Red Onion

Mountains of food are served at the new Red Onion in Belmont Park--mounds of tacos, hillocks of fajitas, cliffs of carnitas rimmed by plunging precipices of frijoles and rice. Situated at the upper end of the once-controversial Mission Beach development, this trendy import from El Norte (Red Onion is a long-established and wildly successful Los Angeles chain) lies smack between the ocean and the Big Dipper roller coaster.

The Red Onion restaurant chain has closed its 10 remaining locations, but the company's trustee said Tuesday that branches of the chain may soon reopen under individual owners. The remaining branches were shut down Monday, and 900 employees were laid off after a deal fell through to sell the chain's parent company, International Onion Inc. of West Covina, said Jeffrey Coyne, the bankruptcy trustee.

The Red Onion restaurant chain, hit repeatedly by charges of discrimination, has quietly agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the claims of two former college football players that they were initially denied entry and then later thrown out of a Santa Ana restaurant because they were black. Company officials said the settlement closes the book on the last lawsuit among several filed in 1986 when it was disclosed publicly that some restaurant managers had instructed employees to "clean up the crowd" when it became "too dark."

The Red Onion restaurant chain was ordered Thursday to pay $375,000 in penalties and fees for 28 alleged health and safety violations over the past year, from failing to keep vermin from the premises to blocking emergency exits. The civil settlement was the largest ever obtained by Orange County authorities against a restaurant for health and safety violations, said Bob Merryman, the county's director of environmental health.

When Maziar Mafi heard the news item from Tehran, he flinched. In the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, Wednesday was "Death to America" day, with thousands cheering the eighth anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy and the start of 444 days of captivity for 52 American hostages. "It's the saddest thing I can possibly hear," said Mafi, 26, a law clerk, during a break in the trial of his lawsuit claiming that the Red Onion restaurant had denied him entry because of his race.

More layers were peeled away last week in the controversy over charges that the Red Onion restaurant and disco chain was guilty of racial discrimination. The chain, with outlets in Santa Ana, Fullerton, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, was already under investigation by the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing and the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

Three owners of Red Onion restaurants that are not associated with the chain owned by Ronald Newman said Friday that they would change the names of their establishments to avoid association with the others. On Thursday, Newman's International Onion Inc. was ordered to pay $375,000 in penalties and fees for more than two dozen alleged health and fire code violations in its 13 restaurants in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

Although it opened only three months ago, the Red Onion disco in Riverside, like its Orange County counterpart, is the target of an investigation regarding racial discrimination. The Riverside City Council voted this week to look into complaints that a black Riverside policeman and several other black and Latino residents were barred from the restaurant and bar because of their race.

Facial hair can sometimes serve as a good indicator of what type of crowd a nightclub attracts. Young, terminally hip dudes tend to go for goatees and Vandykes, although their popularity of late has made them a must for the pop cultured masses. Those worldly types sporting a full beard are likely to sit in Anglophile bars ordering ale.

"It seems like anyone in the Valley, when they turn 21, that first night out, they come here." Jim Camuso was behind the bar at the Red Onion on a recent Wednesday night, turning calibrated quantities of vodka, lime juice and triple sec into something called a kamikaze and extolling the virtues of the Woodland Hills club that employs him. In the spirit of journalistic enterprise, I had asked someone who knew the West Valley better than I do where its biggest pickup place was.