L.A. Restaurants

SAMBO'S — Someone I worked with once said that the only tragedy of the civil rights movement of the sixties was in the demise of Sambo's Restaurants. A Sambo's was like an IHOP, which then was more often called an International House of Pancakes. In the above photo, you can see the emphasis Sambo's put on the fact that they served pancakes.

The chain, which at one point involved some 1,200 outlets, was named for its two founders, Sam Battistone and Newell "Bo" Bohnett...but the amalgam of their names also had another meaning and it changed over the years. You all remember the children's story of the little boy named Sambo who was chased by tigers and...well, I don't remember it all that well. Something about the tigers running themselves ragged and turning into melted butter. I never quite understood the biology involved in that but Li'l Sambo took the liquified tiger home and put it on his pancakes. So when people saw the name "Sambo," they thought of pancakes, which is why it was a good name for a place that served them. Or at least it was when the first Sambo's was opened in 1957 in Santa Barbara.

But years later, a name like Sambo — and the accompanying caricature of Sambo, himself — came to denote an ugly racial image. Sambo started out in an 1899 book by Helen Bannerman as a native of India. She called him Little Black Sambo and in later revisions and publications of the story, he fluctuated between Indian and Negroid. Aware that the black version of Little Black Sambo alienated many, the restaurant chain made him more inarguably Indian and when that didn't change perceptions, they made him Caucasian and tried to change his name and the name of the entire chain to Sammy's. It didn't take and by 1985, the once-flourishing chain was in bankruptcy. The original, located in Santa Barbara, is still open (though only for breakfast and lunch) and that's about it.

Qualitatively, I recall Sambo's as being about the same as an IHOP, which is a half-notch above a Denny's. I think many of them became Denny's which for a restaurant is some kind of shameful demotion. As if the chain hadn't already been embarrassed enough by the controversy about its very name.

PONDEROSA — This restaurant, situated in the corner of a shopping mall on Jefferson Boulevard in Culver City — was unrelated to the chain of Ponderosa Steak Houses that now dot the nation. This one was a huge "all you can eat" emporium that my friends and I loved in the seventies and eighties. It was set up cafeteria-style with a large salad bar and then a carving station where several chefs would dispense about six different entrees including prime rib, baked ham, roast turkey and corned beef, and as many side dishes. The food was pretty decent but of course, the best part was that you could go back for more and more and more, and you could try everything.

What fascinated me about the place was that while the outside advertising emphasized how you could stuff yourself on meat for a modest price, once you were inside, all efforts were devoted to getting you to eat the cheap foods. Servers would place baskets of very fine, thick-sliced sourdough bread on your table and tell you how yummy it was. They were also apparently instructed to never take away a dirty plate until you'd eaten every possible scrap of edible material on it. If you tried to get them to remove a plate with one more bite on it, they'd look at you like you couldn't possibly be serious and ask, "But...aren't you going to eat that?"

In the meantime, you had to pass the salad bar to get to where they carved the prime rib and if you hadn't already put a lot of lettuce on your plate, the carvers would look at you in astonishment and mutter, "No salad?" Like they were very concerned you get a balanced diet. As you went back for your third or fourth helping, the slices would get thinner and they'd hurriedly toss a huge scoop of rice or mashed potatoes on your plate even before you asked for a side dish.

Once, I talked to the manager about booking a banquet there for C.A.P.S., the cartoonist group of which I was then president. He told me they loved private parties and explained to me that private parties were not on an "all you can eat" basis. The way it worked, when our group was ready to dine, they'd close off the serving line to everyone but us. We could then go through and each of us could have our pick on any of their entrees, which would be carved for us in portions larger than the usual serving size for the Ponderosa.

After I left, I realized two things. One was that our members would complain about the cost per plate, which was higher than the "all you can eat" price to eat the same food if you were dining in the next room. Also, I realized that we'd become part of the restaurant's efforts to get their patrons to not go back for more food. It would take our group at least twenty minutes to go through that serving line, during which all the other folks dining in the restaurant wouldn't be able to get seconds or thirds or ninths. I think that was the main reason they liked private parties.

WEBSTER'S — I don't know much about Webster's Restaurants, other than that a man named Dick Webster opened several of them around Los Angeles and that he boasted of serving the best lemon pie in the world. The one in the picture above was on La Cienega on the border of Beverly Hills. My family and I occasionally went to one on Pico Boulevard a few blocks east of Overland.

The food was pretty simple — burgers, roast beef, chicken, stuff like that — but the menu and the waitresses implored you to save room for some of that world famous Webster's lemon pie. I tried it one time and didn't see what all the fuss was about. Seemed like pretty standard lemon pie to me.

THE BAGEL — Down on Fairfax, south of Olympic, there's an area now known as Little Ethiopia because it contains around a half-dozen Ethiopian restaurants and one or two retail stores with Ethiopian groceries or gifts. Back in the eighties and before, most of the buildings housed delicatessens and the largest was The Bagel, a very genial place with very mediocre deli food and not much of it.

People went to The Bagel for the waitresses, who were the friendliest in town. Every time I went there, the place was full of older men who, I got the impression, went there every day to flirt with them. (They were mostly older women — older than me, not older than the older men.)

There were two parts to the menu at The Bagel: Hot food and sandwiches. Except at breakfast, they always seemed to be out of whatever hot food you tried to order. I'd try to order the roast chicken and the waitress would say they were out. So I'd try to order the pot roast and the waitress would say they were out. So I'd try to order the brisket platter and guess what. Finally one time, I just turned to her and said, "Let's do this the easy way. Tell me what you do have." She answered, "The chicken soup and any of the sandwiches except the turkey pastrami, and we're out of sourdough and egg bread." Then she leaned over near me and said, as if she didn't want anyone else to hear, "The owner only orders the things people are buying. No one's ordered turkey pastrami lately so the kitchen doesn't stock it."

"Well, let me think about what I want then," I said. "In the meantime, I'd like a bowl of chicken soup and a bagel."

"Oh, I forgot to mention. We're out of bagels."

I acted more shocked than I probably was. "Out of bagels? Isn't this place called The Bagel? How can you run out of bagels at The Bagel?"

"We didn't run out," she explained. "It's another thing the boss no longer orders."

Are we surprised The Bagel went out of business? I'm not...but I still kinda miss the place, anyway.

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