May 2010 Archives

We haven't done one of these for a while, so here's a Memorial Day-themed photo from around the Inland Valley. Can you guess where?

As usual, we'll withhold all comments, or at least all correct guesses, until the contest closes this evening.

Here's a link to the three previous quizzes.

The text on the sign reads: "For your country's sake today; for your own sake tomorrow."

* Update: A.S. Ashley correctly identified this as Memorial Park in downtown Pomona; Allan and REN were mostly right in giving the location but using the old name, Central Park. Thanks for participating, everyone. And we'll do another Photo Quiz, on a non-holiday weekend, sometime soon.

Mes Amis, 14720 Pipeline Ave. (at Chino Hills Parkway), Chino HIlls

Mes Amis opened in January in half of a contemporary glass and steel building just north of a busy intersection. My Chino Hills friends found it on Yelp (where Mes Amis currently gets 4 1/2 stars) and that night four of us had dinner before watching "Lost."

The interior is sleek, with plenty of natural light, tables and no booths, a gold and rust color scheme, tasteful decor and a TV silently playing in one corner. Most of the cooking can be seen from the dining room.

The novelty, as outlined in Friday's column, is that Mes Amis has two locations: London and Chino Hills. (Perhaps Paris was too crowded.) The owners are brothers, a continent apart, and although the menus are similar, each owns his own location.

The menu is Lebanese, but with a modern take, and the food shows a high level of care. We had a "journey," one of four appetizer plates that cost $9.95 (for now). It had four items, like a bento box, and divided among four people, it was almost a meal.

Our entrees included mixed kabobs with lamb and chicken (pictured) and the Double Treasure, which is lamb patties with two sauces. The entrees were around $15. After the "journey," we probably could have ordered two or three entrees instead of four. The meat was tender, the grilled vegetables delicious, the presentation thoughtful. We all liked our food quite a bit.

Service is non-intrusive and leisurely, by design. We certainly weren't rushed; indeed, our server took our "journey" order and didn't return to take our entree order until we had finished the appetizer. Owner Sammy Elias later told me that was slower than even he'd like, but that the idea is to slow down to eat as the Lebanese do.

Our suggestion would be a note to this effect on the menu, or an explanation from the server that could begin: "Have you dined with us before? Our philosophy is..." Many diners will embrace the policy, but it may be counterproductive (see the criticism on Yelp about the service) not to tell us what it is.

That quibble aside, we liked Mes Amis very much and are anticipating our next visit, and our next "journey." The only local Lebanese restaurant at this level that I'm aware of is Casablanca in Claremont, and Mes Amis may be even better.

I've gone back and taken photos at Stuft Pizza Cafe and Richie's Diner, both in Rancho Cucamonga, to enliven those posts, which were written in this blog's pre-photo days.

This campaign sign (anti-campaign sign?) recently popped up in various locations along Fourth Street in Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario. This particular one was found in the lawn outside the Daily Bulletin -- tsk, tsk -- where an editor removed it and presented it to me. It's currently occupying a proud place in my overflow cubicle.

Some friends and I attended the "Lost" finale party Sunday night at the Orpheum theater in downtown L.A. My seats were in the front row, a marvelous bit of luck (I got them through Ticketmaster like anyone else).

Before the finale aired, we heard from L. Scott Nadler, who played Rose, and Michael Emerson, who played Ben, as well as from a few minor players (Walt, young Ben, Kate's father and a Dharma guy). Emerson, who was the audience favorite, was particularly articulate and charming.

Asked how he played the duplicitous Benjamin Linus in the times when he didn't know whether his character was lying or not, Emerson said he simply said his lines earnestly and let the audience sort out fact from fiction.

Several people in the audience came in costume. The guy across the aisle from me was in a Hanso Corp. lab coat with the lottery numbers stitched on the back.

Reader Ric Stevenson wonders if anyone remembers the Upland Inn, a restaurant and boarding house once owned by his aunt and uncle.

"The Inn was built around 1901 and was first used as a boarding house. In the '60s it became very popular as a fine family dining restaurant. As a kid I spent a lot of fun times there with my cousin and ate some great food," Stevenson writes.

Bill and Barbara Vallon, his aunt and uncle, owned it in the '60s. The inn, located on Ninth Street, burned down.

Anyone able to help?

Ramon's Cactus Patch, 647 W. California St. (at Mission and San Antonio), Ontario

A model home turned into a restaurant with a cactus garden out front, at the confluence of three streets, the location of Ramon's Cactus Patch is as unusual as its name. (The simplest way to get there is to take Mission Boulevard.)

Ramon's is also the oldest restaurant in Ontario, opening in 1937 and still owned all this time by the same man, Ramon Sanchez.

Inside this quirky gem are high-backed wooden booths salvaged from the old Orange Hotel in downtown Ontario, where Ramon's plied its trade before moving here in 1962, and framed photos of various old Ontario buildings. A vintage painting of a mysterious Mexican beauty is the focal point of one wall. The pre-electronic cash register is decades old. The overall effect is like stepping into another world.

The two-page menu is faded, like an artifact from an earlier era. Other than the prices, the menu probably hasn't been updated since the 1960s. The cooking is plain and comforting, a reflection of mainstream Mexican American food from midcentury, stubbornly untrendy.

Some don't like the tacos, which use essentially a hamburger patty as the filling; I haven't developed the habit either. I always go for the chicken burrito ($5), which comes with a tiny salad with a salsa-like dressing. The complimentary chips and salsa are always good, the lightly spicy salsa arriving in a curious tapered glass bottle that resembles the one Barbara Eden slept in.

Like Vince's Spaghetti and Yangtze, Ramon's is a time capsule, one that offers a taste of old Ontario. Ramon still visits his restaurant most days. Today (Friday, May 21), he turns 96. Go wish him a happy birthday.

Reader (and friend) Jason Winston says:

"My wife saw this on her Facebook page, and we really were stumped at how many items could be on an Ontario bucket list."

Hmm.

1) Vince's Spaghetti letting you make the spaghetti.

Readers?

For an outing to L.A. on Sunday to the L.A. County Museum of Art, I used four types of public transit -- a personal best, not that I was keeping track:

* Locomotive (i.e., Metrolink, to get from Claremont to Union Station)

* Subway (i.e., the Purple Line, to get from Union Station to Wilshire and Western)

* Bus (i.e., Metro Rapid, to get from Wilshire and Western to Wilshire and Fairfax, LACMA's location)

* Light rail (i.e., the Gold Line, to get from Union Station to Little Tokyo for lunch)

The whole thing cost $11, with my $11 Metrolink ticket acting as an all-day pass for subway, light rail and bus, and of course I avoided parking fees.

The Metro Rapid bus is a wonder, by the way: The bus stops are stylish, the bus arrives every 10 minutes, it barrels along with very few stops and, as I said, it was free with my Metrolink ticket. It was my first time but I'll ride it again.

The former Taco Kitchen is now Simpsons Floor Covering, 2911 Bonita Ave., La Verne.

Reader Bill Lukens, now residing in Marin County, writes:

"Reading about Henry's reminded me of the great Taco Kitchen located in the middle of an orange grove in an old pump house at the end of Bonita Avenue in La Verne. In those days Bonita did not go through to Claremont, it stopped on the edge of the orange grove just out of the east side of town. You took a small one-lane road into the middle of the grove to find the restaurant.

"On hindsight the food was not just good, it was outstanding. The owners, Elsie and Marshall Moss, presided over every meal. One of them was always there.

"Local people waited the tables and each plate had to pass under the eyes of Elsie or Marshall before it hit your table. The enchiladas were to die for coming piping hot, right from the oven, with the cheese still bubbling. And the tacos and beef tostadas were the best I have tasted even to today.

"The restaurant was always full. Right up to the last time I went there in 1970, it was good to the last plate. I often have thought of starting a Taco Kitchen in Tiburon where I now live and replicating the great recipes accumulated by Elsie and Marshall from their trips to Mexico.

"The funny thing was that it was located in La Verne, whose population was American mainstream. But oh how they loved the Taco Kitchen -- La Verne's little surprise."

What a nice reminiscence. Thanks, Bill. Here's some additional information: Taco Kitchen's address was Fourth Street at Fulton Road (phone number LYcoming 4-2453). The building dates to 1944 and today, heavily remodeled, it's home to Simpsons Floor Covering and an insurance office. No enchiladas or orange groves in sight.

Reader Al Lopez of Victorian Mortgage on E Street, Ontario, compiled a list of businesses and sights that have vanished from the local landscape and faxed them over. "These are a few that I can remember. I've lived here since about 1949. My dad was born in Ontario in 1924 and has lived here his whole life," Lopez wrote.

Unsure immediately what to do with it, I set the list aside, as I'm wont to do. The other day, tidying up my cubicle, I came across the list and made time to type it all up, essentially as Lopez wrote it. Enjoy.

On Holt Boulevard in Ontario: Bamboo Hut (bar, at Campus); Judy's Past Time (bar and pool hall, between Lemon and Euclid), Tahiti Club (lounge, between Lemon and Euclid), Ford Lunch (restaurant, at Euclid), 1st Trust Bank (at Euclid), Orange Hotel (between Euclid and Sultana), Torley's Market (at Sultana), Laddies (burgers, across from Torley's), Sherman Williams (paint, at Sultana), Hoyt Lumber (at Plum), Dairy Queen (by Campus), Taco Lita (at San Antonio), Shady Grove Dairy (at San Antonio), Burger Lane (between San Antonio and Mountain), Citrus Motors (between San Antonio and Mountain), Mark Christopher (between Palm and Fern?), Valley Drive-In (movies, at Central).

On Euclid Avenue in Ontario: Bank of America (at B), California Theater (movies, at B), Fallis (clothing, at B), The Forum Theater (movies, ?), 1st National Bank (at E), Carnegie Library (at D), Walter's Cafe (between F and G), Bank of Ontario (below overpass), JC Penney (below E), Bocanegra Bakery (at Francis), Donahoo's Chicken (at G), Jasper the Ant picnic sign (for July 4th celebration).

On Mountain Avenue in Ontario: Market Basket, White Front, House of Pies.

Elsewhere in Ontario: Municipal dump on Mission -- highest elevation in Ontario?, Hooker Headers, Drew Carriage, Chaffey College at 5th and Euclid, Daily Report building, Firestone Tires (Lemon and B), Grove School (near Sunkist), Greyhound Bus Station (on Transit Avenue), Ontario Police Station (behind old City Hall), GE Hotpoint plant, Delahoyt (sp?) Auto, radio stations KWOW and KASK, Lockheed Aircraft, National Guard unit with fighter jets.

On Holt Avenue in Pomona: Van de Kamp's, International House of Pancakes, Standard Brands Paint, Angel's Lumber, Pomona Valley Datsun, Bekins Storage, Thom McAn's Shoes, Lloyds Lumber, Tate Cadillac, Catron's Volkswagen, St. Charles Bar and Grill, Crocker National Bank.

Elsewhere in Pomona: Espiau's, Orlando's, Henry's, Love's Wood Pit, Xochimilco's, Boys Market, Zody's, Sears.

"Just to name a few," Lopez notes. The understatement of the year.

Jicamex, 604 E. Mission Blvd. (at Linden), Pomona

Jicamex may or may not qualify as home cooking, but it operates from a house, a big old yellow one, a holdover on a busy commercial street. I'd heard good things about this place, which opened in 2009, and checked it out for lunch this week.

Most of the seating is outside on a giant shaded patio; there are a few tables inside. You order from a window outside. Tacos are a mere dollar, burritos $4. A big spender, I got an asada torta for $5 and a jamaica drink for $1.

The sandwich was large, on soft bread, stuffed with meat, beans, onions, lettuce, cheese, tomato, onion and mayo. One of the better tortas I've had. The menu also has quesadillas and sopes. After reading the reviews on Yelp, I'll have to try the costillas, described as a pork sparerib in a taco.

This'll be a nice place to go for lunch or on a warm summer evening. In another plus, Jicamex is open until midnight. I'd rate Jicamex as one of the best Mexican restaurants downtown.

As mentioned in print the other day, I'll be among the scoopers at an ice cream sundae fundraiser in La Verne today to benefit Relay for Life, which benefits the American Cancer Society. Come buy a sundae for a good cause. We'll be at Roberta's Village Inn,
2326 D St., from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Here are the shifts:

5:30 pm -- Dan & Annette Harden, Brian McNerney, Fire Chief John Breaux, me

6:30 pm -- Mayor Don Kendrick, Mayor ProTem Donna Redman Nasmyth, Police Chief Scott Pickwith, Captain Darryl Seube

7:30 pm -- Former Mayor Jon Blickenstaff, Council Member Robin Carder, Planning Commision Chair Cid Pinedo

Tonight is a Farmers Market night downtown so parking will be more of a chore. Organizers recommend parking behind the Fire Station or at Church of the Brethren.

The Bulletin puts all the attention on the Pomona Fox, since that's the one within the bounds of our coverage area, but Riverside recently restored its Fox theater too.

I hadn't been there since its January reopening until last Friday, when the theater showed the Marx Brothers classic "Duck Soup" and then had the acclaimed Frank Ferrante doing his one-man Groucho show (well, two-man if you include accompanist Jim Furmston on piano). It wasn't exactly well attended -- it looked to me like about 400 people in the audience -- but it was a fun show.

Here are a few (rather poor, I'm afraid) photos of the joint: the mezzanine (right), a false opera box with tiled stairway (below left), a light fixture with starburst in the auditorium (below right), and the interior and exterior (further below). I have to say, the $32 million renovation is beautiful.

A restored 1927 steam locomotive blew through the Inland Valley on Saturday and again on Sunday, a special run between L.A. and San Bernardino to celebrate the latter's bicentennial. I got the above photo on Saturday morning in Claremont as the former Santa Fe 3751 headed east, at high speed. Woo-woo!

A couple of dozen people, including families with children, turned out to greet it. Members of the San Bernardino Railroad Historical Society, which bought, restored and operated the train, waved from the rear platform.

The Chasing Steel blog by Joe Perry of Ontario has some impressive photos of the beast at rest.

I know we're living in a throwaway society, but that was never more clear than after Claremont emblazoned its trash trucks with a pro-consumption slogan.

Fire House Express, 121 W. Foothill Blvd. (at Euclid), Upland

Rather than a fire station with express firefighting service, Fire House Express is a casual pizza and pasta restaurant in a shopping center storefront by Vons. Pizza is baked in an open fire oven, probably accounting for the name.

It's a clean, sharp looking place with modern design and a couple of TVs hanging in the corners. You order at the counter and return to a booth. (A server brings the food to your table.) They sell pizza, sandwiches, fried chicken and pasta. I stopped in for dinner this week and had the lasagna ($7.99) as a dinner with salad and soda ($2.99 more). Later in the week I returned for a pizza slice lunch special with salad and soda ($4.99).

The salad comes in a transparent takeout container but isn't bad for what it is. The lasagna was made while I waited and was essentially a plate of noodles, sauce, cheese and sausage, rather than a tightly layered concoction. Still, I liked it enough to return for the pizza. It's not a high-volume slice place. The chef, who was making a pizza as I ordered, asked what I'd like on my slice. What the heck, I requested sausage and mushrooms.

What arrived was a wide but stubby slice, apparently one-fourth of a small pizza. The crust was airy, almost fluffy, the toppings generous, the sausage especially good.

Overall, Fire House Express was a pleasant surprise. I wouldn't recommend going there for dinner unless you like solitude -- over the course of 90 minutes one evening, I was the only customer -- but it's a good lunch spot if you're anywhere nearby.

Books bought: "The Complete Humorous Tales and Sketches," Mark Twain; "Mark Twain's Other Woman," Laura Skandera Trombley; "Earth Abides," George R. Stewart.

Books read: "Solar Lottery," Philip K. Dick; "The October Country," Ray Bradbury; "Roughing It," Mark Twain; "Endgame," Samuel Beckett.

Another four-book month, this time comprising sci-fi, fantasy, an American literary classic and a play. Three unread books were added to my groaning shelves. This means that if I maintain this pace of reading/receiving, I'll be caught up in, oh, 400 months.

"Solar Lottery" was Philip K. Dick's first novel and involves a future Earth in which everyone on the planet is a player in a lottery that could elevate any of them to the world dictatorship. Dick, of course, is best known for visionary writing that was turned into "Blade Runner," "Minority Report" and other films. Never popular or well-paid in his lifetime, he cranked out about 50 books, many of which aren't very good, and "Solar Lottery" is one of them; the plotting is a jumble and the ideas don't gel. But we all have to start somewhere.

Bradbury's "The October Country," from 1955, comprises the best of the out-of-print "Dark Carnival," plus four "new" stories. Among the half-dozen or so must-read Bradbury books, this collection of his earlier, macabre stories includes "The Small Assassin," "Skeleton," "The Lake," "Homecoming" and "Uncle Einar," five of his best-loved pieces. Most of the others are no slouch either.

Twain's travelogue of the Old West is sprawling, episodic, frustrating, padded and brilliant. It's also partly imagined, which this scholarly edition details in an equally sprawling notes section that is both welcome and beside the point. Marvel at Chapter 16, as fresh as Sedaris, in which Twain picks apart the Book of Mormon. The drunk's all-digression monologue in Chapter 53 is a hoot. And in Chapter 73, during a visit to Hawaii, young Twain grabs a board and goes "surf-bathing"!

I spent two months reading "Roughing It," in between other books. I finished it with a couple of days left in April and decided to plow through something short to maintain my four-book pace. So I turned to Beckett's "Endgame," which I've owned for years but never read, although I once saw the play performed live.

It's an allegorical four-character play, in which one character is dying, his son is tired of helping him and his parents live with them in side-by-side trash cans. I prefer "Godot," but "Endgame" is still devastating, not to mention devastatingly funny.

It was satisfying to tackle the 800-page (ooof) "Roughing It," and to do so without throwing off my schedule (even if it took me two months). I'm back to normal-sized books now, but I'll try to work in another doorstop or two before the year's out.

So, what are you reading, and have you read any of the above?

I've been wanting to see the newly restored 1928 Riverside Fox Theater but so far nothing on the schedule has grabbed me. (Ditto with Ontario's Citizens Business Bank Arena, although I've at least toured that building.)

Well, at 7 p.m. Friday, the Riverside Fox, 3801 Mission Ave., will show the Marx Brothers classic "Duck Soup," plus Groucho impersonator Frank Ferrante live on stage doing 90 minutes of Marxism. Read about the event here. Tickets are $20 to $49.

I'll likely be there -- "Duck Soup," a farce about politics and war, is one of my favorite movies and, while I'd rather pay half the money and see only the movie, the Groucho guy might be fun. And I'm looking forward to eyeballing the "other" Fox (as opposed to Pomona's).

"Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave and freeeee!"

La Verne Online is the name, and it's run by 25-year resident Peter Bennett, a former LA Times staffer and PR guy. I've read a few articles there and it's pretty well done, with coverage of Monday's council meeting and long features on such folks as private eye Becky Altringer, Gumby licensee Nick Croce and Taste of Asia chef Virada Khowang. (One flaw: No dates on any of the stories.) Best of luck to them.

Mike Tanner of the Dinerwood blog celebrated his third anniversary as a diner reviewer by eating breakfast at LeRoy's the Original in Monrovia and he invited me along. (We previously ate lunch together at Roady's in San Dimas.)

Read what he had to say here. He sums up the experience well. If I were grading, I'd give LeRoy's a B...for butterflies (they're part of the decor, as are lions).

Sketch of Bible Storyland's proposed Hanging Gardens of Babylon restaurant

Bible Storyland, you say? It's the theme park that never happened. Planned for 220 acres at Foothill and Rochester in Cucamonga in 1961, it was the scheme of ex-Disney salesman Nat Winecoff, "Wizard of Oz" Tin Man actor Jack Haley and yo-yo magnate Donald Duncan. They needed $15 million to launch the Bible-based theme park and never got it after opposition from local clergy and, presumably, tepid response from investors to the strange concept.

I wrote a column about the whole thing in 2005 -- read it as the extended entry to this post -- and figured that was the end of it. Hardly.

Harvey Jordan, a San Fernando Valley man who became fascinated by the theme park after finding dozens of sketches and documents about it, is planning an exhibit on the park at the Victoria Gardens Cultural Center in August 2011. (He works ahead.) He's got a Bible Storyland website. And he's also financing a documentary.

His crew, consisting of a producer and a cameraman, interviewed me in a Daily Bulletin conference room last Monday, capably and at some length. I'll probably be edited down to a sentence fragment -- that is, if the documentary is even completed. Jordan hopes to have it done in time for the exhibit.

I'd suggest you keep your fingers crossed, except that 15 months is a long time to keep one's fingers crossed.