Restaurant Filled a Need for Dentist

Walter Babcock worked as a dentist for more than 30 years. His real passion, however, was not teeth but taste buds.

Babcock realized his dream in 1970, buying the building next to his dentist office and turning it into a restaurant.

“I was thinking too much about the restaurant when I should be thinking about teeth,” said the 67-year-old Babcock, who created Walt’s Wharf, a busy and profitable restaurant attracting Seal Beach residents as well as tourists.

In the beginning, Babcock would catch the fish from his boat and harvest the lettuce on his own grounds. At the restaurant, wine was served in plastic cups, food on paper plates.

Despite this spartan setup, people kept coming. These days, almost 400 dinner guests eat at the restaurant on a weekend night.

“We knew nothing about restaurants, and in the beginning, we were successful despite ourselves,” Babcock said. “It started as a mom-and-pop operation and it just kept growing.”

The restaurant is still family operated and it’s not just the Babcock family.

In the small kitchen, the six Pineda cousins cook and grill swordfish, ahi tuna and Chilean sea bass.

“Watching the kitchen [staff] is like watching a ballerina,” said executive chef Mark Tydell, who worked at Spago in Los Angeles before coming to Walt’s Wharf five years ago.

“We’re not snooty,” Tydell said. “We have people who come in wearing suits and they sit next to the guy in shorts and a tank top.”

Diners can’t make table reservations, but many are willing to wait for an hour or more to eat at the fish restaurant, where even Babcock waits in line for a table.

Inside the restaurant, dark exposed wooden beams frame two rooms occupied by dozens of green-clothed tables.

A mural on the back wall depicts a harbor, a man with two dogs on a pier and several fishing boats. Each element refers to a family member or a family event.

One boat in the mural is named after Babcock’s mother-in-law, known as Momadelle. The 86-year-old helps at the restaurant by arranging its flower decorations every week.

In the mural, there are also several references to Babcock’s son Bryan, who runs the 110-acre family vineyard near Lompoc.

Babcock bought the property 20 years ago and decided it was more romantic to own a vineyard than being a lima bean grower, so the family planted grapes in the place of beanstalks.

Bryan Babcock produces 10 wines for the restaurant, but it’s not just his wines that make the Wharf intoxicating.

“There have been some very romantic interlopings here,” Babcock said.

“It’s amazing how many marriage proposals take place here. Just last week I came into the restaurant and there was a huge bouquet of roses on one of the tables. This is where the couple met and now he was proposing.”

Louise Roug can be reached at (714) 966-5977