A man with ALS longed for lasagna from a long-closed Upland restaurant, DiCenso’s — and got it. I tell the story in my Wednesday column.
Column: Lasagna is recipe for dying man’s happiness
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Monthly Archives: May 2016
Hole in the Wall Gallery, Claremont
On a visit to Bunny Gunner‘s new digs in the old Pigale Optical Parlor space at 230 W. Bonita Ave. in Claremont, I was directed outside from the framing shop and art gallery to see the Hole in the Wall Gallery in the breezeway. First pass through, looking for a door, I missed it. Then someone pointed it out to me.
It’s a cabinet in the wall, about the size of a shoebox, that probably once held a fire extinguisher. Bunny Gunner co-owner Juan Thorp said he’d noticed the empty cabinet when he’d moved in to a nearby space two years ago and got Pigale owner David Wilson’s permission to make use of it. Thorp had turned a similar receptacle in an alley behind his former space in Pomona into a tiny art space too.
“This was empty and I loved it,” Thorp told me as we admired his handiwork. “Dave said go for it. He said it was a drug drop in the ’70s.”
Thorp put in plexiglas and a new light (there’s a key and lock too) and christened the space the Hole in the Wall Gallery. It lives up to its name.
Artist Anne Seltzer has the current show, if that’s not too grand a name for the single piece inside the space. It’s titled “…and now for my next trick” and is priced at $95.
“I’m a fan of alternative spaces,” Seltzer told me, mentioning that she had installed the Little Free Library box at eye level in a nearby alley behind Heroes and Legends. She’s had sculptures or paintings in the tiny gallery several times and has sold half a dozen of them.
Of the location, Seltzer said: “It’s fun to come up on.” In my case, you might come up on it and not even realize it. Keep an eye out for it.
Column: Antique Row loses an old friend as store closes
A long-lived antiques store in downtown Pomona has closed and been cleared out of decades of merchandise. That story is followed by seven (!) Culture Corner items and a poignant Valley Vignette. All this in my Sunday column.
Column: Pomona: Construction up; campaigning begins
I attended Pomona’s State of the City address this week, a nice chance to reconnect with city affairs, for me and for many other guests. I write about that in my Friday column.
Restaurant of the Week: Iron Skillet
Iron Skillet, 805 N. Euclid Ave. (at H), Ontario; open daily, 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
One of Ontario’s most distinctive restaurants, the Iron Skillet dates to 1959 and was built in the Googie style, with a low-pitched roofline and expansive windows, not to mention an old-fashioned counter with swivel seats. Originally a Spires Squires, it’s been Iron Skillet, under various hands, since about 1980.
After a period in the doldrums, it’s perked up in recent months under new owner. A reader advised me to give it another try, touting the freshly baked bread, pies and home-cooked food. So, after a long period away, I’ve gone in a couple of times for lunch.
First visit I got a special, the BBQ brisket sandwich ($9), which was a mistake. I forgot that kind of sandwich is basically chipped beef. The fries were better than average, though.
Next time I got the half-sandwich special ($11, I think), which came with two sides, from among a choice of soup, salad or pie. I got a tuna melt plus a Caesar salad and apple pie. (There were three flavors available.) It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I got pie, or that I opted for my baseline diner sandwich.
This was a filling meal, and pretty good too: big salad, hearty sandwich even in a half-portion and, after a few minutes for everything to settle, a slice of pie. While the pie was along the lines of the type you get in a supermarket, i.e., not spectacular, it was pie in a diner, where the ambience improves the experience. I’m not sure why it was served with a spoon rather than a fork.
Everything is homemade, including the pie and bread, my server told me. Breakfast is served all day, they’re open for dinner and, after 4:30 p.m., dinners come with ice cream on the house. Perhaps no other restaurant in Ontario can make that claim.
The menu has a variety of breakfast items, sandwiches and salads at lunch, and chicken, steak and seafood items for dinner (including, for those who find this appealing, liver and onions). Unexpected beverages include Italian sodas, Shirley Temple and Roy Rogers.
The Skillet is worth a fresh look if you like classic American diners. It’s nice to see them trying again.
Update August 2016: I’ve gone back a few times, including twice for breakfast, getting the cinnamon french toast (oh, that home-baked bread) and hash and eggs, both superior. An early bird dinner (for me it was a late lunch) of prime rib wasn’t bad either, and if memory serves, around $10. And it came with ice cream.
Column: Ontario kicks off 125th with Heritage at the Square
Ontario is marking 125 years as a city later this year and has events planned, with the first this Saturday at downtown’s Town Square. Details are in my Wednesday column, followed by nine more Ontario items. Gosh, an all-Ontario column. Some of these items, by the way, were written weeks ago, awaiting their turn at bat.
James Hueter, ‘Explorations’
James Hueter, one of the Claremont artists from the GI Bill era, has a one-man show, “Explorations,” that opened Saturday and continues through June 1 at the Bunny Gunner gallery, 230 W. Bonita Ave. It’s got a couple of dozen works in various media: paintings, drawings, sculptures and assemblages.
Hueter, seen at right above, turns 91 on May 15 “and continues to make new work in his studio in Claremont,” daughter Barbara Schenck told me. I attended the opening, as did many others, including a lot of local artists there to pay obeisance.
Hueter is the last survivor of the “Four Friends” group of Sam Maloof, Rupert Deese and Harrison McIntosh. One of his pieces was acquired recently by the Huntington Library for its permanent collection.
His most recent solo show was at the Claremont Museum of Art in 2009. “It was a 60-year retrospective — and that was seven years ago,” Schenck noted.
Column: Mother-daughter favorite is RC Big Read book
“The Joy Luck Club” is the Big Read book for Rancho Cucamonga. Have you read it? I haven’t, but probably should. That’s the lead item of Sunday’s column, which also has five Culture Corner items, a plug for this blog and a Valley Vignette.
Column: Comic in DC crosshairs is from 909
Comedian Larry Willmore speaks at the 102nd White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, DC, on April 30, 2016. / AFP / NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
Friday’s column starts with an item about the buzz-worthy White House Correspondents Dinner, where Larry Wilmore roasted the president and everyone else. Wilmore, who took Stephen Colbert’s place on Comedy Central, grew up in Pomona. I’ve also got a half-dozen Culture Corner items and more.
Restaurant of the Week: BC Cafe, Claremont
BC Cafe, 701 S. Indian Hill Blvd. (at San Jose), Claremont; open 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily
Drive by BC Cafe any weekend morning and you’ll see people standing in small groups outside, waiting for a free table. It’s a big-breakfast spot, with roots dating to 1959 in Pomona, where it was named Breakfast at Carl’s, before moving north and shortening its name at some later point, the ’80s or ’90s.
The name is somewhat confusing, incidentally. The owners attempted to brand the place as Kickback Jack’s, with a cartoon mascot of a Jimmy Buffett-like jackrabbit, but that’s only stuck at the second location, in Rancho Cucamonga. The website for both is KickbackJacks.com. But a change of the Claremont sign lasted a couple of weeks before the BC Cafe name was hastily restored.
I’ve eaten at both locations but primarily at Claremont’s, although not for years. For my birthday in March, though, I decided to treat myself to banana pancakes there.
BC was just as I’d remembered, even if the Howard Johnson’s behind it is now a Knights Inn. On a Monday morning, there was plenty of seating. The breakfast menu is extensive. They also have a variety of smoothies, not to mention a variety of milkshakes, on a beverage and desserts menu.
I got one pancake, plus egg and bacon ($9.03). (You can get two pancakes with egg and bacon/sausage for $11, or the two pancakes alone for $9, but two would have been too many.) The sides were fine and the pancake very good, with bananas cooked right in, as I’d recalled, rather than placed on top as an afterthought, as at most restaurants.
Figuring I ought to try them for lunch too, I returned a few weeks later, at about 1 p.m. There’s a sizable menu of sandwiches, burgers and salads. There’s also something called the “dirty” menu for both breakfast and lunch, where all the items have “dirty” in their names. It’s evidently less healthy items, although that’s muddied by “dirty kale Tuscany salad,” which hardly sounds like an indulgence. The print version is poorly designed and really should be rethought. Also confusing: The back of the staff T-shirts promote “dirty donuts,” but they’re not on the menu that I could tell, and I forgot both times to ask about them.
I ordered off the specials menu, a half Frisco baguette ($8.89), which is a roll with chicken, onions and mushrooms, all grilled. What is “Frisco” about this sandwich is unknown; it’s a chicken Philly without cheese. It came with fries, plus soup or salad.
There was a problem here: The first soup I ordered wasn’t available, and as for the second, the server returned and reported that they’d all been sitting for a while without heat and that she wouldn’t serve them. She recommended a salad, which I got, and which was fine. This may be a fluke, but it doesn’t say much for the kitchen. It does, however, say a lot for the server.
Naming issues aside, the sandwich was quite good, and I don’t know how I would have eaten the full version. Besides the salad and fries, there was a cute little cup of tapioca pudding (awww), a pickle slice, an orange slice and a teensy box with two pieces of Beechwood gum. Such a deal.
So, BC Cafe has awfully long menus, the sort of thing that leads to suspicion of overreach. Except both my meals were really good.
