Fans Don’t Waffle About La Jolla Eatery

Bob Lakosil was fed up with talking about the stock market. He wanted to get away from bulls and bears and settle down with some serious pig--some good home-cooked bacon from John’s Waffle Shop in La Jolla.

Lakosil is manager of E.F. Hutton in La Jolla. He said “Everybody!” has been asking about the stock market, about the crash of ’87 and the dreaded crush of ’88. And now he’s tired of having “Everybody!” hang on his every word, like a scene from some E.F. Hutton television commercial.

But at John’s, a 34-year-old eatery on ritzy Girard Avenue, Lakosil can get away from it all and take a “Back to the Future”-type journey that seizes his sense of romance like a blast from a welcome past.

“It’s a throwback to the Midwest, to the type diners Sue and I used to know growing up,” he said with an almost-misty expression.

Sue is Lakosil’s wife; Nicholas is their 2-year-old boy. All were at a table at John’s on Friday morning.

A Cozy Place

“This place is cozy and comfy and terrifically down-home,” Lakosil said. “The food is reasonably priced and tasty, and where else can you come in and see wood paneling on the walls and corrugated sheet metal like the kind behind the griddle over there? The place is great because it’s real .”

Lakosil won’t get an argument, at least not from the patrons who packed the place Friday morning, filling the small, narrow dining room with lively chatter and plenty of laughter, punctuated with cries of “More coffee, please .”

No one was waffling in their enthusiasm for John’s.

That was the common denominator. Nothing else about the crowd seemed the least bit consistent. Varied was the one description everyone clung to. Mike Lavin, 27, and Coleman Taylor, 28, were woofing down fried eggs and hash browns side by side. Taylor and Lavin are maintenance workers and “the best of buds,” Lavin said.

“I like this place because it doesn’t have many blacks,” he added, promptly getting a poke in the ribs from Taylor, who happens to be black.

“I like this place because it doesn’t have many Lavins,” Taylor said with a lusty laugh.

A few feet away from the Lavin-Taylor show was David Sprung, 40, whose line of work is “high fashion.” Sprung, who only recently moved to La Jolla from South Florida, owns Jacques LeLong, “the ultimate boutique,” an exclusive women’s clothing outlet on Prospect Street. Among the items in Sprung’s store is a lynx coat that retails for $20,000.

Sprung was polishing off a banana-nut waffle and rhapsodizing about the beauty of La Jolla, which someone once dubbed “the jewel.” That makes John’s an anachronistic nugget on the necklace of Girard.

Funky and Spunky

Funky, spunky John’s, redolent of bacon grease and sizzling cheese, may seem like an odd favorite for residents of the pristine jewel, but Sprung and others treasure it--and return again and again, no matter how nomadic their ventures make them.

Sprung said John’s may be the only place in San Diego County where maintenance workers and teachers and the occasional hard hat can mingle with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor or Johnny Carson, who on a recent visit left a $2 tip, sending a waitress into ecstasy. In referring to John’s, Sprung and others consistently use words such as “landmark” and “institution.”

Sprung said he was “somewhat concerned” about the fat content of the food at John’s--which specializes in ham and omelets, pancakes and waffles heaped with “fresh-frozen” strawberries--but it’s never enough to make him stop coming and ordering just those things.

“Oh, no, no, no ,” he said. “I get a lot out of coming here--the friendliness of the place, the atmosphere. Besides, I believe in the ethic of really treating myself once in a while. John’s is my treat.”

Bud Davis, 51, remembers coming to John’s when it first opened in 1953. Davis was then a delivery boy for his father’s meat company, when John’s was known as Gene’s Waffle Shop. That lasted until 1954, when John (Dusty) King bought the shop and gave it its current name. King got his nickname starring in cowboy movies. In 1980, he sold the place to Davis with the stipulation that “everything remain the same”--including the name.

Davis, a marathon runner, has kept the promise but in 1982 added “more nutritional items,” such as whole-wheat pancakes and fruit salad. He also opened up on Sundays, a move King had always resisted. Davis said Saturday and Sunday are now the busiest days. John’s is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It opens at 8 a.m. on Sundays.

‘Exhibitionistic Cooking’

For 28 years, until his retirement in 1985, chef Felix Tobias was in Davis’ words “the morning show at John’s.” Tobias was “more than just a chef,” Davis said. His schtick was “exhibitionistic cooking.”

Lakosil, the E.F. Hutton expert, said he used to come into John’s just to watch Tobias fry eggs. He would flip them from pan to pan, always playing to the crowd, which egged him on with giggly delight and disbelief.

Waitress Zee Diakoumis loves the ambiance of John’s, which she said has stayed through the post-Tobias era. She takes tips from people all over the world--Europe, Greece, even Santee.

John’s wide appeal was evident Friday morning. Sitting at the table near the door were Patricia Farnitano, 24, and Gregory Seminara, 27, from Atlanta, which they called “Hotlanta!”

Seminara said that he and Farnitano were vacationing in La Jolla, and after merely driving by, were “sucked in” by the toasty magnetism of John’s. Farnitano is a nurse, Seminara the regional sales manager for the Clorox Co. They were splitting the $3.65 strawberry supreme--a crusty waffle laden with strawberries and mounds of vanilla ice cream. They tabbed it a guilty pleasure, the kind any vacationer from “Hotlanta!” deserves.

“If people ate more waffles like this,” Seminara said conspiratorially, “we at Clorox would sell more bleach. Imagine the stain this thing would leave.”

While Seminara pondered dirty laundry, and the profit it might induce, Betsy Kuhle, 33, was considering--and devouring--her own guilty pleasure. Kuhle is the women’s tennis coach at Western Michigan University. She’s in La Jolla helping baby-sit her brother’s kids, one of whom, 4-year-old Nicky, was by her side taking in the delectable cuisine.

“I don’t often eat this kind of food,” Kuhle said apologetically, finishing off a waffle. “But I’m kind of tired, and this place has a way of just destroying willpower. But who cares? The food is great.”

Randi Grant, 26, has only worked as a waitress at John’s since June, but she cherishes the “homey atmosphere” and the fun of spotting recognizable faces from Hollywood.

“Several of the stars from ‘St. Elsewhere’ were in the other day, and a bunch of guys who played in ‘Roots’ came in,” she said. “The villagers are tops, though. This place remains an institution because of how everyone feels about it. They love it, and that emotion comes through.”

Steve Daniels, 27, and Cheryl Mlceh, 23, had just finished the “graveyard” shift at Scripps Memorial Hospital. Theirs was a mood bordering on punchy celebration. Daniels, the respiratory therapist, was having “fluffy” scrambled eggs and several cups of “coffee black.” Mlceh, the registered nurse, was gulping down a waffle and ham.

“I’m tired!” Daniels said. “We had a couple of code-blues last night. Just your average night at the old hospital.”

“I thought we needed some excitement in our lives,” Mlceh said. “So I went with this here syrup-laced waffle. Look at that thing, would you. What a way to top off the mornin’.”