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Pieces of Eight, Marina Del Rey, (restaurant) |
Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3926
From: Santa Barbara, CA
|  Posted: 2011-04-20 10:14 pm Permalink
Name:Pieces of Eight
Type:restaurant
Street:Fiji Way
City:Marina Del Rey
State:
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct
Description:
In recognition of John-O's upcoming Nautical Crawl and the recent posts on The Reef restaurant, I thought I would start a thread for the Pieces of Eight restaurant located in Marina Del Rey.
One of the eight (at least) restaurants operated by the Specialty Restaurant company in the LA area that had various degrees of Poly Pop and Nautical themes.
The best image of this restaurant was the rendering posted by Bigbro from the Paul Page album of the same name.
I picked up a souvenir menu postcard showing the fighting ships.
Location map in the MDR harbor.
Menu inside
 
Lunch
Drinks & Pupus
Matchbook
I posted this menu under the Ports o Call Restaurant, but I think it came from here.
The building is still there and is now Shanghai Red's. Still got some of the old bones.
DC
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 10562
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2011-04-21 10:59 am Permalink
I found this menu on the net:
It also has their logo font that can be seen on the Paul Page album cover:
I loved his "Pieces of Eight" song so much that I put it on my "Sound of Tiki" CD :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxX-Sfu-I_0
The exterior rendering you show above is actually a postcard. Jeff Berry also borrowed it to illustrate the Pieces of Eight cocktail recipe. It's a cheap card on thin, non-glossy, yellow copier stock. Here's the caption, no date:
This place went one step beyond nautical decor and clearly tied in the concept of treasure...
...which means pirates, with Polynesian pop. Here's an interesting little piece on the history of the coin:
"It was the coin upon which the US dollar was based, and it remained legal tender in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857 discontinued the practice. Because it was widely used in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East, it became the first world currency by the late 18th century. Many existing currencies, such as the Canadian dollar, United States dollar, and the Chinese yuan, as well as currencies in Latin America and the Philippine peso, were initially based on the Spanish dollar and other 8-reales coins."
And a good image that explains the name, as the currency was measured by weight of its precious metal, and thus could be cut up into eight pieces:
One piece was 8 Reales
[ This Message was edited by: bigbrotiki 2011-04-21 12:58 ]
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Tom Slick
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Aug 26, 2005
Posts: 1083
From: The Beaches of South Bay, SoCal
| Posted: 2011-04-21 4:22 pm Permalink
Just before I got to the bottom photos of DCs post, I was thinking "I wonder if this is that Shanghai something restaurant location?".....lol, I ride my bike by there every so often when I do my 40 mile round trip bike ride...It is a nice looking spot. Very lush, and the water fountains/pool sounds nice as I ride along the bike path..Great stuff guys!
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Sabu The Coconut Boy
Grand Member (8 years) 
Joined: Aug 20, 2002
Posts: 2784
From: Carson, California
| Posted: 2011-05-29 9:05 pm Permalink
Here's an artist's rendering of the Pieces of Eight from "American Yachtsman" magazine, February 1963. There was a large article on the booming construction in Marina Del Rey and evidently this restaurant was the first in the community. I got a chuckle over how the magazine editors got the theme of the restaurant wrong, but based on its name alone, it's an understandable mistake. I've also included a close-up of the artist's signature just in the hopes that someone might recognize it.
 there was probably better detail on the original painting. The picture in the magazine was very small.
_________________
[ This Message was edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2011-05-29 21:13 ]
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LikaNui
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Sep 29, 2008
Posts: 14 | Posted: 2011-06-17 9:09 pm Permalink
Great to see all of this -- mahalo!
I've been there countless times over the years. My family had one of the very first boats there when Marina del Rey was built in 1963 (I was 12) and I've been in PO8 all while it was open and also after it changed to Shanghai Red's. I've even played music in there over the years, until I moved to Hawaii in the early 1990s.
Back in the beginning there was just a dirt road leading down to PO8 and no other buildings around it. They used to always have a guy in a pirate costume out on the main street waving people in, with a large bird on his shoulder, of course. Anyone find photos of that?
[ This Message was edited by: LikaNui 2011-06-17 21:12 ]
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