Flamingo Cafe Feeds Old-Timers Memories

In a current television commercial, a good ol’ boy in a small-town diner asks for more picante sauce. He balks at the big-city brand he is given. “This ain’t . . . picante sauce.” The gum-chomping waitress tells the choosy customer he “ain’t Burt Reynolds.” For serving the big-city brand, the portly sheriff tells her, “Darlin’, we gone haf to shut yew down.”

This scenario would not be out of place at the Flamingo Cafe in Chula Vista, where the atmosphere is one of unmanufactured nostalgia.

There’s no chrome, hardly any neon, no fancy floor. There’s just down-home food, served seven days a week, 24 hours a day, for the many decades the Flamingo Cafe on the corner of Broadway and G Street has been open for business.

And business has been good. Since 1925, cooks have made countless breakfasts, dished up oodles of chicken-fried steak and meat loaf, and served enough coffee to float a flotilla.

Standard American Fare

The menu features standard American fare. Prices range from a 50-cent cup of coffee to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at $1.30 to liver and onions at $3.75 on special and, at the top of the price list, a $7.35 T-bone steak dinner.

“The Flamingo has a family feeling,” said Howard Paine, whose father bought the property in 1949. “You go into a Denny’s and it’s just a Denny’s. You go into the Flamingo and people are talking between tables as if sitting in their own dining rooms.

“The whole cafe is a dining room and people like it because it never changes. ‘It’s a part of

people’s lives, it grows on you.”

And it grows on a lot of different people. There are the elderly that come in for their 10% discounts on dinners. There are the housewives, the loners and the book readers. After midnight, the bar crowd wanders in, followed by workers just coming off the graveyard shift. Occasionally, new wave youths drop by, with their distinctive clothing and hair styles. And of course there are the 30 or so regulars whom manager Artice Dunlop says you can set your clock by.

The cafe itself is homey and unremarkable. Large flamingos are carved into the heavily varnished tables in the seven booths, three of which seat only two people. A large oil painting of flamingos hangs on a wall. Bric-a-brac and old photos are displayed in helter-skelter fashion. Assorted pies are stacked in a glass case on the 16-seat counter. The obligatory ketchup bottles, hot pepper sauce and salt & pepper shakers are clustered at each table and along the counter. An interesting flamingo-etched mirror hangs above the juke box.

Clientele Remains Loyal

Paine attributes the cafe’s longevity to the friendly environment and a loyal clientele that stuck with it in good times and bad.

Clarence (Bud) Cash has been going to the cafe since 1939. “I worked odd hours and it was always open,” Cash said. “Everybody is so nice and you can come here and meet your friends.”

Cash, who retired from the flower-growing business only three years ago, is known by all the other regulars at the cafe. He is a spry octogenarian and obviously enjoys the lively banter that can be heard above the din of clinking dishes.

He talked about the flower plots he used to own around Chula Vista. He talked about his famous second cousin, Johnny Cash. Clearly, he likes being in his favorite eatery passing time with the customers.

Although the cafe’s management has changed many times over the years, the personnel has been steady.

Edie Carl retired from the cafe in August after waitressing there for 16 years. Esther Guy, 71, is a short-order cook who has worked at the Flamingo since 1961. She said Sunday is the busiest day but she “can handle it.”

“They get TLC here--I even remember if they like their toast buttered,” Guy said.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the cafe has only closed on two occasions--Christmas Day, 1965, and another day that same year for repairs after a car crashed through a wall.

Property Still in Family

The property on which the cafe stands remains in the Paine family, but the cafe is now owned by Merrilee Kjar. Dunlop, the manager, is negotiating to buy it.

Before Interstates 5 and 805 were built, Broadway was the main thoroughfare in the South Bay. It joined with Highland Avenue in National City and the old Pacific Highway to form a link from Tijuana to downtown San Diego, Dunlop said.

“The cafe was the truck stop here,” she said.

Truckers, motorcyclists on their Indian bikes and tourists stopped off here, Paine recalled.

Some of the music on the juke box reflects that long-ago time. The Glen Miller tunes are right alongside the likes of Madonna and Dwight Yoakam.

“I guess the property would probably be worth more if something else were sitting on it, but it’s part of my life,” Paine said. “I wouldn’t know what to do without it.”