Someone who looked like Charles Bronson ought not to be eating Szechwan tofu. : Eating Out at Toy Sun

There is no question in my mind that the San Fernando Valley is possessed of more good restaurants than any single area in Los Angeles.

I say that with a great deal of effort because before I was assigned to this distant outpost, I naturally assumed that food was considered chow in the Valley and eating out meant, at best, a Big Mac and fries.

We used to sit around in darling little Westside bistros sipping Campari and nibbling on Cajun chicken wings while wondering what the people over the Sepulveda Pass were eating.

We could picture them in Van Nuys growling and snapping as they hunched over their eats, then visualize them contentedly picking their teeth and wiping their hands on their coveralls when their bowls were empty.

Then I actually got to the Valley.

I discovered St. Moritz and Gaetano’s and Mr. Chang and Papillon Francais and La Ve Lee and Lautrec and Fontana di Trevi and a lot of other places that would make those sweet little Westside trattorias seem like pizza parlors.

Then, if there are all those great places in the Valley, I hear you cry, what am I doing cramped into a booth in a place like Toy Sun? Good question.

Toy Sun is the Chinese equivalent of dives with nothing to offer but Budweiser beer and the dubious distinction of being a place where truck drivers eat.

I do not drink Budweiser beer, and there is absolutely nothing in my background to suggest that I ever wanted to eat where truck drivers eat. But a friend urged me to go to Toy Sun in the middle of Canoga Park and listen to the conversations.

“It’s a blue-collar Chinese place,” he said. “Guys come by in their work clothes to pick up stuff to take home and, while they’re waiting, they get into these strange discussions. Try it. You’ll see.”

I did and he was right. I was digging into the egg roll portion of my $2.95 special when I heard someone say, “I had a friend who got out of bed to take a leak and keeled over dead.”

He looked like a carpenter and was talking to a man who was dressed in the kind of clothes that telephone linemen wear. The lineman also wore a bandanna tied around his forehead, which is a form of blue-collar chic.

“He collapsed at Knott’s Berry Farm two days earlier,” the carpenter was saying of the friend who got out of bed and died. “No one paid much attention but me. I told him to go home and go to bed. As it turned out, that wasn’t such a good idea, but the point is, no one really cares when a working guy suffers.”

“That’s the truth,” the lineman said. “I’ve had a foot problem for years. If I don’t take off my boots the minute I get home, my feet swell and then my back begins to swell. They wouldn’t even give me time off.”

I would have liked to hear more about the swelling back, but the carpenter wasn’t interested.

“Talk about your back problems,” he said. “A landlord pushed me out a window once and my back hasn’t been the same since. I was off work for almost three years. We were living on the $285 a month my wife was bringing in.

“One doctor said there weren’t nothing wrong with me. I would have reported him, but he wouldn’t give me his name.”

“A lot of doctors won’t give their names because they know they’ll get reported,” the lineman said.

“I popped a couple of ribs later,” the carpenter added. “I did that on the job, but. . . .”

He shrugged to indicate no one cared about the popped ribs either. It was not a working man’s world.

A guy who looked like Charles Bronson had come in, meanwhile, and asked for a triple order of mu shu pork and Szechwan tofu.

I could figure the mu shu pork all right, but it seemed to me that someone who looked like Charles Bronson ought not to be eating Szechwan tofu. But that’s not for me to say, I guess.

Anyhow, he was waiting for his order to be filled and listening to the conversation when, during a lull, he came up with: “I got shot in Fresno two years ago.”

Not bad. It isn’t easy to capture attention in that kind of situation, but he did it. The other two looked at him.

“The bullet hit me right here,” Bronson said, lifting his sweat shirt and pointing to a scar on his stomach. “I’ve had trouble with my bladder ever since.”

I wanted to tell him that wasn’t where his bladder was, but I’m not big enough or brave enough to challenge anyone who looks like Charles Bronson.

“It burns every time I go,” he said.

This reminded the carpenter of a bowel problem that seemed to start the year his ribs popped, but I was not about to share the rest of my moo goo gai pan with his bowel problem, so I left.

I will, however, return to Toy Sun when I need to know what the working man is thinking. It might not compare with Le Triumph in the quality of its cuisine, but who cares about potage a la tortue when you can dine with a guy with a swelling back?