Toast of the Town : Harry’s Stirs Social Spoon in La Jolla

For Michael West, it was through a visit to Harry’s coffee shop that he eventually landed his La Jolla dream house back in 1981.

“One Sunday morning, when my wife and I first considered moving here from Los Angeles, we called a local Realtor about looking at some houses,” said West, president of First National Bank.

“I asked where she wanted to meet. And she said “Oh, why we’ll meet at Harry’s, of course. Everybody meets at Harry’s.”

Eight years later, West has become a regular at the coffee shop he calls “La Jolla’s laid-back power breakfast place,” where he has met more clients than the feathery flapjacks flipped each day from Harry’s well-greased grill.

On any morning, mixed in with the surfers and retired couples, West might see a couple of big-time developers sharing a corner booth, a corporate attorney at the counter, or the managing partner of some Big Eight accounting firm poring over the financial pages at a window table.

“And who I don’t know Harry will introduce me to,” said West, a strapping man in a beige business suit. “He’ll say, ‘Mike, I think you ought to know so-and-so.’ I’ve never gone into Harry’s with too many business cards. He always cleans me out.”

All around this wealthy enclave, 57-year-old Harry Rudolph is known as the Ambassador of Breakfast, the social spoon that stirs La Jolla’s morning cup of coffee.

Since it opened in 1959, Harry’s coffee shop has provided La Jollans with an authentic glimpse into a simpler small-town life--places with only two traffic lights and a single patrol car, where the servers wear statuesque hairdos and can not only remember your order, but probably your name as well.

Like the food they serve, some of Harry’s waitresses are salty, and some are sweet. But they go with breakfast like cream in your coffee, or maybe a jalapeno in your egg yolk.

There are other neighborhood breakfast spots, most notably John’s waffle shop and the Broken Yolk Cafe. But Harry’s has history. Situated on Girard Avenue, it’s the oldest family-owned restaurant in La Jolla, a place where just about everyone feels like a regular.

The eatery has also been a training ground for his nine children, most of whom have learned not only how to get on with strangers, but bus their tables, top off their coffee.

And, every morning on the early-bird shift, Harry’s 89-year-old mother works the cash register with the watchful eye of a 50-year veteran in the coffee-shop business. Her name is Susan, but everybody calls her Mom.

Each day at 5 a.m., a waitress knocks on the door of Mom’s apartment, directly over the coffee shop, to summon her for the day.

“She’s so cute--every morning, she asks the same question: “Who is it?” says waitress Nanette Forrey. “Then we guide her downstairs to her place. She needs help getting there. But, as soon as she gets there, she takes charge. She knows just about everybody who comes in.”

Regulars know Harry’s as an equal opportunity eatery because just about everybody bellies up to the counter there--movie stars and masonry workers, wealthy tycoons, firemen, lifeguards, plastic surgeons and chairmen of the board.

Dick Van Dyke used to be a regular customer. So was Ray Kroc. Tom Cruise and the boys from the film set were regulars during the making of the movie “Top Gun.” Just last week, waitresses say, John F. Kennedy Jr. was spotted at the counter, hunkered down over a steaming plate of scrambled eggs.

In the past, former Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid even paid the coffee shop a brief visit--replete with machine gun-armed body guards at the front and back doors--so his wife could sample Harry’s tuna salad sandwich.

Teen-agers meet there for a snack before school. And, every Tuesday, a group of Christian La Jolla businessmen gathers to discuss the Bible over a cup of coffee and three-egg omelettes.

Not bad for a coffee shop that was doomed to failure from the day it opened.

“Actually, we’re in a bad location. It’s in the middle of the street. The parking lot is hidden in the back,” Harry said. “We’re far away from downtown La Jolla and all the foot traffic.

“The day we opened 30 years ago, the locals predicted we wouldn’t make it. They said we were on the wrong end of town.”

But Harry’s has survived, its owner says, with a dash of pluck and a ready smile. People first show up for the fast service. But they come back because of the friendliness.

Harry grew up working in his father’s coffee shop in the New York City area, a place called Junior’s Corner where brisk service was a matter of survival, he recalls. Because New Yorkers don’t have time to wait.

“It’s like that here, fast and friendly,” he said, adding that prices are reasonable as well. “If a waitress has an attitude problem, she doesn’t stick around for long.”

Talk about friendly. When Steve Brown, a landscaper from El Cajon, celebrated his birthday the other day, half-a-dozen waitresses gathered around his booth with a blueberry muffin adorned by a single candle.

Then they sang him a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday.’ This wasn’t any hip chain restaurant, where halfhearted teen-agers dole out such gestures each week by the dozens. This was the real thing. And Brown was blushing to prove it.

“I was raised in Kentucky, and this is the first place I’ve found that even comes close to that kind of down-home friendliness,” he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Brown spotted gray-haired Mom beckoning him with a handful of chocolate kisses. Later she sent a $2 bill over to his table as another little gift.

“The friendliness just comes out real naturally,” Brown said. “Out in El Cajon, they have this assumption about La Jollans and their ‘don’t tread on me, upper-crust attitude.’ But this coffee shop is as friendly as in any small community I’ve ever been to.”

Gardner Marston likes the feeling of walking into a restaurant and knowing almost everyone. “It adds a boost to your morale,” he said. “Let me put it this way, this place is an institution--not a university or penal institution. It’s an institution of breakfast.”

And strangely, the coffee shop even serves as a meeting ground for the town’s socialite set--just ask Reba Brophy. The social editor for La Jolla magazine often sips coffee in a secluded booth, with a watchful eye on celebrity comings and goings.

“Nobody in La Jolla eats breakfast at home anymore--they all come here,” she said. “So, if you stay in here long enough, you’re bound to come across someone you know, or would like to know.”

On weekends, the wait for a table at Harry’s can last two hours. But few people seem to mind. Instead, they devour the offerings from the dozen or so newspaper vending machines found just outside--from the financial sheets for the movers and shakers to a singles magazine for the lonely at heart.

Once inside, counter patrons can relish the waitresses’ clattering symphony of movement--scooping up a stray dish with one hand as they pour another cup of coffee with the other.

Scientist Lee Chavis comes in every morning at 5:30 a.m. to savor a cup of black coffee and eavesdrop on the banter of a crew of early-morning regulars.

“These are World War II vintage guys, typically from Brooklyn or someplace else, and they have these amazing arguments about golf or baseball--all in a New York dialect,” he said. “It’s very funny.”

Indeed, Harry’s is the kind of place you can write home about.

“The thing about the place is that it’s stayed the same,” said John Demirjian, a surfer and substitute schoolteacher, who sat at the counter, writing a letter to his parents.

“It hasn’t changed hands every few years like some of the other greasy spoons in town. It’s the same here, always. And people come back.”

Customers like Demirjian often become involved in the daily coffee shop confusion, helping to bark out orders to the cooks. Or offering up a little small talk of their own.

“Hey, hows about you and me taking a little bike trip around the world. I got the bikes,” he asks waitress Nanette Forrey.

“How long will it take,” she counters with a smile.

Oh, about two years, comes the response.

“I don’t know,” she says. “That’s quite a commitment. My customers would miss me.”

She’s not kidding. In fact, some customers aren’t even hungry when they show up at Harry’s--they’re just there for a little morning socializing with waitresses who have seen their children grow from infants.

“The food is always good. But I think it’s Harry who brings the customers back,” said Gene Sally, a four-day-a-week customer. “He’s like a politician or a one-man welcome wagon. He kisses all the babies, no matter how ugly they are.”

Harry has instigated so many business deals, he’s lost count.

“A lot of big stock deals have happened here,” he said. “You heard about the restaurant in San Diego that years ago bugged all its booths? Well, with all the money talk in this place, I sure wish my tables had ears. I’d be retired by now.”

Still, Harry keeps informed. He’s even on the community advisory board of the First National Bank, West said. “We figured that, if we wanted to keep track of what a community wanted in a bank, we might as well just ask Harry. He knows everyone.”

There are some confidences, however, that Harry will not surrender. Several high-ranking city politicians are regular customers at the coffee shop--not for the exposure, but for the food, along with some peace and quiet.

So Harry leaves them alone and chases away the autograph seekers and business card peddlers.

But even the low-key Harry--an avid golfer and sports enthusiast--has gotten stars in his eyes.

Lost His Cool

Once, Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight came in with a group of other coaches. Harry was so excited to meet him, he uncharacteristically lost his cool. He knocked a glass of water on Knight’s lap.

“He looked up at me without messing a beat and said ‘Nice hands, son,’ ” Harry recalled.

Another time, Harry had been up late the previous night studying a new series of self-help golf tapes produced by pro golfer Al Geiberger.

“I was up real late looking at these tapes,” he recalled. “The next day at 6 a.m. I look up at the counter and who do I see sitting there--it’s Al Geiberger!

“I thought I was dreaming, you know, too many long hours behind the counter. I yelled, ‘Al Geiberger, what are you doing here?’ He looked at me like I was crazy. He said he’s just dropped his son off at a local golf tournament. He hasn’t been back.”

After 30 years of scrambling La Jolla’s eggs and buttering its toast, even Harry can see the day when he walks away from the coffee shop crowd for the last time.

Recently, at his wife’s urging, he cut his closing time back from 7:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. Although many of his children have moved out of state--meaning he can’t call them in to work if someone gets sick, Harry says--daughter Cathy now works as manager and will one day take over the reins.

“I’ve always envied people who had real weekends,” he said. “It’s always been seven days a week around here. Even if I took a day off, my mind is always here.”

But there is one thought that bothers Harry just a little--the suggestion that his daughter might one day change the name of the place to “Cathy’s Coffee Shop.”

“If she does,” he said, shaking his head at the mere idea of it, “she’d be out of the will for sure.”