Diners Invited to Storm Bastille Day Feasts

VIVE LA FRANCE! Friday July 14 brings the bicentennial celebration of Bastille Day, and many of Orange County’s French restaurants promise gala festivities. The Bouzy Rouge in Newport Beach will offer a designer fashion show in the afternoon, an artist to sketch the guests, door prizes every half hour and cancan dancers (!). A methuselah of champagne (that’s six liters, no less) will be opened to toast the evening. For reservations, call (714) 673-3440.

At Le Biarritz in Newport Beach, chef John Sharpe promises a weeklong emphasis on the southwestern--southwestern part of France, that is. Specialties will include a cassoulet of fava beans and several Basque specialties, priced from $14.95 to $19.95. Reservations: (714) 645-6700.

La Vie en Rose in Brea will import a mime, a Maurice Chevalier-style singer crooning “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” a left- b ank caricaturist and more of those cancan girls. A special five-course dinner will cost $45 per person. Reservations: (714) 529-8333.

Sharon and Grant Showley, who’ve just returned from eating their way across France, will share their discoveries at Showley-Wrightson in Newport Beach July 14 and 15. Their special Bastille Day dinners will highlight Provencal fish soup, hot garlic chicken salad, young veal with mustard sauce and roulade of chocolate with fresh raspberries. The six-course dinner, with wines from Burgundy and Champagne, will cost $65, including tip and tax. Reservations: (714) 760-9700.

Newport Beach’s Chanteclair will be transformed into a French marketplace, with revelry beginning at 4 p.m. July 14. For $10, guests can sip wine and sample fare a la Francaise: cheeses, pates, sausages, pasta, seafood, grilled chicken and desserts, all to the accompaniment of a French accordionist. And, yes, there will be cancan dancers.

Le Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach will commemorate the French Revolution with a bal populaire dinner-dance on the 15th at 7 p.m. in the Cafe/Bistro. The tab: $55 per person will cover a four-course, gourmet French dinner, wine, music and dancing. On the 16th, the hotel presents a bicentennial brunch in the Cafe from 10:30 to 2 p.m., tabbed at $23 per person ($30 with champagne). An exhibit of more than 50 works by French artist Guy Buffet, portraying scenes from the French Revolution, will be on display throughout the hotel. Reservations: (714) 476-2001, Ext. 2194.

La Brasserie in Orange will celebrate the holiday by unveiling a new, 500-label wine list with numerous rare vintages, plus a new lunch and dinner menu.

But hey, what about our July holiday? Johnny Reb’s Southern Smokehouse in Anaheim makes Independence Day entertaining easy with take-out cold packs (to heat on the barbie or in the oven) or ready-to-serve hot packs. Beef ribs, barbecued chicken, pork ribs and pick-two combos come with barbecued pinto beans, Southern slaw, tater salad, corn bread and peach cobbler. They’re priced from $49.95 (for four hongry folks) to $104.95 (for 12). Phone (714) 535-7322.

DINNER EPICENTER: We knew it all along, but Nation’s “Restaurant News” confirms that households in Orange County spend more in restaurants than those in Los Angeles. We’re third in the nation, behind San Francisco and Boston.

‘ROUND AND ABOUT: Hemingways in Newport Beach is in escrow, but the prospective owners don’t plan to change the name or the dining concept . . . John Rader, whom many remember from Chanteclair and the Balboa Bay Club, is new GM at Bistango in Newport Beach . . . Rick and Diane Buford (he publishes Wine Line and will be remembered from the Hobbit, Alfredo’s and the Golden Truffle) take over the Black Sheep Bistro in Tustin from Tom Harrison and Maribeth Seaton, as of July 14.

ON THE MOVE: After 20 years in its Santa Ana location, Nieuport 17 will move to Tustin after the first of the year. The new restaurant is under construction in Lafayette Plaza at Newport Avenue and Irvine Boulevard . . . Showley-Wrightson will relocate in a new, larger spot with banquet facilities, just three-fourths of a mile away in Newport Beach. A February opening is planned . . . Negotiations are under way for J.J. Shaw to move JJ’s Bistro from Dana Point to the site now occupied by Gandhi in South Coast Village, and for Gandhi to move around the corner to the spot vacated by the Belgian Waffle Inn . . . A new Royal Thai is abuilding in Dana Point, targeted for an end-of-the-year opening.

LEGALITIES: Delaney’s Restaurants and its owner, Francis Delaney, have filed for protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The chain has agreed to be acquired by an unnamed corporation . . . Gemmell’s in Costa Mesa also has filed under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws. The problem, according to Byron Gemmell, is with payroll taxes, not purveyors, “but we had no choice but to file.” The restaurant will remain open “while we restructure and pay off.”

NEW & NOTEWORTHY: Ristorante Italiano Primavera is the new bambino on the block across from Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley. A trio of owners--Piero Intotero, Michael McCord and chef Angelo Juliano--will herald their opening all during July with a four-course special dinner. The $15.95 repast includes an entree of breast of chicken and prawns in white wine sauce or veal scallop with eggplant, tomato sauce and mozzarella.

At Tom Brown’s Bicycle Cafe in Dana Point, the only “smoking section” is on the patio outside. The moderately priced restaurant, next door to a health club at Del Prado Avenue and Amber Lantern Street, accents the healthy and offers a separate vegetarian menu. John Hicks is chef.

The Restaurant at Cameron Court in Santa Ana boasts a new seafood bar in its Cameron Deli. Offerings include oysters and clams on the half shell, smoked fish and sea mussels.

Capers, a today-look remodel of the old Dana Trader in Dana Point, now serves lunch and Sunday brunch, with the emphasis on California freshness. Owners Jules Marine and Patrick Dudley enhance the scene with changing exhibits by contemporary artists.

Larry Cano and Fred LeFrank have opened Salud at Beach Boulevard and Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach. They’re serving Mayan, Mexican and Yucatan . . . Meanwhile, Cano’s in Newport Beach has launched a sit-down, four-course prix fixe Sunday brunch, served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The price: $11.95.

AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS? Then head on down to the Irvine Hilton and Towers and tune up for the weekend with “TGIF and All that Jazz-Dixie Style” parties every Friday from 4:30 to 8:30 on the hotel’s pool-side patio. Southern delicacies (crocodile meat and crayfish, for instance) and such drinks as Cajun martinis and Dixie beer are served to the accompaniment of the 20th-Century Jazz Band.

In the same location on Saturdays, the hotel offers up Texas-style Barbecue Hoe-Downs--steaks, ribs, grilled fish, biscuits and cornbread--all to the tune of toe-tapping country music. Adults, $18.95; children under 12, $8.95. Reservations: (714) 863-3111.