pulling up stakes and leaving the Island.

And now he has the popular M R Onions restaurant up for sale as a going concern, after operating it for almost 10 years.

Mr. Hetzel said yesterday that he and wife Lynne were hoping to move out of Bermuda and get into the wine business. They are even selling their plush Knapton Hill home, "Ariel'', while planning to hang onto a cottage on Hinson Island.

The Bermudian couple, with their two children, are contemplating a move to New Zealand this summer. "We're making our plans to go down under and grow grapes.'' He said of M R Onions: "It's definitely on the market. It's still a busy restaurant. It is time for me to get out and let some younger person run it.'' Managed under an operating company, Razorback Ltd., the restaurant venture on Par-La-Ville Road came about when Mr. Hetzel returned home from a stint sailing as cruise director for Holland America cruises. His specialty was round the world cruises. He did three of them. But he also sailed Alaska and Caribbean voyages.

"I was getting paid to have fun,'' he recalls.

The restaurant, formerly operated by a group of businessmen under the name, The Atlantic Oyster House, closed down. Enter Mr. Hetzel with a new concept that he was confident would work under a new name of M R Onions.

"When you take over a failed business,'' he said, "you turn it around and get it back on its feet. Then you move on.

"I'm getting a little too old for this, I think. And it's time to spend more time with my kids and do other things.'' More than nine years after purchase, the restaurant has about $1.5 million in annual sales, with a staff of 23. But success in restaurants is nothing new to Brian Hetzel. The 47-year old Bermuda Hotel School graduate had his first start as a 13-year old waiter at the Hog Penny.

"And I was making serious money, too,'' he remembered fondly. He was a bartender by age 16.

About 11 years later, some 20 years ago this month, he and an equally popular restaurateur, Mr. Fritz Reiter, bought the bankrupt business in 1975. It was the days of the Sovereign Room and the Guinea Discotheque upstairs of The Hog Penny restaurant.

The following year, Mr. Hetzel assumed complete ownership. And five years later in 1981, he sold the The Hog Penny and The Fisherman's Reef restaurants and flew off to join Holland America.

Some months ago, he sold the prime City real estate on Burnaby Hill that houses the two restaurants.

He'd never say he'd never get back into the restaurant business, again, but he doesn't see it in the foreseeable future.

ONIONS SELLER -- M R Onions restaurant owner Mr. Brian Hetzel, who is planning to sell the popular restaurant after successfully running it for almost 10 years.