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For decades, Rafael “Ray” Vega made the rounds in the brick-lined dining room of Casa Vega restaurant in Sherman Oaks, dressed sharply in a sweater vest with a name tag fastened to the front.
“Hi, I’m Ray Vega and this is Casa Vega,” he would say. He often hosted Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, George Clooney, Al Pacino and other actors and studio executives, who sipped margaritas, tucked into the restaurant’s signature tufted red leather booths.
Vega, who helped introduce and popularize Mexican food in the San Fernando Valley, died from complications of COVID-19 on Saturday at age 86, according to his daughter, Christina “Christy” Vega. He had been battling dementia and Parkinson’s disease for the past 15 years.