Guess who’s back in town

It would be easy to be bitter about what happened this week. The fact is, it all happened so fast that most of us who may have had a negative opinion barely had a chance to react before the event.

But, what is done is done, and the only thing we can all do is try to make the best of it.

I am talking, of course, about the opening of the new Hooters restaurant in Costa Mesa on Monday.

I knew about the new Hooters from an announcement I read in the newspaper a few weeks ago. Since that time, there has been a makeshift Hooters sign on a tall pole in a parking lot along the San Diego Freeway (405).

My wife and I wondered about the location, at least the third try for Hooters in Newport-Mesa. The first one, we recalled, was on the peninsula where the Red Onion used to be.

Then it moved from a casual beach setting to the buttoned-down world of South Coast Metro near South Coast Plaza.

By the way, there really isn’t any official place called South Coast Metro, it’s just a way of combining areas of two cities to make it seem like one. Part of what is known as South Coast Metro is in Costa Mesa and part of it is in Santa Ana.

I always thought Costa Metro would be a better name, but that’s too much Spanglish. After all, “costa” is a Spanish word meaning “coast,” and metro is a shortened version of “metropolitan,” which is ice cream in a combination of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla and favored by my father.

(My father also liked spumoni, but I think that was because the rest of us hated it, and he never had to worry about his supply disappearing. We hated it because he told us “spumoni” was Italian for “spit” and no one ever bothered to look it up.)

So, Costa Metro is out because it means “coast ice cream.”

Is that really so bad? Is it worse than the name of our local professional baseball team, “The the Angels Angels of Anaheim?”

There are a lot of other strange names in the area too. What about Newport Beach? Where is this new port anyway? And even if there were a port, hasn’t it been around long enough so that it’s not really new any more?

For that matter, Costa Mesa is kind of an odd name, too. In Spanish, nouns come before adjectives. So where we would say, “white house,” in Spanish it is “casa blanca,” literally “house white.”

That makes the translation of Costa Mesa “coast table” which isn’t really correct. It should be “Mesa Costa.” Oh, where is June Casagrande when you need her?

Besides, there is no coast in Costa Mesa -- it’s landlocked.

I don’t know the Spanish word for landlocked but my guess is that combined with “mesa” it won’t roll right off the tongue.

Costa Mesa used to be “Goat Hill.” While not very flattering, it was at least an accurate description of the area’s residents.

Now, the area’s residents, at least some who work here, include women in tiny shorts and tiny shirts pushing chicken wings.

I was told many years ago that the chicken wings at Hooters were really good. So, one night before a televised football game, my brother-in-law and I ordered some wings to go from the old coastal ice cream location.

Because they don’t deliver, we had to go to the restaurant to pick them up.

Turns out we got there too soon and had to wait around and watch the servers. I mean, watch the game. Yeah, watch the game, that’s what I meant.

If Hooters is going to compete here in the chicken wing game, they’ll have to top Wingnuts on Harbor Boulevard, which does a delicious job.

The new Hooters location is not exactly driver-friendly. It’s a former Carl’s Jr. restaurant on South Coast Drive that was closed or sold because it was not generating enough revenue.

It probably didn’t make enough money because the location isn’t very good.

Right after the new Hooters location was announced, a much better opportunity opened up when Kaplan’s Deli went out of business. The old Kaplan’s on Harbor was right off the freeway.

Then, again, Kaplan’s went out of business because it wasn’t making enough money either, so what do I know.

The opening of Hooters has inspired me to think about getting into the restaurant business. My venture is going to be called Suckers.

At my restaurant, you pay before you eat and you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get or when it will be served.

So, Hooters opened this week. My suggestion is that if you are at all inclined to go eat there, you’d better do it quickly because they don’t seem to like to stay in one place very long.

And this time, they’re right near a freeway onramp on South Coast Drive just west of Harbor Boulevard so the getaway will be easy.

I wonder if they serve spumoni.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or at [email protected].

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