This beloved Orange County restaurant is closing after serving 50 years of mai tais
After half a century of mai tais and ocean views, Wind & Sea is shutting its doors on Sept. 15, another casualty in Orange County’s vanishing independent restaurant scene.
Wind & Sea, the Dana Point fixture that has poured mai tais for locals and tourists alike since the Nixon administration, will serve its last drink on Sept. 15.
The closure ends a 50-year run that outlasted recessions, real-estate booms, and the steady encroachment of chain restaurants and luxury developments along the Orange County coast. What began as a simple seaside spot became, for many, the last authentic taste of old Dana Point.
Its departure is more than the loss of one menu. It signals how rising rents, post-pandemic labor costs, and shifting demographics have made longevity nearly impossible for independent operators who once defined the region’s casual waterfront culture.
Regulars already speak of the place in past tense, trading stories of sunsets over the Pacific that no chain restaurant’s marketing department can replicate. The physical building may survive under new management or new branding, but the particular blend of kitsch, comfort, and community that Wind & Sea represented will not.
Orange County has spent decades selling its coastline as a lifestyle brand; now the original props are being cleared offstage. When the final mai tai is mixed in mid-September, it will mark not just the end of a restaurant but the quiet erasure of one more thread in the county’s lived history.
The real question is how many more such institutions can disappear before the “beloved local spot” becomes nothing but a nostalgic hashtag.
Original reporting: LA Times.
Original reporting: LA Times, Business.
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