CORONA DEL MAR TODAY

If holiday entertaining is stressing you out (and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet) — don’t fret. Just call Five Crowns and have Chef Dennis Brask will make prime rib with all the sides for you and your guests. You can even pick up the restaurant’s hot-fudge sauce to make gourmet sundaes at home.

For $350, you can get a full prime rib rack, which weighs 17 pounds and serves 12 to 15 people. The meal includes au jus, whipped horseradish, mashed potatoes, gravy and creamed corn or spinach. A half order that serves six to eight people costs $195 including the sides.

Orders must be placed directly with Chef Brask 48 hours in advance and then can be picked up at the restaurant, including on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. You can order the meat raw or have Brask cook to order; and you can get just the prime rib with no sides as well.

Sourdough breads are also available for $6 per loaf; and English trifle serving 12 to 14 people can be ordered for $50 as well as other cakes. To place orders, call (949) 760-0555.

Five Crowns also is selling the hot-fudge sauce used to make its signature sundaes. The sauce, created by Clarence Clifton Brown, sells for $7.50 for a 10-ounce jar. According to a Five Crown spokeswoman, the C.C. Brown company originated in 1906 in California and is considered to have created the country’s first hot-fudge sundae, with many celebrity fans.

Five Crowns is located at 3801 East Coast Highway.

Photo courtesy of Five Crowns.

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When the City Council decided unanimously not to let The Port Restaurant and Bar stay open later on weekends, owner Ali Zadeh said he was not surprised.

“It is what it is,” he said in an interview today. “I’m disappointed, but I’m a reasonable kind of person.”

The City Council on Tuesday night held a public hearing on Zadeh’s appeal of a planning commission decision not to let him have live music, close at 1 a.m. or have weekend lunches. In the end, they decided to keep closing time at midnight, allow weekend lunches and take a closer look at allowing limited live music.

Several neighbors testified that the restaurant at 440 Heliotrope Avenue drew noisy patrons who created parking problems and worse. One woman brought photographs of vomit on the street, which she showed to the council.

But others rallied around Zadeh and The Port. Bartender Lindsay Watkins told the council members that she was going through terrible times, having lost her job and focus, when Zadeh hired her.

“I was going to lose my destiny,” she said. “But Ali opened up his arms. If it wasn’t for Port, I don’t know where I’d be.”

Zadeh said that listening to his supporters bolstered his mood in spite of not gaining the extra hours on weekends. He also said he has faith in the future of his restaurant.

“I look at it as a long-term project,” he said. “The place is popular. That means a lot.”

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A local charity has donated the seed money for a UCLA facility that will focus on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common and most deadly form of the disease.

Debra Miller, president and founder of CureDuchenne, presented a $200,000 check to UCLA earlier this week. The facility will include a clinic and research facility.

“Finally, 600 boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy will have a clinic in Southern California where they can receive optimum care and where leading edge research will take place which to help these boys have a future,” Miller said today.

The money for the donation came from last month’s Dealing for Duchenne poker tournament, which raised $450,000. Read our coverage of the event here.

Debra and Paul Miller of Corona del Mar founded CureDuchenne in 2003, a year after learning that their only son, now 12, has the disease. The disease has no cure, and most children with it will die before they leave their teens. The Millers decided that prognosis was unacceptable; they have raised more than $5 million, and they have funded projects that have made it to three active clinical trials.

Late this summer, several CureDuchenne supporters climbed Mount Rainier to raise money. Read our stories about that climb, and the organization, here and here.

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Today is Veterans Day, so expect closures including schools, Newport Beach City Hall, banks and the post office.

Street sweeping in Newport Beach will not take place today, but trash collection schedules will not change.

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After a 90-minute public hearing tonight, the Newport Beach City Council voted unanimously not to let the Port Restaurant extend its weekend closing time to 1 a.m. But the council did decide to let the restaurant add weekend lunch hours, and they are likely to decide down the road to allow the Heliotrope Avenue establishment to have some form of live entertainment.

Neighbors, employees, patrons and others testified at the hearing, mostly in support of owner Ali Zadeh’s attempts to extend his hours and add music.

But City Councilwoman Nancy Gardner, who represents Corona del Mar, said that as much as she admires Zadeh, a change to the permit for him will stay with the property.

“It will not necessarily be Ali running the place eventually,” she said. She also said that 1 a.m. was too late to close a restaurant in a residential area.

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In what has become a patriotic tradition, Harbor View Elementary School held its annual Veterans Day assembly this morning. Students invited family members, neighbors and friends to visit the school, where the students sang patriotic songs and honored those who have served in the military.

“I liked watching all the veterans say where they served,” said sixth-grader Roman Hays. “It is really nice how so many veterans came and shared their story.”

Sixth-grader Nikhil Yerasi said it was important to show respect to veterans. “I also enjoyed the singing, and hearing the veterans’ stories,” he said. “One in particular that astounded me was (a veteran who) lost many of his friends while in service, and 116 of them were eaten by sharks. That scared me.”

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“I was in a plane crash with my father; his girlfriend, Sandra; and the pilot of our chartered Cessna. Sandra was 30. My dad was 43. I was 11. By the end of our 9-hour ordeal, I was the only survivor.”

Do you want to know more? About the story, or the writer or both? If so, you’re in luck — there are still a few seats for the Nov. 17 Pen on Fire Speakers Series to be held at SCAPE Gallery in Corona del Mar.

Local writer Barbara DeMarco-Barrett will host “An Evening with Memoirists” featuring two memoirists, Danzy Senna and Norman Ollestad. The event, which begins at 7 p.m., costs $15 including refreshments and requires advance tickets.

Ollestad wrote “Crazy for the Storm,” a Los Angeles Times bestseller and Starbucks pick that begins with the lines quoted above. Novelist Jim Harrison said, ” ‘Crazy for the Storm’ is an absolutely compelling book which I read in one long sitting. The fact that it’s true made me shudder, but then Norman Ollestad is a fine writer and every detail is convincing.”

Danzy Senna was born in Boston, the daughter of two writers, an African-American father and a white mother who met during the Civil Rights Movement. She received her B.A. from Stanford University and MFA in creative writing from the UC-Irvine. Her first novel, “Caucasia,” was an instant bestseller and received the Book-of-the-Month Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and other awards and critical acclaim.

For more information or two register, visit the Pen on Fire website.

SCAPE is located at 2859 East Coast Highway.

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The owner of The Port Restaurant will return to City Council Chambers tonight for a public hearing on his appeal of a planning commission decision not let him extend his hours and have live music.

The commission made its unanimous decision at its Sept. 17 meeting, denying Port owner Ali Zadeh’s request to stay open an extra hour until 1 a.m., to have lunch hours and to have live music. While a crowd of supporters testified that The Port was a high-end establishment with a neighborhood vibe, others testified that the restaurant was trying to become a nightclub, and its patrons were guilty of being noisy and worse when they left the Heliotrope Avenue location. Read our story about that hearing here.

City staff is suggesting that Zadeh’s alteration of his requests — to stay open the extra hour only on weekends and not seven days of the week — isn’t enough to counter concerns that his parking lease could be terminated with just a month’s notice, and that noise levels are too high.

To read the staff report, click here.

Zadeh said this week that he’s tried to work with neighbors and find a compromise, including closing at 11 p.m., an hour earlier, on Sundays through Tuesdays. He invited neighbors to stop by the restaurant on Monday evening to discuss how they can work together. Zadeh has said for months that he wants to run a welcoming local hangout, just as he wants to work to support local schools and other village businesses. He also has said that if his business could suffer severely if he can’t extend his hours, or continue to offer the live music his customers desire.

The City Council meeting will begin at 7 p.m.

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