It’s No Passing Fancy : Rush of Traffic and Change Can’t Shake Venerable Arches

Nestled near the bridge that crosses West Coast Highway at Newport Boulevard is an inconspicuous old restaurant. For generations of Coast Highway travelers, this barn-like little building has stood out as a bulwark of permanence against an otherwise unrelenting tide of seafront development and change.

It was at this very spot that John Wayne used to regularly eat his steaks. Humphrey Bogart once frequented these environs.

For 70 years, the Arches restaurant has been a Newport Beach institution and a landmark on the coast. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the establishment--then a coffee shop and gas station--was one of the few places between Los Angeles and San Diego where travelers could get gas.

Model-T Fords traversing what was then the county’s main north-south thoroughfare lined up for food and fuel. Later, as the restaurant began attracting Hollywood stars, the city’s elected officials gathered in proverbial smoke-filled rooms to lay early plans for their burgeoning municipality.

Today the pricey eatery stands not only as a familiar gathering place for Southern Californians whose parents dined there too, but as a comforting beacon of continuity on a road otherwise fraught with change. “Other places come and go along Coast Highway,” says Marilyn Cane, who first ate here as a high school student in 1947, “but the Arches stays the same.”

It began in 1922, the same year that surfing was introduced in Newport Beach, the first Newport Regatta sailboat race was held and the city’s original sewer lines installed. In its initial incarnation, according to Daniel Marcheano, who has owned it for 10 years, the place was a roadside cafe next to a gas station. Its name, he said, had emerged from a contest in which a local sixth-grader submitted an entry inspired by the old building’s architectural style. Prominently embedded in that style was--you guessed it--a large set of arches.

Those famous arches were destroyed by fire in the late 1940s, Marcheano said, causing the building to be replaced by its present descendant, a rotund little wooden structure mildly reminiscent of a red barn. A decade later, a shrewd owner converted the gas station into a liquor store built in the same hay-barn style.

Beginning in the 1930s the restaurant started attracting the Hollywood crowd. Besides Bogart, it served meals to the likes of Lauren Bacall, Gary Cooper, William Powell, June Allyson and George Peppard. Later, Joey Bishop, Buddy Ebsen and business figures such as Lee Iacocca became regulars. And in the 1960s and ‘70s, John Wayne--a Newport Beach resident--could often be seen munching his dinner in one of the establishment’s dark-cushioned booths.

“The Duke used to love the Arches,” says Pilar Wayne, the late actor’s widow, who still frequents the place. “He was a steak guy. He always liked New York steak, well done, with baked potatoes and a green salad.”

Today, the Arches--which lent its name to the nearby bridge--is an expensive, elegant, well-heeled restaurant that draws a largely upper-crust crowd to its dining room decorated with lush, rose-colored wood paneling.

Included on the menu are such far-ranging items as abalone, spinach salad flambe and a ham-and-Swiss-cheese sandwich called the Coast Highway Deluxe. Flaming desserts include crepes suzette, bananas Foster and cherries jubilee.

An average dinner for two with wine costs about $90. And the restaurant’s lengthy wine list includes Chateau Leoville Poyfrre , vintage 1870, priced at $5,000 a bottle.

The number of stories surrounding the Arches has grown over the years. A former owner, who was famous for his liar’s poker games, was reputed to have kept the establishment’s stash of wild rice in the safe because he considered it the most valuable commodity on the premises. And there are several variations on the theme of the man who, some years ago, ran up an enormous bar bill by treating everyone in the restaurant to a glass of Louis XIII cognac at $90 a shot. One story has him finally giving a gold bracelet to the bartender in lieu of the cash he didn’t have; another has him walking out entirely and stiffing the whole joint.

Indeed, lunches and dinners at the Arches are generally noisy affairs with patrons greeting each other from adjacent tables. That’s because most are acquainted, according to David Burns, a local attorney whose wife, Melanie, remembers coming to the restaurant with her parents in the 1950s. “You feel like a family,” Burns says.

Regulars give a variety of reasons for their loyalty to the place.

Some cite the quality of the food and the fact that the portions are large. Many say they appreciate a style of service that is attentive and old-fashioned. For most, however, the Arches is simply a habit. It’s been there so long that the place has become a local tradition.

“I used to bring my son here when he was little,” said Robert E. Harris, an insurance company founder whose son is now a successful business consultant in San Francisco. “It should be made a national monument.”

George Pappas, the city’s retired finance director who’s been a regular for 32 years, remembers the Arches as the local equivalent of a community center. “Anybody who was anybody was always at the Arches,” he said. “It was the place to go, kind of like a neighborhood bar.”

And Evelyn R. Hart, a City Council member, believes it’s the human desire for permanence that gives the restaurant its unique place in the hearts and minds of Newport Beach residents and travelers along the coast. As the endless stream of automobiles hurtles down Coast Highway toward destinations unknown, she says, the barn-like structure stands as a tiny unmoving reminder of a bygone era, a time when life was simpler and the traffic more slow.

“The more things change, the more people want them to stay the same,” Hart says. “This is just a little part of Newport Beach that people really like.”