Post #739606 by PremEx on Wed, Mar 18, 2015 10:52 AM

Just came across this old thread. I grew up in Newport and have very vivid memories of us neighborhood kids playing army around the stone ruins and concrete footprint of this place on the bluff. We were always uncovering artifacts from the restaurant. Wish I had kept a few. There was still a lot of palm trees and other lush foliage around the grounds.

We just referred to the place as "the Castaways".

In later years the ruins became quite the spot for us high-schoolers to hang out late at night and get into all sorts of trouble up there. Such prime real estate overlooking the back bay and ocean, I was always amazed it sat vacant for so many decades. I seem to recall the land being owned by The Irvine Company.

My dad was one of the Newport Beach firefighters that fought the blaze the night it burnt down. When a local reporter asked him how it was going, he responded "We'll stop it at the ocean."

My folks were frequent customers of the restaurant, and used to talk about it fairly often...very much missing the place. They had several photos taken there that I remember seeing, but don't know what ever happened to them. Some time after my mom died he remarried and somewhere along the way those photos were lost.

Don't know if my dad ever patronized it way back when it was Mona's...a reputed house of ill-repute. But he was a single Marine stationed at El Toro...so it wouldn't surprise me.

:)

[ Edited by: PremEx 2015-03-18 11:02 ]