Taste of Newport satisfies

NEWPORT BEACH — Susan Mehta got a pretty good deal for $22 Friday: admission to the city’s top culinary event of the year and a chance to relive the 1980s.

The Mission Viejo resident has attended the Taste of Newport at Fashion Island for nearly a decade, sampling dishes from restaurants across town. She also has a solid set of Huey Lewis and the News in her record collection at home.

On Friday, she got to enjoy both, as the authors of “Hip to Be Square,” “The Power of Love” and other megahits prepared to headline the 19th annual festival’s opening night.

“I’m so excited,” said Mehta, who hung out in Fashion Island for two hours before the gates opened. “I was a big fan back in the ’80s, so I have a lot of their music.”

From food and drink to rock ’n’ roll, there was something to satisfy everyone’s palette along Newport Center Drive. Nearly three dozen restaurants from the Newport Beach area set up booths and offered samples to customers, who paid with electronic cards that they purchased up front.

The restaurants themselves took 70% of the proceeds, with the remainder going to the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce and a number of charities.

Former Mayor Dennis O’Neil, who has attended the Taste of Newport every year since its inception, was among the first ones through the gate on Friday. Over the last two decades, he said, he had enjoyed watching the festival expand.

“It’s gotten bigger and better and more expensive,” he said. “It’s just a real happening.”

Some of the restaurants represented — including Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream and Treatery — were new faces, but most had been around for much longer.

Ali Rabbani, the owner of the Marrakesh Restaurant in Costa Mesa, said he had set up a booth every year and always counted on a packed crowd.

“It gets so busy you can’t walk,” he said. “People get off work, and then they come here and party till 11 o’clock.”

Patricia Phillips, the owner of the Tapas Restaurant in Newport Beach, returned for the seventh year Friday. Since Orange County had recently gone through a heat wave, she offered a new dish: gazpacho, or cold tomato soup.

“Just because it’s so warm out and gazpacho is a cold soup, we thought we’d try something new,” she said. “Also, we get a lot of people who are vegetarian.”