Jazz Club El Matador Will Reopen as an Ivy League Bar : Entertainment: Huntington Beach restaurant’s new owners say they’ll start with a few nights of the music that was the venue’s staple.

For more than two years, it was a jazz bastion in Orange County, presenting such top Southern California players as Ron Eschete, Wilton Felder, Tom Kubis, Stephanie Haynes and Joe Sample six nights a week in a casual, friendly atmosphere.

But this week, without much fanfare, the lights went out for the last time at El Matador, the family-owned Mexican restaurant and jazz club in the Huntington Harbour Mall. Owner Marcial Gallardo has sold the establishment he operated for five years to a partnership headed up by Brian and Steve McKay of Fullerton. Singer Shelley Moore, who played Sunday, was the room’s final attraction.

The McKays plan to remodel the restaurant and reopen in about six weeks as a “traditional Ivy League bar and grill, with a musical policy,” according to Steve McKay. “We want to continue with what’s been successful here,” McKay said when reached at the former El Matador. “We might not be doing jazz seven nights a week, but I think we’ll try for three nights at first. We’ve talked to (El Matador’s musical director) Luther Hughes, and we’ll talk to him again.”

Hughes said that El Matador “introduced the best jazz that Orange County has heard--on a continuous policy, rather than a night here or there as at the Coach House” in San Juan Capistrano or elsewhere. But he added that he welcomes the opportunity to work with the McKays.

“We’ve discussed putting in a stage, a sound system, maybe even a baby grand piano, which would open up some new musical areas,” Hughes said. (At El Matador, keyboardists had to provide their own instruments.)

McKay said the new establishment, which is leaning toward the name Huntington Grill, may also try other forms of music, such as “light blues, or blues, but no hard rock.” McKay said that he’s seeking an upscale crowd and that he was attracted by the room’s potential.

Business was good at El Matador, according to Marcial Gallardo Jr., Gallardo’s son and the general manager. “But we just had to sell it,” said Gallardo Jr., who spoke by phone from the Gallardos’ other El Matador restaurant in Costa Mesa, which opened 26 years ago. He cited “personal reasons” as the cause of the sale. “It’s sad, but we just had to do it,” he said.

Gallardo Jr. pointed out that while he and his father regretted leaving the clientele they had built up at the El Matador in Huntingon Beach, they didn’t regret leaving the mall, which he called “a poor location.”

The Huntington Harbour Mall, nestled in a large block about a half mile from Pacific Coast Highway and a block from Warner Avenue, mainly houses businesses that are open only during the day, so El Matador received little foot traffic and had to rely on customers specifically seeking it out.

Gallardo Jr. said his father is contemplating opening another restaurant-jazz room but said it wouldn’t happen until later this year.

“It would be the same setup as El Matador, only in a better location,” he said.

“We had something good going there.”