HOME STYLE : Early Morning With the Regulars at Vickman’s

Owner Harry Vickman and head baker Robert Pena have been working since 3 a.m. in the kitchen of Vickman’s Restaurant and Bakery near downtown Los Angeles, mixing batter for their famous Italian rum cakes, shaving blocks of chocolate over velvety cream pies and kneading dough for long loaves of French bread. Their effort has a rhythm from 78 collective years of work--45 for Vickman, 33 for Pena. In the early morning hours, the restaurant is quiet, with only a few produce-market workers wandering in for coffee and a look at yesterday’s sports scores. But by 5:30 a.m., the line of customers waiting to order and find a seat reaches the door. “Boy, I’ve gotta get a cuppa coffee; I’m dyin’,” says a trucker in pointy-toed cowboy boots and a cap decorated with the Long Haul cologne insignia. He’s just in from Fresno. The front register doesn’t open until 6, so the three counter “girls” on the early shift work the cash register too, and the orders stack up. But no one really complains about the wait. It’s a chance to wake up and to ponder the fresh-baked Danish.

Between 5:30 and 6, Big Wally Cucich of V. & C. Wholesale, who’s known around Vickman’s as “the king of the produce market,” presides in the front room over informal business dealings with cronies. Customers nod to other regulars as they pass to their favorite tables, and waitresses rush by with stacks of pancakes and jiggers of melted butter. “The main thing he’s gotta do is cut out the broker,” one produce man says across his plate. “In certain commodities, people don’t want to buy from a broker, but you’ve gotta move merchandise.” The main commodity moving at Vickman’s is coffee, at 50 cents, poured from two-cup carafes capped with fluted paper covers. At lunchtime, the big movers will be the blackboard specials: pea soup, stuffed pork chops with applesauce and potato puffs, chicken with buttered noodles, and poached salmon with caper sauce. An assortment of accountants and artists, salesmen and rag-trade tycoons begins to drift in around 7 a.m. Carrying copies of the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, this suit-and-vest brigade mixes with the earlier crowd without fanfare. “I saw Murray on Thursday; he unloaded the Chicago property,” a voice floats over the crash of silverware. “What, Murray’s not dead? You saw him Thursday?” comes the reply from his table mate, his face hidden behind a newspaper. Across the room, an elderly woman in a bright-green sweater sits alone in a booth. “You feel better today, Isabel?” asks the waitress who brings her a fresh cup of tea. After planting a kiss on the old woman’s cheek, the waitress returns to the counter, picks up her order pad and smiles at the next person in line: “Hi, Gus, what can I get for you today?” Vickman’s Restaurant and Bakery is at 1228 East 8th St.