Islands Chain Says It’s Last Call for Smokers : Prohibition: The Costa Mesa-based company is going to ban cigarettes in its 13 restaurant-bars beginning in April.

Forget the Big Wave, the half-pound hamburger that is the favorite menu item at a group of restaurant-bars scattered across Los Angeles and Orange counties.

What’s bearing down on Islands is more of a tidal wave.

Operators of the 13-outlet, tropics-themed chain will kick smokers off bar stools and out of smoking-section booths on April 1.

“It’s not an April Fool’s Day joke. We’re going to do it,” said Michael B. Smith, a regional manager for the Costa Mesa-based company.

While some cities have enacted dining room smoking bans and a few restaurants are experimenting with their own smoke-free policies, the move is seen as the first by a bar operator in Greater Los Angeles.

Smoking and drinking have traditionally been viewed by bar and lounge patrons as like mixing gin and tonic or Scotch and soda.

Islands employees cheered when told of the change. Some customers jeered, however.

“Perfect!” said Tina Noriega, a hostess at the chain’s Manhattan Beach restaurant who had to call her father in Redondo Beach to bring her extra asthma medicine one day recently because of the smoke.

Waitress Jenna Savran of Lawndale said she has grown tired of having to wash the cigarette smell out of her hair at the end of her shift. “Nobody volunteers to work in the smoking sections,” she said.

Pshaw, said customer Jacquie Kolodiej, a bakery machine operator who stopped in at the restaurant’s Burbank outlet. “I’m disappointed. I’m a smoker. This is the first time I’ve ever been here and I’d looked forward to coming back.”

Said Frida Mejia, Sun Valley education center administrator who was dining in the palm-frond-covered bar area at Islands’ Encino branch: “Customers in bars are adults and they ought to be able to do whatever they want.”

At the chain’s outlet in Beverly Hills--where city officials yielded to pressure and quickly overturned a controversial 1987 law prohibiting smoking in restaurants--actor Jeff Garrett agreed. “I think there should be a place to smoke. Usually I smoke while I drink,” he said.

Several Islands bartenders predicted that the prohibition will chase away customers. But Steven Selcer, the company’s chief financial officer, said the health dangers of secondhand smoke outweigh the minor losses the chain may face.

He acknowledged that restaurant chains such as Bellflower-based Norm’s--which has banned smoking in its 16 outlets--and the 9,000-unit McDonald’s, which is reportedly considering doing the same, are more likely candidates for do-it-yourself bans than restaurants with bars.

Islands’ crackdown was toasted by one smoker, however.

“Why should other people have to deal with my smoke?” asked Dennis Blair, a Tarzana resident who was watching a surfing film on a television set above the Encino Islands bar while he sucked on a Marlboro and nursed a Blind Russian vodka drink.

“To me, it’s a very good idea.”