Restaurant of the Week: Padua Pasta Makers

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Padua Pasta Makers, 300 E. Arrow Highway (at 3rd), Upland; closed Sundays

Two friends teamed up to open an Italian market in March, after more than a year of work and a failed crowd-funding campaign. But that didn’t deter them. Padua Pasta Makers took over a former dance studio, which operated as a cleaners prior to that, that now is a gleaming, tiled shrine to Italian food.

There’s a deli counter with meat and 18 kinds of pasta; refrigerator cases with pre-packaged pasta and sauces made onsite; shelves and tables of canned tomatoes, olives and olive oils; and fresh bread, baked daily. Also, a light fixture made, upon closer inspection, from utensils.

You can get hot or cold sandwiches at lunchtime, 6 inches for $6.50, 10 inches for $8.50. I met a couple of friends there for lunch recently and ordered the Padua Special, the 6-inch version, with mortadella, salami, capocolla and provolone. I got it as a box lunch for $9.50, which gets you a soda, a tiny salad (I chose pesto pasta salad) and a piece of chocolate, not to mention a box.

The sandwich was quite filling, and I ended up taking half of it home. Should they make a 3-inch version? You might be better off skipping the box, as the extras may not feel worth $3. (Although the small piece of chocolate was awfully good.) I’ve meant to go back and buy pasta or sauce to go and will have to do that.

The business is evolving: When I was there late in August, they’d just got their beer and wine license, and they’ve added more dine-in tables because people want to eat there. And I can’t blame them: It’s lovely and sparkling, almost like a tea room. Also, the bathrooms may be the nicest in all of Upland. One friend said: “It’s like a men’s room in a Manhattan hotel lobby.”

Nothing but the best for the City of Gracious Living.

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Sprinting toward Arby’s

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The former Arby’s at 2250 N. Garey Ave. in Pomona, which dated to 1970, closed in 2012 and almost became a Boost Mobile store in 2013, reopened recently as a Sprint store. The building has been cleaned up and painted gray with yellow trim, matching the adjacent McDonald’s. The result looks appealing, actually. But the Conestoga wagon roof and original poles, now holding a modest sign, betray its Arby’s origins. Check it out and see if the staff is sick of Horsey Sauce jokes yet.

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Column: In kindergarten visit, he came bearing library cards

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In a series of classroom visits by library representatives, Ontario kindergartners are all getting library cards. I asked about tagging along and instead wound up making a visit myself — and reading to children. Yikes! But, anything for literacy. I tell the story in Friday’s column.

Above photo by Courtney Saldana of the library; photos below by Jana Dupree from Ontario-Montclair School District. In the bottom photo, the adults are, from left, teacher Sally Kinderstuth, Saldana and myself, all of us overshadowed, I think, by the giant on the right.

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Restaurant of the Week: Cachanilla

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Cachanilla Chinese Restaurant, 305 E. Holt Ave. (at Palomares), Pomona

Once upon a time, I believe, this restaurant was an American coffee shop, Hull House; later it became a series of Mexican restaurants, among them La Cabana and Molcajete; later still it was a Chinese buffet. Now it’s Cachanilla, which bills itself as Chinese food in the style of Mexicali.

Mexicali, in Baja California, at one point had a high concentration of Chinese immigrants and still has more Chinese restaurants than any other part of Mexico. I had no idea.

Intrigued, a friend and I gave Cachanilla a try recently for lunch. The interior is kind of swank, an upgrade from what I recall of a decade-old visit to La Cabana.

The menu seems very American Chinese, with chow mein, chop suey, orange chicken (“pollo a la naranja”) and the like. I got Mongolian beef ($8, “carne deres estilo mongolia”), my friend got the house special chow mein ($10, “chow mein de especialadad de casa”), and we shared dumplings ($8).

Well, these all tasted pretty standard to us, and a query of our waiter about what made the food Mexican got us an off-point answer about how people in Pomona wouldn’t care for San Gabriel Valley-style authentic Chinese food. A better answer had come via email from reader John Clifford, who learned from a server that Mexicali Chinese tends to use fewer vegetables and more bean sprouts and that some dishes include jalapenos or cilantro.

To be honest, we were a little disappointed by our lunch, having envisioned something more fusion-y. (But not like the Ontario Chinese-Mexican fusion place.) This was just regular Chinese food, which can be found seemingly everywhere.

That said, Chinese food is as scarce a commodity in Pomona as it is in Mexico, with a Panda Express in the Target center perhaps the only other edible Chinese food within city limits, unless fried rice specialist Kwon’s or the teriyaki bowls at Jinza count. So I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for liking Cachanilla, but also I wouldn’t steer anyone there from out of town.

By the way, I guess what I had really is Chinese food. An hour later, I was hungry again.

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Card-carrying library patron

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I got an Ontario City Library card the other afternoon. I had always thought of getting one, especially after shaming Gary Ovitt into signing up a few years ago, under the theory that the guy whose name is on the building ought to have one. Since I only work here rather than live here, I didn’t know if I qualified.

But then I was volunteered (note verb tense) to help get library cards to kindergartners, and that seemed like a good time to ask what the rules are, because it felt like if I were handing out cards, I should have one. Turns out anyone can get one. So I got one.

Later, the library director, Helen McAlary, told me there’s no residency requirement because so many potential users may work in the city but live elsewhere, or have some other reason for wanting to visit.

There’s not even a minimum age. “Even a newborn can be given one,” she said. “But we prefer they be old enough to know what they’re getting.”

I didn’t check anything out, and given all the unread books and unwatched DVDs in my home, I don’t know when I will. But I can, if the mood strikes. When the circulation clerk told me I could check out 20 items at a time, my heart beat a little faster. It took me back to the excitement of getting a library card as a boy and all the happy hours I spent at the library.

Thanks, Ontario.

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Column: Latest dirt on Claremont City Hall is in a mound

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A mound of dirt was fronting Claremont City Hall on Monday. Baseball? No, it’s part of the renovations to the landscaping. Ontario City Hall has also torn out its lawn. That’s the first part of my Wednesday column, followed by five Chino Valley items, three Culture Corner items and one about the royal family that comes from (why not?) a reader in La Verne.

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Reading Log: August 2015

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Books acquired: none

Books read: “A Journey to the Center of the Earth,” Jules Verne; “Why LA? Pourquoi Paris?” Diane Ratican; “Deus Irae,” Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny; and “Valis,” Philip K. Dick.

August ended with four books read. Well, technically, August ended with three books read, but I finished “Valis” at lunch on Sept. 2, so I’m counting it.

“Why LA? Pourquois Paris?” was left on my desk at work, by unknown parties; presumably it was a freebie sent to us, as it was published this year. The author is from Pasadena and has lived in Paris. She wrote chapters comparing her two favorite cities, LA and Paris, in various ways, enlivened by many pages of whimsical illustrations. Lightweight but charming. I jotted down many ideas from the Paris sections in case I visit again, as I suspect I will. The LA advice is pretty good too.

I’d read “A Journey to the Center of the Earth” as a lad but remembered not a whit of it. After reading “Around the World in 80 Days” and rereading “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” in recent years, I wanted to tackle this one too, in my childhood copy. I read it in an unusual way: a few pages in bed per night. It took me six or eight weeks this way. Normally I would never read a novel in such incremental fashion, but 1) it’s episodic, 2) the chapters are short and 3) it’s not compelling. The science is laughable — dinosaurs and an ocean-like lake under the Earth! — but the story is cute, and a little better than the other two Vernes, maybe because the narrator is likable.

“Deus Irae” and “Valis” are two latter period Dick novels, and purely by accident they made a good pairing, both being about spiritual concerns and both including, in passing, the idea of God existing in a humble brown clay pot. Also, in the first one, a character thinks he can find God by hallucinating on drugs; that idea is dismissed in one line in the second.

I couldn’t possibly describe the plot of these two books to anyone’s satisfaction, but they’re among Dick’s better books. Some say “Valis” is his masterpiece, and while it was a little static for me, it was very good.

The three novels are all purchases dating to my childhood or young adulthood. Only eight of those very old books remain on my shelves to be read. Progress.

What did you read in August, and have you read any of my four?

Next month: More progress, and almost certainly something by Robert Benchley.

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