch of hard times.
An Irvine Co. spokesman wouldn’t comment on why Rex had closed. But the spokesman said “the current economic environment is a difficult one, particularly for upscale restaurants.”
Rex was lured from its beachfront location near the Newport Pier, where it had been for about eight years, by Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren, whose company was remodeling Fashion Island at the time. The restaurant opened in the mall in October, 1990.
Bren and other affluent locals frequented Rex, which along with nearby competitor The Ritz was known as a gathering place for the wealthy. Competition from The Ritz, in fact, may have helped polish off Rex.
The Ritz, ironically, once occupied the same space that Rex moved from near the Newport Pier.
That beachfront location is now occupied by 21 Oceanfront, a more casual but still upscale restaurant that is also owned by Chandler. 21 Oceanfront remains open.
Among several wealthy investors in Rex is developer Anthony R. Moiso, president of Santa Margarita Co., which is developing a huge portion of family-owned land in southern Orange County. Moiso couldn’t be reached for comment.
The 160-seat Rex featured black booths and a black granite dance floor. It couldn’t keep $70-an-ounce beluga caviar in stock when it opened, Chandler said at the time. The restaurant had a decidedly non-California dress code that required coats for men and forbade tank tops, jeans and sneakers.
