Restaurant Marin, an upscale diner where everything from layered cakes to poached eggs was cooked in a wood-burning oven, has closed.
The restaurant, a sister concept to the wildly popular Arc restaurant at South Coast Collection, is relocating early next year to Newport Beach.
Owners Noah and Marín Howarth Von Blöm, who are not shy about taking risks with their restaurants, said Restaurant Marin had a good following at breakfast and brunch. But when it came to dinner, the modern diner menu of steak frites, meatloaf and roasted chicken, didn’t attract as many customers.
“It became a breakfast spot,” Marín said in a phone interview.
And a breakfast-only crowd doesn’t pay the rent at SoCo, a modern lifestyle shopping center in Costa Mesa.
So the husband-and-wife culinary team decided to pivot.
They closed the elegant diner, next door to Arc, on Monday, Nov. 13 and began remodeling it. It will become Arc Wood-Fired Pizza.
Marin, who designs all of their restaurants, said she hopes to open early next week. She is repurposing the diner’s blue booths to create a long banquette in the small dining room. This will accommodate large parties, a feature lacking at Arc.
A wall has been knocked out to connect the pizza restaurant with Arc. When it opens, it will have about 40 seats, about 10 more than Restaurant Marin.
While the menu is not set, Chef Noah plans to serve about 8 to 10 hand-tossed pizzas, cocktails and salads. Though the two restaurants are connected, Marin said the experience at each restaurant will be different. But, if someone sits at the pizza joint and wants to order Arc’s famed wedge salad, she won’t deny them.
As for Restaurant Marin, fans of the oversized breakfast sandwich, layered cakes and pies will find a tweaked version of the concept at Arc Butcher & Baker in Newport Beach.
The couple has been planning to open a butcher shop and bakery at 417 30th St. for months. The 2,200-square-foot shop will have a “massive wood-burning oven” for baking loaves of brioche, cakes, cookies, pies and pastries, Marin said.
The other part of the space is a butcher counter, where customers can buy the same hand-butchered meats found at Arc.
“You can literally get Arc at home,” Marin said.
When it was clear that Restaurant Marin wasn’t working at SoCo, the Von Blöms decided they could relocate Restaurant Marin to Butcher & Baker. Initially, it was going to have a retail section. That’s been scrapped to make room for breakfast seating. Diners will order from a counter making it a more casual and approachable all-day breakfast spot, she said.
The 30-seat restaurant, butcher and bakery also will sell fried chicken sandwiches from a walk-up ordering window at the back of the shop.
Marin said she and Noah hope to open Butcher & Bakery by early 2018.
“It’s in the heart of the peninsula. For us, we’re really excited about the possibilities down there,” Marin said.
Restaurant Marin has been a rough experiment for the dynamic culinary couple since it opened in spring 2016.
When they announced plans for the diner, they shocked the local restaurant community with a European-style service, which eliminated tipping and raised menu prices to offset higher wages paid to employees. They also extended the experiment to Arc.
The Von Blöms felt they were taking the bull by the horns by raising wages to $15 an hour – well ahead of the 2022 state mandate. But the experiment failed. Diners balked at the menu’s sticker shock.
Two months later, the restaurants reverted to the lower prices and tipped service.
The Von Bloms also own The Guild Club, a members-only restaurant at SoCo.
