In 1924, Harold Lloyd came east to film a few scenes for “The Freshman” in downtown Ontario. Lloyd was one of the biggest stars of his day and this movie was a big hit. It’s among my favorites. I delve into the visit in Sunday’s column.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the 1969 storms that flooded Cucamonga and wreaked havoc throughout the region. I look back in Friday’s column. I hope I didn’t get anything wrong, but may well have, as a good overview article about the scope of the damage was hard to find in the limited time I had. If you lived through it, what do you remember?
Slummin’ Gourmet, 224 E. 2nd St. (at Gibbs), Pomona; open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday to Saturday
There’s a trend in LA of food truck operators opening traditional restaurants, and like a lot of LA trends (concert venues in old theaters, Instagram-worthy breweries, homelessness), this one has likewise come to Pomona.
Slummin’ Gourmet‘s truck used to come to the Fairplex Food Truck Thursday event, so it’s not a stranger to town. Last October, chef Tony Lu retired the truck, except for catering or special events, and opened his restaurant in a narrow storefront in downtown Pomona’s Antique Row. For you oldtimers, it occupies what used to be Kaiser Bill’s Military Emporium.
After weeks in which I waited patiently for a friend to be in town at lunchtime, she threw me over for another lunch partner. I see how it is. So when two other friends wanted to meet up for lunch in Pomona, Slummin’ was among my suggestions and that’s where they picked after a look at the intriguing menu.
Antique Row, once lined with antique stores, now is about half vacant, another line of work, like newspapering, on which the internet has taken a toll. Squeezed between a salon school and a vacant antique mart, Slummin’ is joltingly modern from its design aesthetic to its inventive fusion of Asian and American tastes.
We lined up at the counter and ordered a bunch of items to share: chipotle maple sweet potato tots ($5), Chicken Done Right sandwich ($12), honey walnut shrimp “tacos” ($14), P-Town Seoul Bowl ($14), Asian BBQ pork belly baos ($9), and cauliflower curry grain bowl ($11).
The items began arriving in paper baskets or on plates. We were also given paper baskets as plates and plastic utensils. (Slummin’s motto: “Fancy, not schmancy.”)
The tots, dusted with sesame seeds and scallions, were fun, only lightly spicy and both tastier and moister than sweet potato fries tend to be.
The honey walnut shrimp “tacos” are served in Bibb lettuce wraps rather than tortillas, befitting their Chinese, or at least Chinese American, origins. The lettuce held together surprisingly well, and the combination of lightly fried shrimp, sauce, cucumber, lettuce and crispy white vermicelli was delicious. Two of us said this was our favorite.
The Seoul bowl, with rice, pork belly, kim chi and a fried egg, was another favorite. We also liked the pork belly baos, which came open-faced like tacos.
We were less impressed by the grain bowl, where the curry and the quinoa didn’t appear on speaking terms. The Chicken Done Right sandwich, despite a nice Asian slaw, didn’t have enough crunch or spice. Chicken Almost Done Right would have been more accurate. “It’s just not memorable,” one in our party said. We also topped things off with two churros ($3.50 each), which didn’t appear to have been made onsite and which were too sugary.
Still, we were impressed by the eclectic menu, which changes every week. In fact, looking at the menu online as I write this on Tuesday, not a single item we ordered — and we ordered a lot — is on this week’s menu.
More important, then, is the general impression: It’s a clean, lively spot, the staff is really nice and they’re turning out some quality items. “They have that food-truck pedigree where they’re used to pumping things out,” one friend said admiringly.
You won’t feel like you’re slumming by eating here. Slummin’ Gourmet elevates the Pomona dining scene.
Every time I’ve driven past Golden Spur steakhouse in Glendora, it looked closed, but that’s only because I’ve only ever driven past in the morning on my way to Donut Man. Now, though, Golden Spur really is closed, after a mere 100 years.
Glendora is a little outside the Bulletin’s coverage and delivery area, but since the news hadn’t made the papers, apparently, and surely many of you have likewise driven past or even eaten there in the past century, I phoned City Hall to inquire about the property and learned a new use has already been approved. So, all that makes up Wednesday’s column — plus a Culture Corner and a Valley Vignette for good measure.
The Avoiding Regret blog has a fond, amusing post about the restaurant.
As you may have noticed, the “Recent Comments” section on the right-hand side of this page was frozen in time since mid-November, stubbornly refusing to reflect any of your fresh, piping-hot comments.
Your comments showed up here, but for those of you who tried to keep up on what others posted, you were out of luck. So was I, to a point; I needed a work-around to see new comments, because I always read them and want to respond if called for.
Some of the brightest minds at our newspaper chain’s home base in Denver spent a month trying to figure out what was wrong without breaking everything. Apparently they had to revert to a previous version of the commenting software plug-in to unjam things.
That was resolved by last Thursday. Your comments are now not only flowing freely but transparently. Thanks for your patience. Now go out there and comment for the team!
You’ve probably seen Sumner House even if you don’t know its name; it’s the Victorian on a slight rise at First and College in Claremont. Don Pattison has been the host at the Pomona College-owned guest house, greeting visitors and living on the premises for 26 years. On his way out, he gave me a tour. Tag along in Sunday’s column.
In a column that’s been in the works for months, here’s the story of Rainbow Gardens, a dance hall from the ’40s to the ’60s that drew an amazing array of performers, many of them household names. It was the Fox or Glass House of its day. It’s the subject of my Friday column. (And will result in at least two follow-ups.)
Old World Deli, 281 S. Mountain Ave. (at 8th), Upland; open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily except Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
A storefront in the Mountain Green shopping center next to a former Mervyns and Kohl’s is on the surface an incongruous spot for a restaurant named Old World Deli. It calls itself “an international delicatessen featuring Italian, German, Jewish and American food” and began as a meat market in Downey in 1969.
The Upland location began in 1973 on Foothill Boulevard, according to one of the many newspaper writeups framed on the walls. There were multiple locations at its height; today there’s Covina (126 Shoppers Lane) and Upland.
I ate here once or twice in the ’00s and had positive experiences while never feeling motivated to return. A few months ago, a soup-lovin’ friend told me the soups are top-notch, putting the restaurant back on my radar. During the holidays, an attempted visit to my go-to pizzeria, San Biagio’s, in Mountain Green was thwarted due to vacation.
So I hit up Old World Deli. After the shaded patio tables out front, you enter to a deli case, tile floor, a wall-filling mural and some Italian market items. Rather than order at the deli counter, you order at the regular counter, where the staff is friendly.
The menu has hot and cold sandwiches, a salad bar, soup, pizza, pasta dinners, hot dogs and broasted chicken. They are broad-minded sorts.
I got the tuna melt ($8), a special that day. As careful readers know, the tuna melt is my baseline sandwich, the one I will almost invariably order if it’s on a menu to get a sense of the restaurant. This was a good version with pickles, cheddar and tomatoes on sourdough.
A week later, with San Biagio’s still closed, this time for painting, I had the excuse for a repeat visit to Old World Deli. I wanted a soup and, with five choices, went with cream of mushroom, which was sold out. I opted for broccoli cheese, plus a half sandwich, roast beef (around $8.50).
The sandwich, about 4 inches, was packed with roast beef. The soup was the standout, an 8-ounce serving, creamy and, remarkably, hot all the way to the bottom of the foam cup. Both made for a decent-sized lunch.
I ought to try one of the dinners, which they serve after 4 p.m. and which include a daily special, like fish and chips on Friday. Fish and chips? Broasted chicken? Lasagna? They seem to know what they’re doing, so it wouldn’t surprise me if all these items were pretty good. Although I would advise them against branching out into sushi.
You may have heard or read over the years about a reputed Sears kit house in Rancho Cucamonga, a 1908 landmark. But is it really a Sears kit house? We may never know, but two experts say it’s unlikely. I assemble the story (folding Piece A into Slot B) for Wednesday’s column.
Spotted on Indian Hill Boulevard in Pomona. Something tells me the rent for this former cut-rate store is more than a buck a month.
