Restaurant Gets Third Helping : Newport Beach’s Villa Nova Is Rebuilt After Fall Fire

While restaurant owners Andrew and Charlene Crean were savoring the sights of Europe during a vacation last fall, their waterfront Italian eatery back home, the Villa Nova--an institution here for nearly three decades--was burning down.

Curiously, when they finally heard the bad news the next day, the Creans were in the coastal town of Vilanova i la Geltru, Spain. Charlene Crean recalled that during the previous day’s travels, probably as the restaurant burned, she had told a traveling companion: “If I could redo the restaurant, I would tear down the banquet room, the stairs and the kitchen.”

Those three areas were the only sections of the restaurant that were destroyed in the fire. “That was weird,” she said.

Since last September’s fire, the Villa Nova restaurant--Italian for “new house”--has been disassembled and rebuilt from the ground up. The familiar facade of the restaurant--painted fresco-style to resemble an Italian village--has been visible to drivers along busy Coast Highway for weeks.

And within the next two weeks, the “new house” at 3131 W. Coast Highway will open for a third time since it premiered on the Sunset Strip in 1935.

The Creans have paid close attention to every detail in the construction, sparing no cost to re-create the restaurant’s intimate 1930s ambience that made it such a popular hangout for Hollywood and sports stars over the decades.

“We don’t mind the extra expenses. We are going to be here a long time,” said Andrew Crean, 45, son of John Crean, the wealthy philanthropist, businessman and onetime congressional candidate.

The original Villa Nova was built by silent film actor-director Allen Dale, who changed his native Italian name from Alfred DiLisio to Americanize it. He got into the restaurant business after his broken English kept him from finding work once talkies became popular.

His friend, Charlie Chaplin, who had a restaurant of his own, backed Dale financially to open up a small trattoria near Hollywood and Vine in 1933. Two years later, the Villa Nova opened its doors on the Sunset Strip.

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The Villa Nova became an instant hangout for Dale’s Hollywood and sports pals. Such notable regulars included Bing Crosby, John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Dean Martin. Reportedly, Vincent Minelli proposed marriage to Judy Garland there.

“Dale had a strict rule: No press allowed,” Crean said.

Shortly after Dale got mugged in 1967 on the Sunset Strip, Crean said, he got mad enough to take his operation to West Coast Highway in Newport Beach, where it has been ever since.

Over the years, Dale kept adding on to the original structure “while the city wasn’t looking,” Crean said. “It was amazing it didn’t fall apart before the fire. It was just like a tumor that kept growing.”

Andrew Crean purchased the restaurant in 1993 from Charlotte Dale, who took over the establishment after her husband, Allen, died in 1971. At the time of the sale, the restaurant was nearly bankrupt and Crean poured $200,000 into refurbishing it. The September blaze caused at least $1 million in damage, most of which the Creans’ insurance has covered. But Crean estimates he has added double that amount so far.

“My chef’s hat off to Andy,” said head chef Sonny Mergenthaler, 46, who has been at the Villa Nova since it moved to Newport Beach in 1968. “He didn’t need this kind of heartache. He could have sat home if he wanted.”

All but four of the restaurant’s staff will return to the rebuilt restaurant. The in-your-face attitude of the waiters, a hallmark of the Villa Nova, will also return.

“Service here is New York style,” Crean said recently while walking through the unfinished interior of the restaurant. “Our waiters are belligerent and have tremendous personalities.”

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The average waiter at Villa Nova has been there for seven to 10 years, Crean said. When making reservations, some customers specifically ask for certain waiters.

And in response to a deluge of calls from longtime customers, Crean decided to maintain as much of the restaurant’s original looks as possible.

“There are too many memories I have there,” said Newport Beach resident Bob Allen, 44, who has been a regular patron for 20 years. “I proposed to my wife there. We really miss it being gone. We look forward to it being opened.”

The eatery’s Red Room is being completely duplicated, replete with the red-leather, U-shaped booths with gold buttons and striped wooden walls. The original paintings of late artist Stefano Falk, which were taken down by the Creans’ daughter, Kelly, the day after the fire, have been restored and will be placed in their approximate original locations. Its sign will be replaced next week.

The popular piano bar, where entertainers croon songs from yesteryear, will be in a sunken area designed to maximize the view of the harbor. The view has been enhanced in the seating areas as well. Each eating salon has been sloped so that everyone in the restaurant can look out the windows.

For the Villa Nova’s third incarnation, Crean employed local artist David Barton Johnson to paint the exterior to depict the facade of an 18th century Italian village, much like the area in Abruzzi, where Dale came, from and from where the original concept of Villa Nova was inspired.

“When I saw the restaurant burning from the bluffs, I knew it was going to be rebuilt, and I knew I would be the right person for the job,” Johnson said. Murals of villagers preparing food will greet patrons as they approach the restaurant’s lobby through a narrow cobblestone walkway. At the cashier’s desk, a view of the restaurant’s authentic wooden cupola is visible through a round opening in the ceiling. The former restaurant had a faux cupola painted on the ceiling.

The stairway leading upstairs to the banquet room was widened. The banquet room was redesigned so that it has a view of the bay and not of the offices.

And in the kitchen, “we now have one large refrigerator instead of several small ones,” said Crean, leaning against the shiny, enlarged cooking area. The fire was caused by an electrical problem in one of the old refrigerators.

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During busy times, the kitchen will now be able to serve 125 plates an hour compared with 75 plates an hour in its old configuration, Crean said. It will also be several degrees cooler.

“I can’t wait to get in there,” said chef Mergenthaler at the restaurant’s makeshift offices in a trailer near the construction.

Mergenthaler has become as much of an institution as the restaurant. He started as a busboy and moved his way up to chef in 1981. “I’ve seen everything here.”

Mergenthaler has prepared homemade pasta for the rich and famous, as well as the not-so-rich-and-famous, carrying on the restaurant’s tradition of serving the hearty peasant fare that original chef Wally Gentile made famous for 50 years. Gentile moved to Newport Beach with the restaurant without changing the menu, not even a salt shake. Mergenthaler took over the year Gentile died of leukemia.

“This isn’t healthy California cuisine,” Crean said proudly. “Our food is old style, big portions, high in cholesterol and high in fat. . . . If it works, why change it?”

If patrons do notice anything different about the new restaurant, Mergenthaler said, it probably will be the sprinkler heads in the ceiling, designed to quench any future fire.