“Sadly, he admitted to me afterwards that he should have built the Polynesian style again because that’s what it was known for,” he added. So he was really enamored with that look and he thought that would be a great look for this,” Tallichet said. “At the time when this was rebuilt in 1980 he was into this mining theme, which was a kind of a barn wood-looking multilevel restaurant and we were building those around the country at the time. David Tallichet later rebuilt The Reef a few steps back from where it was originally located since the city had built a road by the water. This lasted until around 1974 when the original restaurant burned down to the grown. Tallichet, who was born six years after The Reef opened, remembers a busy festive place that was located right up to the water with a hula area, grass, a fire pit and tiki touches throughout. “So he figured it was a romantic place to open a restaurant.” “My mom tells the story that he brought her out here because this is where guys would take their dates to watch the submarine races,” he said with a smile, later explaining that watching submarine races was really a euphemism for getting romantic with dates. So his father found the spot for his restaurant, which at the time was the isolated end of the harbor, while on dates with his future wife, John Tallichet’s mom. “And that stuck with him, that if he was ever going to do a restaurant…it needed to have a theme to it,” he added. “What made it unique was that it was kind of this cowboy theme,” Tallichet said. The elder Tallichet got the idea to do his first themed restaurant after visiting a cowboy-themed place in Texas that despite being located in an isolated area was still packed with people. That’s where he fell in love with the city and along with a few other partners, including George Millay, the creator of Sea World, decided he wanted to open a themed restaurant. The late David Tallichet, who was born in 1922 and grew up in Dallas, was a WWII B-17 bomber pilot who served in Europe.Īfter returning from the war he got into the hotel business, which eventually landed him in Long Beach at the Lafayette Hotel. “It’s one of the few legacy restaurants left in Long Beach,” said Elizabeth Borsting, a Long Beach resident, founder of the Dine Out Long Beach, Restaurant Week 2.0 and frequent diner at The Reef. Now at more than triple the size of that original 7,000-square-foot restaurant his father opened in 1958, The Reef, which serves a high-end American food menu including seafood, steaks and pastas, celebrates its 60th anniversary with a private gala Nov. Maybe it’s lost being a themed restaurant and now it’s more of a destination,” 54-year-old Tallichet said as he sat inside one of The Reef’s several dining rooms near a large window that overlooks the bay. “The Reef is just a part of the community now. Located on the other side of Queensway Bay with an impressive view of downtown Long Beach across the water, The Reef was there before The Pike and its famed Cyclone Racer roller coaster were shuttered and before the Queen Mary was docked next door and the Hotel Maya opened on the other side.Īlthough it’s no longer that little Polynesian-themed restaurant Tallichet fondly remembers, The Reef still stands almost where it did when it opened 60 years ago and not only is it a well-known Long Beach staple, it’s also the first of an impressive family-run restaurant empire. Long Beach-born John Tallichet remembers the brightly colored drinks with umbrellas in them, the customers dressed in festive shirts and the bonfires and luaus he would see as a kid at his father’s small waterfront Polynesian-themed restaurant decades ago.
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