Bob Burns Is Out at Tony Center

Bob Burns Restaurant, where many a customer has sipped martinis near the piano bar before heading into the dimly lit dining room for dinner, will close following a New Year’s Eve celebration after 31 years at Fashion Island.

The restaurant, an original tenant at the tony Newport Beach shopping center, is closing because Fashion Island has opted to feature retail stores at the location when the restaurant’s lease expires.

Beth Burns, who helps run the family business, said Thursday that customers have come in teary-eyed after learning that the restaurant--which is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week--will close.

“Many people are really quite upset and can’t believe we’re going to be gone after all these years,” Burns said. “We’re just some people’s second home and they’ve been coming here since the day we opened. . . . We know exactly where they like to sit and what they like to order.”

If the loss of the restaurant--with its Scottish decor, massive entry fireplace and sunken dining room rimmed with black leather booths--is a blow to some locals, it’s strictly business for Fashion Island, which now boasts trendier eateries, such as Wolfgang Puck and P.F. Chang’s.

“It’s part of a merchandising strategy of Fashion Island,” said Paul Kranhold, a spokesman for the Irvine Co., which owns the center. “It’s basically an effort to sort of create a new mix of retail merchandisers in Fashion Island that better complement one another.”

Kranhold could not say who the new tenants might be, except that there will not be a restaurant.

There are two other Bob Burns Restaurants, one on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica and another in the Warner Center in Woodland Hills.

When Bob and Elizabeth Burns opened the Newport Beach business in 1967, it was Fashion Island’s only restaurant. When Bob Burns died in 1971, his wife took a condensed course in business management at Harvard and continued operating the businesses, which then included the Newport Beach and Santa Monica restaurants, and another in North Hollywood that has since closed, said daughter Beth Burns.

The family is hoping to relocate in Orange County, she said.