‘The end of an era’

Tariq Malik

With its tall roadside sign touting happy hamburgers and great steaks

too, The Grinder oceanfront restaurant was a social landmark for many

Surf City residents.

And although the place is now empty, its antique decorations shipped

off to an auction house, owner Bert Blender hopes it could be done again.

“It was an emotional day to say the least,” said Blender, a

61-year-old Newport Beach resident, of the diner closing last week after

26 years of business. “But if there’s a chance to start up here, anywhere

in this city, I’ll take it.”

The dining business is in his blood. For the last 100 years, his

family has run restaurants and inns. One location, the Gusthof Adler Inn,

still stands in his Southern Germany birthplace of Sigmarigen.

But The Grinder, he added, has a date with a bulldozer.

Patrons bid farewell to the eatery Sept. 26, when Blender closed it

after losing a monthly lease with his landlord, Capital Pacific Holdings.

The land development company owns The Grinder property, as well as the 30

empty adjoining acres between 1st Street and Huntington Street, just east

of Pacific Coast Highway.

The next day, stragglers hearing of the closure came to try to find

one last omelet, or at least say goodbye.

“It feels like the end of an era,” said Michael Fagundes, 25, who

frequented the diner for breakfast almost daily. “I told my parents that

I was going to have my children here.”

The Grinder, added his friend Tarek Khatib, was the last untouched

piece of Huntington Beach, oblivious to the pressures of redevelopment

and real estate.

Blender started The Grinder in Huntington Beach in 1974, part of a

chain of restaurants he and his family started in Los Angeles and Orange

counties in 1968. When it closed, it was the last in the county. But the

restaurateur has done his best to relocate some of the diner’s 30 or so

longtime employees.

“We were important to so many people here,” Blender said. “But we are

in consideration for a restaurant spot when this new development is

complete, whenever that will be, though we obviously won’t have this

location. I want to open up again in this city because of the people.”

Capital Pacific officials say designs for The Grinder property and

surrounding vacant lot are in the infant stage.

“We’re probably still a little more than two years out from anything

going up on that property,” said Ethen Thatcher, a project spokesman for

Capital Pacific. “But when it’s complete, it will be an urban center with

a mixed-use of retail, dining and residential property.”

The Grinder is one of many restaurants vying for space in the new

development, but it is there, he added.

However, the antique decorations that once adorned The Grinder’s

walls, including a pair of chandeliers made from wooden oxen yokes that

date back to the early 1900s, will be auctioned Oct. 16 at the Embassy

Suites Hotel in Anaheim.

And some residents are eager to take a piece home.

“My husband courted me there back when it was still the Snack Shop,”

said resident Laurel Howard, 63, who moved to the city about the time The

Grinder opened. “My son, Jim, cut his teeth in that restaurant, and I

know he’d want something to remember it by. The family would gather

around the fireplace there, and it was a beautiful feeling . . . like

home.”