Rival Chefs Hash It Out : Diners: A lawsuit raises the burning question: Is there room for two omelet houses in the Antelope Valley?

For those who didn’t know there actually are recipes for hash browns, be assured there’s a good one in use at Crazy Otto’s Diner, located so close to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks in Lancaster that your seat actually vibrates when the trains roll by.

So says new owner Donald Whitbeck, who also believes those copycats over at the Copper Skillet in Palmdale have stolen it.

Whitbeck has filed suit against the owners of the Copper Skillet, Patricia and Geoffrey Cross, accusing them of stealing not only his hash brown recipe but also those for salsa, chili and omelets.

A Superior Court judge has issued a temporary restraining order demanding that the Crosses not compete unfairly with Whitbeck. Presumably, this means their hash browns better be browner or less hashlike. Anything but the same old round mound of ground spuds.

Asked to describe Crazy Otto’s food preparation technique, attorney Susan Clark refused. “That would be a secret,” she said.

To Patricia Cross, seated in her tidy little restaurant in a nondescript storefront on East Palmdale Boulevard, the whole thing seems a little hard to grasp.

“How many ways are there to make hash browns?” she asked as a handful of customers dug into their potatoes and eggs, accompanied by biscuits and gravy.

But Whitbeck said the problem is not that simple. He said Crazy Otto’s has developed a wide reputation for its food and its special kind of ambience. People actually drive long distances to watch their plates shimmy and shuffle across the table in unison, like a Melmac conga line. And, of course, to stare in wonder at the three-foot-tall statue of an otter, which sits incongruously on the roof holding up a train lantern. Nobody seems to know why it’s there.

Whitbeck said the Crosses are not only copying Crazy Otto’s recipes, they’re trying to use their former involvement with the diner to cash in on the whole Crazy Otto phenomenon.

“It’s like if you designed a little round car and called it the people’s car,” attorney Clark said. Volkswagen, she said, would have a right to be teed off.

Patricia Cross said she and her husband, an expatriate English couple who came to the United States to seek their fortunes 10 years ago, were not trying to upset anybody when they opened the Copper Skillet. Their involvement with Crazy Otto’s began when they purchased the diner in 1983 from the wife of the original owner, Otto Linsell. Six years later, the Crosses sold it to another couple. As part of that sale, the Crosses agreed not to open another restaurant within 10 miles of Crazy Otto’s for seven years, Whitbeck said.

Patricia Cross said she didn’t realize the non-competing clause would transfer to Whitbeck, when he purchased the restaurant last year. So six months ago, she and her husband opened their new restaurant, in part, she said, to give a start in business to two of her children who are out of work due to the state of the economy.

She also said that before they opened the Copper Skillet, her husband went over to Whitbeck out of courtesy and told him their plans. “They shook hands,” she said urgently, as though there could be no greater betrayal than going back on a handshake.

Yes, Whitbeck said, he shook hands. But that was before he realized that the Crosses were going to open an omelet shop so similar to his diner.

He said Cross even took out radio ads saying, “The Crazy Englishman is back.” There was a story in the local newspaper about his return to the restaurant business.

“The article said he had taken the best of the old and improved on it,” Whitbeck said.

At this point, the intrigue began. Whitbeck “sent someone in to take a menu,” said Patricia Cross, in order to compare it to his. She admitted the menus are similar in design, but said that is because the same company produced both.

Then there is the unpleasantness over whether Geoffrey Cross should be allowed to call himself crazy.

Whitbeck said the term “Crazy Englishman” that Cross used in his advertising came from his association with the restaurant. “He copied the menu and he used the name Crazy,” Whitbeck said angrily.

But Patricia Cross said the term has more to do with her husband’s nature than with his former association with Crazy Otto’s. Trained as a master baker in cold, wet England, Cross inexplicably decided a decade ago that as a new American immigrant, he should go into an alien business in an alien climate. He opened a gasoline station in the desert community of Littlerock, where he became known as “that Crazy Englishman” because of the long hours he put in under the burning sun.

In his wife’s opinion, crazy is as crazy does.

The controversy has clearly upset Patricia Cross. “We did not come in with the intention to run Don out of business,” she said.

But Whitbeck said he feels betrayed by a man who offered his hand and then gave him the back of it.

“If he’d done things like a gentleman,” it might have been different, Whitbeck said. “But he tried to pull a fast one on me.”

If Cross had opened a dinner restaurant, he said, he would not have minded. Also, if Cross had opened his restaurant a little farther away, he would have been safe. Whitbeck drove the route between the two restaurants recently and found they are 8 1/2 miles apart.

Asked whether his business has suffered in the six months since the Copper Skillet has been open, Whitbeck said it has been stable. “Business should have grown since we’ve been here, but it hasn’t,” he said. “It has stayed constant.”

Patricia Cross said her restaurant has done OK. It had not taken any business from Crazy Otto’s, at least until all the fuss started, she said. Then, some Crazy Otto’s customers began coming in to offer their support, she said.

Is there room for two good omelet houses in the vast Antelope Valley? Apparently not.

Patricia Cross said she expects she will have to close the restaurant. But that may not satisfy Whitbeck. He said Geoffrey Cross has recently taken the position that the non-competing clause does not apply because he never signed it.

Now, Whitbeck thinks he ought to be paid the $220,000 that was given to Cross in the sale as compensation for not competing. Cross never fulfilled his part of the bargain, Whitbeck said.

Patricia Cross admits she and her husband may have made one mistake when they added an Ortega-chili-with-ground-beef omelet to their menu. Crazy Otto’s has the same item on its menu.

“Geoff said that for one omelet, he didn’t think they would mind,” she said.