Home Kitchen at 309 E. Foothill in Pomona closed recently. I’d never been there but passed by frequently over the years. Then in January I noticed all the letters were gone from the face of the building. Yep, it’s closed.
“No lease,” explains a message on a whiteboard that directs diners to Ho’s Silver Spoon at 150 S. Grand Ave. in Glendora, which is owned by the same people.
Click on the thumbnail photo at right for a larger view of the message and full directions. What a public-spirited fellow I am. Ho’s gets decent reviews on Yelp.
Some of you may recall that circa 2000, the Pomona building had a Winchell’s on the other end where you could watch them make the donuts. It was an experiment and didn’t last long. Home Kitchen was in the other half of the building probably since the beginning. Nothing ever replaced Winchell’s. Now the entire building is vacant.
Incidentally, in the small patio area when I visited a week ago, the H from the Home Kitchen sign was lying face-down on a table, as if someone couldn’t be bothered to haul away the last letter.
* Update: While some readers below refer to Brannigan’s, the actual name, I’m told, was Baxter’s. My source says: “It was a Baxter’s in the early ’80s, then a Reubens in the late ’80s and then that half of the building closed, maybe around ’92. The Coco’s closed in ’93, I think. I could be off by a year or two in either direction.”