Who was it that said "The best thing about having wealthy people around is that the quality of food is top notch." Was that F Scott Fitzgerald? No, he said, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” FSG lived in the Colony for a while, you know, from 1927 - 1928 when he came to Hollywood to make money to support his daughter and Zelda. “Beloved Infidel”is a book about his time in Malibu written by his girlfriend at the time - Sheilah Graham.

FSG struggled in Hollywood and one thing that really bugged him is people thought he had died. When he shook hands with people and said his name, there was sometimes an embarrassing hesitation.

There was also a “Beloved Infidel” starring Gregory Peck, which wasn’t very good. The actor's son came by the Malibu Newsstand from time to time and said his father regretted that movie. He wasn’t very good in it, but it made Malibu look good.

Chat GPT said: “Gregory Peck never said he regretted making “Beloved Infidel,” but he later acknowledged that he may have been miscast and that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a difficult figure to capture on screen. Peck’s natural steadiness and moral authority worked against portraying Fitzgerald’s nervous brilliance and volatility, a mismatch he recognized without ever disowning the film.”

So if not FSG, who was it that drew a parallel between wealthy people and food quality? Oh, that was me. But it’s true. In places I’ve been where the wealthy frolic: Malibu, Maui, Tiburon, Carmel, Saratoga, carpaccio and grappa in Val d’Aosta, the five-star seafood stands of Montauk, the epic churrascarias of Rio de Janeiro - food quality tends to be high, which is nice for you and me. 

That is also true of Malibu and while this review is about the new Mexican joint Prima Cantina which has risen from the almost ashes of Tramonto (see below) this story started with me “beefiending” for the steak frites at Aviator Nation, a place that for some reason surprises me with the quality of the food there - from the breakfast buffet at the Composer’s Breakfast Club to the heaping helping of steak frites I was treated to a couple weeks ago by the Slye Family - owners of the Jetty Wave gineria in Princetown Harbor, near Mavericks - who come to Malibu to work with….. Classified.

Anyway, on Thursday I was beefiending all day for those steak frites so arranged to meet with Darren Graves - which rhymes with brave - as he is engaged in a Quixotic quest to rebuild the family property in the Forbidden Zone - on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway, down east a bit from the Burn Out Lot Formerly Known as Moonshadows, on a piece of property subject to an interconnecting death laser variety of new regulations about wave uprush, seawalls, caissons, Advanced Onsite Wastewater System and about a dozen other clothes-rending, time-consuming, money-burning rules and regulations.

CHEZ GRAVES BEFORE AND AFTER

The house to the east of the vacant lot was owned by Edwin Santos, the lottery billionaire.

Darren is determined to rebuild come hellish firestorms or high water from sea level rise and I’m thinking of using Darren as an ongoing canary in the coalmine/crash test dummy/human case study for what one person has to go through to rebuild in Malibu after

An area that a lot of people would like to be declared Eminent Domain, and have the state pay billions to buy it all up and preserve that scenic beauty exposed when hundreds of houses were reduced to smoke and ash and concrete and steel.

So I got to Aviator Nation early and ignored my beefiending and didn’t order those steak frites, although a very drunk dude next to me offered to share his plate of hummus, celery, carrots and bread which was - like seemingly everything from the kitchen there - very good. Darren showed up around 7:15 and I tried to order the steak frites but was told the kitchen closed at 7:00.

What? Seven o’clock? Oh yeah, this is Malibu. So we - as Australians say - spat the dunny. I uttered a couple of oaths which came directly from unsatisfied beefiending and we decided to try this new Mexican place which we at first thought was at the old Court House, but then we figured out it was where Tramonto’s used to be for many years.

This location, location, location is right across the street from where the Burn Out Lot Formerly Known as the Octopus House was, and the other two lots, and then the still-standing, seemingly unscorched 200,000 square foot or whatever big house which belongs to the Ellison Dynasty. 

TRAMONTO AND THE OCTOPUS HOUSE IN 2013 AND THEN IN 2025

A lot of the businesses along Pacific Coast Highway suffer from being placed along a public NASCAR track and scant parking, so getting in and out can be sketchy. But we both made it into the parking lot and entered Prima Cantina Malibu.

I don’t know that I had ever been to Tramonto’s even though for several years I lived close by - two places down east from the Verizon brick building - on the top floor of a place belonging to Janet Macpherson. So I don’t know what was here before, but Prima’s made an impression right away. With apologies for sounding Hemingwayesque, it was clean and well-lighted, shiny as a new penny and most importantly, to the left of the entrance there was a big screen TV which gave me hope there was a new place to watch the Five Time World Champion San Francisco Football 49ers continue their walking-wounded, brave advance to the big game - which will be held on their home turf.

Even after huit heures the kitchen was still open for business, and cousin, business was booming.

FACES AND FACETS OF JOHN “VERIZON” JOHN - THE ANEJONSER

Went to the bar and there was Verizon John - known tequilista/agavist/anejoneser. Verizon John has been in, around and under every house in Malibu and knows everyone. He was talking to a surfer-looking dude and a woman who appeared to be the surfer dude’s wahine and it turns out that surfer was none other than Russell Short - a well known Silver Strand/Hollywood by the Sea local who was all over the surf magazines in the 1970s.

Blonde hair, beaver tail, bungee cord legrope - you know the type. The Soaring Seventies. And the wahine by his side was Audrey, and they both were nice as could be.

So that was kind of cool and we sighed about the 1970s, in a time before Surfline, when surf trunks didn’t cost $150 but wetsuits did, a time when it was just so cool to be a surfer. We talked about the North Shore of Oahu, when it didn’t take an hour to drive from Haleiwa to Sunset, when the North Shore was a quiet place with Kammies Market and Arecia’s and Cafe Haleiwa, which is owned by Duncan Campbell - the co-inventor of the Bonzer and an Oxnard original. Russell had stories about working out on Santa Rosa Island - which can’t be shared here - and others about the localism at Oxnard/Hollywood by the Sea back in the bad old days. The statute of limitations has expired on all that, but still it’s all hush hush and on the QT.
Short has been in construction for many years in California and Utah, and he and Darren found common ground discussing with some vengeance and furious anger the joys of doing projects in Malibu.

They spoke of plan checks and secants and pile drivers and drilling rigs and who are the people who have actually started building a house along PCH near Station 70 and there were uttered oaths about the whole process. 

Darren ordered three tacos - shrimp, chicken and lobster - but that got mixed up and they brought five, and I should have taken the other two. Still beefiending I ordered the surf and turf burrito (feat. shrimp and beef) but what came out looked like a sushi roll the way it was cut into sections. 

Burrushi? Sushiritto? Whatever - it looked cool and tasted good. 

JuAnejo wolfed down some tacos too and washed them with some Anejo. He gave it all the thumbs up using the hand he wasn’t eating and drinking with.
So what started out with a bit of a letdown turned out to be a good night with spirited talk about the usual Malibu suspects: Surfing, construction, real estate, the weather, money, etc.

Pulled carefully out onto PCH and went to sleep serenaded by hooting owls, yipping coyotes, barking sea lions, a rising partial moon, shooting stars and that sublime Malibu winter air and atmosphere: If you could bottle it and sell it….

On Friday night there was a scheduled rocket launch of a SpaceX/Starlink Dragon out of Vandenberg. Those launches as seen from the wild west end of Malibu Road are out of this world - so to speak - so I tried to rally a group of people to watch. The window for the launch began at 8:18 so I went back to Prima Cantina to get some food para llevar. Walked in and there was Tracy Park and Kim Devane talking story. Devane  lost two places that I know of in the Palisades Fire - the building that used to house Cliff Diver, and the place west of that, but not the Malibu Courthouse Building, which was built maybe a hundred years ago and would have deepened the tragedy and loss of it all.

I told Kim I was writing a review about Prima Cantina for Malibu Times and it turns out she owns the property and she had stories - some off the record, some on the record - about how Prima Cantina came to be.

What she did say on the record was a sincere thank you to the Ellison Family, whose private fire-fighters saved the 350,000 square foot, 234 bedroom/123 bathroom palace across the street, but also saved her building from being reduced to smoke and ash. “I don’t know Larry and David Ellison but all credit to them for saving this place,” Kim Devane said. “They had their private firefighters and they saved this building. I can’t thank them enough.”

The owners Nardo and Renee Silvestri came by to say hello and we talked a bit. There was a lot to talk about and learn about there at the bar but the clock was ticking on that launch window so I got out of there around 7:45 with a heaping, warm bowl of nachos with avocado and salsa on the side. I swear I obeyed all traffic laws on the Public NASCAR Track Known as Pacific Coast Highway and the Drag Strip Known as Malibu Road. Made it to the west end of Malibu Road on a perfect winter night, cracked the nachos and waited for the show.

The drama of those SpaceX/Starlink rocket launches is pretty cool. They occasionally get delayed or scrubbed so you wait expectantly hoping to see something - maybe yes, maybe no. And then all of a sudden there is a bright red glob appearing from behind the hills moving like a bat out of hell - all that heat and money and satellite connectivity roaring away from this rowdy earth and defying gravity off into the cold, lonely vacuum of space - to bring high speed indefatigable internet to every village from Alaska to Zanzibar.

The launches are cooler when they go off close to sunset, because you get the twilight effect when the stages fire and it looks like a giant jellyfish streaking across the sky. Way cool, almost makes a brother wish he still took drugs.

Say what you will about Musk politically - even Chat GPT will rag on Musk unprompted, which is edging into HAL 9000 territory - but he makes a good product and puts on a show that is - literally - out of this world.

So I sat there soaking up that cool salt air, listening to the waves crash and enjoying that real country/coastal dark by the sea. Nothing happened for about 10 minutes into the window and I thought it might have been scrubbed, so I cheated and went to the X account for SpaceX and there was the rocket in the gantry, getting fueled up like Verizon John getting on the outside of a bottle of Anejo. 

The countdown went off and then the rocket blasted off at 20:39 - as seen on  the Internet. And then there it was, that lovely red blob going like a… rocket, at 2000+ MPH already 40 miles into the upper atmosphere. The booster came off but instead of flashing south to land halfway down Baja on a 300-foot long landing platform, it fell back north to Vandenberg and I saw a bright fiery blast of it before it disappeared behind the Santa Monica Mountains.

Didn’t hear the sonic boom but you know it spooked a lot of sheep and cattle from Cojo  to Los Alamos. California rules, dude. Especially in the winter.

Cool beans. As in, my nachos were almost cold by then, but memorable. Comfort food for a coolish night.

And now it’s Saturday and the Five Time World Champion San Francisco Football 49ers are looking to grill the Seahawks in their noisy house of pain. Because I’m banned from the place I used to watch football and the other place - Sparky’s Sports Bar - seems to be closed forever, I am headed to Prima Cantina to sit before that big screen at Happy Hour and hoot and holler - and fix this story.

Ho boy, the game started with the Seahawks returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown - that Shaheed dude is a menace - and then the Hawks almost scored again on the very first play by the 49ers - but it was called back as an incomplete forward pass.

A disastrous beginning and it all went downhill from there. A massacre. The Seahawks overpowered and overwhelmed the 49ers who looked like the JV team.

As that debacle was happening, Verizon John came in and spent the evening trading insults with the bartender, Raymundo - you can call me Rei - who has worked at many places in Malibu over the years and knows as many people at Verizon John.
John liked the warmth of the tortilla chips when they arrived -kind of like Harvey Keitel giving the thumbs up to Quentin Tarantino’s coffee in Pulp Fiction. After assaying the tequila selection, John got the taco combo and gave them the thumbs up. 

Others at the bar kept mentioning the surf and turf burrito which I recommended - Burrushi or Surrito.

I got the caesar salad wrap and it erased the bitter taste of watching the Five Time World Champion San Francisco Football 49ers get overwhelmed and a right proper ass whupping by a fired-up Seahawks team that hopefully will win the whole shebang, and lessen the pain a bit.

I was drinking water straight on the rocks all night but Rei flowed me a margarita and kept the chips and dip coming.. 

I was so verklempt by the football game I forgot to tip Rei, so I might have to go back on a Sunday night, watch some more football, sit at the bar and talk story.

Malibu has a new hang out. It is clean and well lighted and friendly with atmosphere as warm as the tortilla chips.