Many in O.C. Will Ring In 2000 in Style

Like a fizzing bottle of bubbly, Orange County is getting ready to pop the cork on New Year’s Eve.

There will be modest at-home and close-to-home observances, but thousands are seizing the millennium moment to celebrate in style. Scores of elaborate parties are planned--from themed private affairs to pricey galas in gilded ballrooms.

At one private club, along with champagne and caviar, there will be a duplication of a feast prepared in Europe at the turn of the last century. At a charity event at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, there will be live camels, confetti cannons and a tented floor spread with Oriental rugs.

In Dana Point--for $2,000 a night (double occupancy, two-day minimum stay)--guests at the Ritz-Carlton get an ocean view and the chance to attend a masquerade ball and dine on truffle-wrapped foie gras and white chocolate souffle.

Over the decades, Orange County has seen its share of singular grand celebrations--the openings of Disneyland, the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace and the Orange County Performing Arts Center among them. But there’s apparently nothing like a sentimental closing of an era to get the party juices flowing on all fronts.

And party-goers are doing some serious opening of their wallets to take it all in.

Working behind the scenes to make it all happen are a cadre of chefs, waiters, caterers, concierges, limo drivers, parking attendants, entertainers--even executives.

Mehdi Eftekari, general manager at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, is among those who will pull double duty. He will be overseeing hotel operations--including the Pavilion dining room, where prices per couple range from $190 for the twilight seating to $500 for a bash that lasts until the wee hours.

He’ll also be attending a private hotel party for 100 friends. At $2,000 per couple, the sleepover will showcase martini and caviar bars, orchids in vases hewn from ice and a dining room fit for a sheik: a cabana done up with sparkling chandeliers and swags of white organza. The next day, guests will be served mimosas at the hotel Jacuzzi and an alfresco Rose Bowl brunch.

*

If it’s a charity benefit you’re after, there is the Moroccan Millennium Celebration being staged by the Orangewood PALS under a tent at Fashion Island. At $350 ticket, the event for 1,000 will feature cabanas, a sunken dance floor, photo ops with camels and confetti sprayed from 16 cannons.

“This isn’t going to be your typical green Astro-Turf-and-plastic-chair kind of party,” says event designer Jeffrey Best.

Arts lovers can kick up their heels at the Laguna Art Museum’s $150-per-person “Once Upon a Millennium” benefit featuring a gourmet supper, dancing and fireworks.

Not to be outdone by professional party planners, Orange County residents such as Marie and Stephen Tygh of Laguna Beach are cooking up their own memorable bash.

They will welcome 100 friends into a tent erected on their waterfront property. Ten dining tables will be set up--each themed to reflect a century of the past millennium. The dress code? “We’re asking friends to dress as their favorite century,” says Marie Tygh, who will sport an ornate gown in the style of the Renaissance.

Orange County Performing Arts Center board member Tom Tucker will welcome about 40 guests to his Irvine Cove home for a sit-down dinner catered by Morton’s of Chicago. Dinner entertainment will include a trio playing classical selections. After dessert, guests will be invited to dance to a seven-piece band.

*

Restaurants are also jumping on the bandwagon, with posh bistros such as the Ritz in Newport Beach staging a private dinner at $300 per ticket for about 350 people. Guests--members of the Ritz Brothers, a nonprofit organization founded by Ritz owner Hans Prager--will dine on caviar, pheasant consomme, chateaubriand and toss down Dom Perignon when the clock strikes 12.

Diva restaurant in Costa Mesa will be transformed into Club Fame. Tickets, at $100 each, will include a buffet dinner and disco dancing until 2 a.m. “We’re basing our theme on the musical ‘Fame’ that’s showing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center over the holidays,” says owner / chef John Sharpe.

Also in Costa Mesa: Pinot Provence at the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel will feature a $75-per-person dinner (with a choice of Long Island duck or prime rib) at 5:30 p.m., and, beginning at 9 p.m., a $175 supper of duck or Colorado rack of lamb.

Savvy Disneyland buffs have booked rooms at the Disneyland Hotel to round out their celebrations. “We’ve been sold out for months,” says a hotel employee.

Members of Club 33--a private sanctum in the Magic Kingdom--will enjoy a champagne supper at $350 per person.

At midnight, the crowds at Disneyland will catch a fireworks display “more exciting than any in park history,” says a spokeswoman.

Members and guests of the Pacific Club in Newport Beach are planning to party family-style. Children ages 4-11 will participate in activities that include face-painting and arts and crafts, says catering director Enrique Martinez. Those 12 and older will celebrate in a separate room that has been set up with arcade games, air hockey and a karaoke machine. In yet another area, adults will enjoy a gourmet dinner and dancing to the Blue Machine. Cost for adults is $350; children, $25.

A faithful replica of the dinner whipped up by famed chef Auguste Escoffier on New Year’s Eve in 1900 at the Carlton Hotel in London will be featured at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. Included on the menu, at $350 per person: Salade Baucaire made with celery, smoked duck and apples; filet of sole with oysters; tournedos of beef; and charlotte russe.

The celebration also will feature a late-night supper, says club manager Henry Schielein. “With all that dancing, people are going to get hungry again.”

*

Jim and Catherine Emmi of Newport Beach, mainstays on the social circuit, wouldn’t think of missing an Orange County milestone.

Except this one.

Instead of partying with locals on New Year’s Eve, the newlyweds will take a $42,000-per-person tour of the South Seas by private jet where they will toast the new millennium, not once, but twice. The trip came their way via a raffle drawing to benefit the Pacific Symphony.

“I think it’s going to be a fabulous honeymoon--we’ve only been married four months,” said Jim Emmi. “We’ll celebrate first in Auckland, New Zealand. And then, we’ll cross the international dateline and celebrate in Moorea, Tahiti.”