Dive Restaurant

What a dive. Dive Restaurant, an eatery owned partly by Disney Studios President Jeffrey Katzenberg, is scouting for a location in Orange County. The restaurant's first location opened May 11 in Century City. Dive features high-end submarine sandwiches that are finished in wood-burning ovens. The Century City restaurant entertains diners with a 210-square-foot rear projection screen and 32 additional monitors that are scattered throughout the restaurant.

What a dive. Dive Restaurant, an eatery owned partly by Disney Studios President Jeffrey Katzenberg, is scouting for a location in Orange County. The restaurant's first location opened May 11 in Century City. Dive features high-end submarine sandwiches that are finished in wood-burning ovens. The Century City restaurant entertains diners with a 210-square-foot rear projection screen and 32 additional monitors that are scattered throughout the restaurant.

Financing required for Paragon Restaurant Group's $25.4-million cash acquisition of the Irvine-based Rusty Pelican restaurant chain has been delayed because of uncertainties from the stock market's crash, the companies said Wednesday. Paragon was "very close to closing" negotiations on a financing package, but the agreement fell apart after the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points Oct. 19, Paragon Vice President William Seckinger said Thursday.

Financing required for Paragon Restaurant Group's $25.4-million cash acquisition of the Irvine-based Rusty Pelican restaurant chain has been delayed because of uncertainties from the stock market's crash, the companies said Wednesday. Paragon was "very close to closing" negotiations on a financing package, but the agreement fell apart after the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points Oct. 19, Paragon Vice President William Seckinger said Thursday.

Even with Westside real estate at a premium, it can't be an easy sell. Sure, the two-story restaurant is in a great location with lots of foot traffic--but what about those portholes? True to its name, Dive! restaurant in Century City has submerged, its doors closing in January. The submarine-themed restaurant, replete with steel hatches, periscopes and flashing red lights, "was under-performing," says David Hoemann, a marketing manager for the Chicago-based Levy Restaurant Corp.

Garden Variety Polo: The Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel has a new chef. Suki Katsuo Sugiura (who goes by the handle "Chef Suki") says he aims to use California ingredients (an herb garden is being planted outside the restaurant) with a touch of Asian flavor. He even has a theme for the lunch menu: Home Garden Oak Grill Cooking. Sugiura uses minimal amounts of butter and cream: "A lot of people really care what they eat, and we have to do honest cooking for the guests."

Storm clouds have been hovering over Only in L.A. ever since I said that comic Steve Allen was the first to give the punny weather forecast of "Muggy, followed by Toogy, Weggy and Thurgy." (Allen himself did not make the claim.) Lloyd Wenn of Oxnard notes that Ed McBain's novel, "Tricks," credits the line to '40s radio comic Henry Morgan. I presume this is not a trick of McBain's, because Marty Elkort and Kim Braithwaite concur.

Until September, Olga Diaz believed her days of earning barely enough money to feed her children finally might be over. The 31-year-old mother of two had successfully trained under the CalWORKS welfare-to-work program to be a restaurant cashier, a job she held for two years and that enabled her to buy food and rent a $850-a-month, two-bedroom apartment in Garden Grove. Then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast, which sent the sagging economy into a nose dive.

"Prepare to dive," a man barks over the public address system. The room darkens. Red lights flash. In the portholes, water bubbles furiously. Dozens of video monitors go black, except for cross hairs and the word DIVE . The 3-year-old girl at the next table looks about anxiously. Her mother, impervious, is trying to figure out what to do with the puff pastry stoppering the "bathysphere" bread bowl of beef stew. Calm as a stewardess in turbulence, the waitress drops off another Coke.

Describing themselves as Hollywood's version of the "dream team," entertainment executives Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen on Wednesday confirmed plans to launch a company from the ground up that will compete with the major studios. The unnamed company will be financed by the three partners in the early stages--although sources said other investors from the communications world may eventually sign on.