Santa Rosa restaurateur Nino Rabbaa closes last eateries

Former high-flying Santa Rosa restaurateur Nino Rabbaa has shuttered his last restaurant, walked away from his Spring Lake concession stand and is being sued over allegations of fraud by a former partner.

The developments represent the demise of what was once the fastest-growing restaurant group in Sonoma County, Flip Hospitality Group, which at one point had six establishments either operating or in development.

Rabbaa said he closed his last restaurant, Lakeside Grill Sports Bar, in January following a dispute with the landlord and won’t reopen his concession at Spring Lake Regional Park because he’s moving on to other ventures.

“I have backed up from the restaurant business,” Rabbaa said Friday. He said he has made an investment in a European venture, but declined to name the company or industry.

The Paris-born Rabbaa, 40, moved to Santa Rosa in 2005 and burst onto the restaurant scene when he and his brother-in-law opened Rendezvous Bistro downtown in 2009. The Fourth Street restaurant, with its artsy interior and expansive patio on Old Courthouse Square, was a popular spot for evening drinks and gourmet fare inspired by Rabbaa’s French and Lebanese heritage.

He followed that up with the trendy but short-lived Space XXV lounge on the west side of the square. He also took over the concession stand at Spring Lake in 2012, renaming it Lakeside Grill and transforming it into a popular beach-side destination.

After a major renovation, he opened Flipside Bar & Burger on Third Street in 2012, and Flipside Steakhouse and Sports Bar in the St. Francis Shopping Center in eastern Santa Rosa in 2014. The latter would go through three rebrandings in quick succession, becoming Flipside Burgers and Wings, then Kitchen 707, then most recently Lakeside Grill Sports Bar.

After partnering with New York-based Invest Hospitality, Rabbaa turned his attention to building a brewery in Rohnert Park and reopening the Rendezvous space as a creperie, but neither came to pass. He closed Rendezvous Bistro in 2014, saying the concept had run its course.

In late 2015, after he and Invest Hospitality parted ways, Rabbaa transferred his two downtown leases to restaurateur Sonu Chandi, who turned Flipside into Bibi’s Burger Bar and is opening the former Rendezvous space as Beer Baron brewpub.

Rabbaa also made a deal last year for Bear Republic Brewery to take over the lease of the Rohnert Park property overlooking Roberts Lake where he planned a brewery.

That left the Calistoga Road restaurant and the Spring Lake concession stand as Rabbaa’s last remaining establishments.

Getting out of the lease at the Calistoga Road property has proven difficult. Forced by the owners of the St. Francis Shopping Center to reopen the restaurant, Rabbaa took on a partner, Tony Halaby, who claims he invested $190,000 in the restaurant for a 50 percent share of the business he never received.

Halaby filed his lawsuit on Feb. 14 in Sonoma County Superior Court against Rabbaa and his company, Hospitality and Beyond, LLC. It claims Rabbaa made a variety of misrepresentations to Halaby that were made with “reckless disregard for the truth” and which led to the loss of his $190,000 investment as well as more than $50,000 he spent on the restaurant itself.

Rabbaa said he has yet to be served with a copy of the suit, but he said he knows Halaby’s claims well.

Rabbaa said that when Halaby first came to California with his family from the Middle East to invest in the restaurant, Rabbaa put him up in his own house for three months and gave him a car to drive.

Rabbaa’s attorney, John Dawson, called the lawsuit “a case of no good deed goes unpunished,” and Rabbaa said Halaby is trying to take advantage of him.

Rabbaa said he lost even more money than Halaby in their venture, which he said was bleeding $40,000 per month until Rabbaa shut it down in mid-2016.

Dawson said Rabbaa worked dutifully with the landlord’s representative to get a suitable tenant into the space, but nothing ever satisfied them. For example, he said, they took issue with Rabbaa rebranding the space as a sports bar without their consent, which Dawson characterized as a pretext to try to find Rabbaa in violation of the lease.

Rabbaa said he had ?$1 million invested in the property and didn’t want to walk away from his investment.

But that’s what he ultimately did, said Jason Hoffman, a Sacramento attorney representing the shopping center owners. Rabbaa, without giving notice, abandoned the property in a “midnight move out,” Hoffman said, taking equipment on which the landlords had liens to secure rent payments and leaving food to rot.

“He left the place a mess,” Hoffman said.

Dawson disputed that account, producing an email from Hoffman indicating the separation was “amicable.” Hoffman said that email preceded the discovery of the missing equipment. Another email from a Eureka-based property management group, The Carrington Co., made it clear the landlord “reserves all rights under the terms and conditions of the lease, including, but not limited to, recovery of damages for future rent.” Hoffman declined to say if that was the landlord’s intent, and no one from the property management firm could be reached for comment.

As for the concession stand, the lease was up at the end of 2016 and Rabbaa chose not to renew it, said Bert Whitaker, Regional Parks operations manager. The park is in the process of looking for a new operator and just released a request for proposals.

Because of the change, there will likely be a delay in the opening of the concession stand, which typically began weekend operations before Memorial Day and opened daily for the rest of the summer, he said.

It’s unlikely a new operator will be able to get up and running before June, he said, especially if time is needed to obtain a liquor license.

“It might be BYOB for the first part of the summer,” Whitaker said.

The new concession contract will not involve the rental of watercraft, as Rabbaa’s had. That function will be managed by parks staff going forward, Whitaker said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.