A New Look for ‘30s-Era Bikers Bar?

Cook’s Corner has cleaned up its act. Well, sort of.

The roadside tavern in the canyons of Orange County is still as rugged-looking as a World War II-era-mess-hall-turned-biker-bar should look.

There are beer stains and sawdust on the floor. Bullhorns, U.S. flags and Christmas lights pass for decoration, and weathered picnic tables serve as the outdoor dining facilities.

But some things have changed. Dishes have replaced paper plates, heat lamps keep outdoor diners warm, and a couple of months ago, the place got electronic cash registers.

“The old ones were really old,” said bartender Toni Peasley. “All they were missing were those cranks on the side.”

The modest changes are the work of Pete Katelaris and Costas Papacharalambous, friends and business partners who bought the watering hole a few months ago.

In deference to the bar’s past, Katelaris was careful in discussing its future.

“We are keeping it rustic, definitely keeping it rustic,” he said, like a doctor reassuring a patient that it won’t hurt.

The new owners, who live only a few miles from the restaurant, know that change is not always welcome around these canyons of the Santa Ana Mountains.

In the right light, Cook’s Corner seems to have been plopped down in a world of pastoral beauty. The nearby gorges and valleys are filled with brush. Sycamores and oaks dot the landscape. The roadside tavern once served cowboys and miners. Today, however, the customers are more likely to be tourists and suburban dwellers.

Cook’s Corner sits at the juncture of El Toro, Santiago Canyon and Live Oak Canyon roads, near O’Neill Regional Park. It is also at the crossroads of suburbia and the country.

Subdivisions have slowly crept up El Toro Road. This year, construction is set to start on the 266-home Saddleback Meadows project just down the road. The development was the subject of more than two decades of protests and lawsuits.

Another 162 homes, the Saddle Creek and Saddle Crest projects, have been proposed for 593 acres of foothills just north of Cook’s Corner. But legal challenges by conservation groups have tied up the plans for years.

A shopping plaza that was to have sprung up across the road from Cook’s Corner on Live Oak Canyon Road also was bogged down by lawsuits. The developer eventually prevailed, but the battle apparently sapped the company’s will to build. The land is being sold to a government agency that plans to preserve the 25 acres as open space.

Through it all, Cook’s Corner has remained virtually untouched. There have been persistent rumors that the place would be leveled for a strip mall, but instead it has become a symbol of the canyons’ bucolic past.

“It is a landmark place,” said Ray Chandos of the Rural Canyons Conservation Fund, which has fought many of the developments. “I certainly hope it stays the way it is.”

Cook’s Corner was named after Andrew Jackson Cook, who got about 190 acres of Aliso Canyon in a land trade in 1884. His son, Earl Jack “E.J.” Cook, opened a roadside hamburger joint in 1931 and soon after Prohibition ended in 1933, alcohol was added to the menu, and Cook’s Corner became a full-fledged bar. In 1946, Cook bought an old mess hall from the Santa Ana Army Air Base, hauled it up El Toro Road, and the tavern was born.

Motorcycle riders discovered the place in the 1970s. It was the perfect stopover from a day’s ride in the canyons, a place to grab a beer or two and maybe something to eat. It was a good place to pick a fight too, old-timers say.

“Oh, yeah! They used to throw guys out the window,” said Colby Griffin, 30, a former Marine who’s been coming to Cook’s Corner since he was old enough to drink. “You still see fights now and then, but not as much.”

Until the early 1980s, the place was a popular gathering spot for motorcycle gangs, including the Harley-Davidson-riding Mongols. The bikers were ranked according to their rides. Harley-Davidsons parked closest to the entrance. Japanese-made racers were banished to spots farther up the road.

If a Japanese motorcycle ventured anywhere near the U.S.-made hogs, it ran the risk of ending up in nearby Aliso Creek, Griffin and other longtime customers say.

Nowadays, the segregation of motorcycles is not as strictly enforced, and riders are more likely to be weekend warriors: businessmen, attorneys and accountants who live in the surrounding suburbs.

“They stop shaving on Friday morning so they can look tough on Sunday,” scoffed Griffin, himself a bicycle rider who belongs to a group called the Mountain Bikers Mafia.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Griffin was nursing a beer at the bar. The place still has the feel of being worlds away, Griffin said, even if it borders some of the newest subdivisions in Orange County.

Bartender Peasley, 28, said Cook’s Corner reminded her of Seeley Lake, the Montana town where she grew up, 45 minutes from Missoula. Besides, she said, “I couldn’t work in Newport Beach. I am not tall enough, and I am not blond.”

Sitting at a picnic table outside was John O’Neill, 54, a retired businessman. He owns a BMW motorcycle, but on this day he had driven his truck to Cook’s Corner for the “new and improved” pastrami sandwich.

“I like what Pete has done with the place,” O’Neill said. “This place could really be a destination spot, a good business.”

Katelaris smiled proudly. The 52-year-old Greek immigrant owns a chain of restaurants in the Inland Empire called Cowboy Burgers & BBQ. He and partner Papacharalambous, 38, bought Cook’s Corner and the 12 acres it sits on from Frank DeLuna for $2.6 million in September. DeLuna had bought the property from Novella Morales in 1988 for $1.3 million.

Both DeLuna and Morales spoke of developing the land, but neither ever did. Katelaris and Papacharalambous said they would like to turn Cook’s Corner into a “recreation center” with better food and ambience, but wouldn’t elaborate.

For now, they’ve hired a new cook and are focused on cleaning up the place. They’ve ordered 170 new bar stools, and the graffiti-scarred bathrooms are next on the list of improvements.

“We are keeping it the same,” said Katelaris, “but making it nicer.”