Chimayo Grill, First of Chain, Might Be Open Soon in O.C. : Restaurants: The creation of designer David Wilhelm and Taco Bell will feature Southwestern cuisine as the fast-food giant’s entree into sit-down dining.

NEWPORT BEACH —  A much-anticipated restaurant being created by restaurateur David Wilhelm and fast-food giant Taco Bell could open as soon as Jan. 15 at Newport Beach’s Fashion Island.

Chimayo Grill, the prototype envisioned as the first of a nationwide chain of restaurants, is the latest creative venture for Wilhelm, a Michigan native who designed some of Orange County’s best-known eateries, including Bistro 201, Zuni Grill, Topaz and Kachina.

Wilhelm opened Pave, his first Southern California eatery, in 1983 in Corona del Mar. Several of his subsequent restaurants have showcased Southwestern-style entrees. That track record caught the attention of Taco Bell Chairman and Chief Executive John E. Martin, who views Chimayo Grill as the first of many full-service, mid-priced, Southwestern-style restaurants across the country.

The chain as planned would broaden the fast-food giant’s reach into sit-down dining. Irvine-based Taco Bell last year acquired San Francisco-based Chevys, a 40-unit chain also slated for nationwide expansion.

Wilhelm and Taco Bell executives would not comment Tuesday on the restaurant’s opening, and Taco Bell has not revealed what Chimayo Grill’s menu will include.

But a Chimayo sign is posted at the site, and crews reportedly are completing a $700,000 renovation of the Fashion Island location previously occupied by Slades Restaurant & Cafe, which closed in October.

Nation’s Restaurant News, a weekly trade publication in New York, reported the January opening date and also that the 4,300-square-foot restaurant will have 150 seats and feature a menu with entrees priced from $12 to $17.

Taco Bell, which posted $829.8 million in worldwide revenue for the third quarter, has targeted sit-down restaurants as an important growth area. And it has high hopes for its collaboration with Wilhelm.

“There is clearly a growing demand for Mexican- and Southwestern-style foods,” Martin said in June, 1993, when he announced the joint venture with Wilhelm. “David Wilhelm’s record of success speaks for itself. He is a tremendous innovator and has a terrific knack for understanding the American palate.”

Despite his prominent role in Orange County’s culinary scene, Wilhelm has been quiet in recent months. He has repeatedly declined to discuss the Taco Bell joint venture. And earlier this year, he resigned from his management role at West Coast Restaurant Ventures, the Newport Beach-based company that owns most of the restaurants he developed.

In recent months, West Coast Restaurant Ventures moved Bistro 201 to Newport Beach from Irvine after a rent dispute, and it closed the Zuni Grill, an Irvine restaurant that featured Wilhelm’s Southwestern cuisine. Zuni then reopened as Saddlerock Ranch, which features “home-style cooking.” West Coast also owns the Topaz Cafe in the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and Kachina in Laguna Beach.

Chefs across Southern California view Taco Bell’s move into sit-down dining as proof that “Southwestern cuisine is going mainstream,” said John Rivera Sedlar, who features such specialties at his Abiquiu restaurants in Santa Monica and San Francisco.

Chimayo Grill takes its name from the small New Mexico village of Chimayo, north of Santa Fe. Chimayo is known for its red chilies and apple orchards, according to Sedlar, who has written a book about modern Southwestern cuisine and began serving it 15 years ago at Saint Estephe, a Manhattan Beach restaurant.

The cuisine features tacos, tamales and enchiladas, Sedlar said, as well as corn, beans, chilies and squash, which are the staples of that region of New Mexico.

Modern Southwestern cuisine incorporates both the tastes of the Native Americans in that area and Hispanic people who subsequently settled there.

“This has always been an obscure cuisine, but it’s here to stay,” said Sedlar, whose restaurants also take their name from a small New Mexico village. “It’s America’s first historic cuisine, the first cuisine of the American continent.”

Janet Lowder, a consultant with Restaurant Management Services in Rancho Palos Verdes, said the Chimayo Grill concept “could be an attractive alternative to traditional Mexican-style food. It should be something different--something lighter, perhaps healthier.”