Red’s and Greens

If Norman Rockwell had palled around with Chester Himes, he might have come up with something like Red’s Cafe, a soul-food diner tucked away off Griffith Avenue, a U-counter fried-chicken peep into America’s recent past, only five minutes southeast of downtown. Red’s is about 40 years old but seems even older, a long, narrow storefront that fills up every day at noon and is as much a part of the neighborhood as the street lights or the grocery stores, or that big church down on Central. There is no finer place to eat neck bones that I know.

At the turn of the century, most of Los Angeles probably looked like this area, tidy Victorian houses on the residential streets, gabled two-story apartment buildings on the thoroughfares, corner markets scattered every few blocks, though now it seems more like certain parts of San Francisco. Probably the corner of the Central City least touched by redevelopment--even Beaux Arts redevelopment--this may be one of the few remaining parts of town still laid out for non-motorists.

At Red’s, a coolerful of fresh lemonade is usually on hand, a framed photograph of a policeman sits next to some sports posters on the wall, and a crowd of regulars--most of the men in shirt-sleeves and ties--sits along the long, U-shaped Formica counter and tucks into huge, Southern farm dinners: old-fashioned meat and threes. In front of each place sit bottles of two kinds of hot sauce, plus a cruet of pepper vinegar to splash on the greens. A television set high in a corner blasts Oprah most afternoons.

“Do you like the lemonade?” owner Lula Jones asks one day. “Because everybody just goes crazy for this lemonade. I don’t understand it . . . it’s just lemonade.” You start to demur, and then notice her big wink.

The menu at Red’s is posted on a signboard high on a wall, but though it changes from day to day, the bill of fare is eternal: You basically have a choice of pig’s feet, fried chicken, or tranchers of long-braised meat. What you eat at Red’s is pretty much unchanging.

Sometimes you’ll find sweet-potato pie for dessert, sometimes just a handful of peppermints. There might be black-eyed peas, sharp-tasting and butter-soft, or pillowy stewed pinto beans, intensely flavored collard greens or a pungent heap of simmered cabbage along with your meat. Oxtails are beefy and gelatinous, melting mouthfuls of meat; neck bones are leaner, stronger-tasting; short ribs are luxurious slabs of long-cooked protein that fall apart with the prodding of a fork. The fried chicken is extraordinary, a full half-chicken to an order: crisp-crusted, well-spiced, juicy and full of flavor, something close to a platonic vision of soul-fried bird. There is always a mountain of rice and gravy. At Red’s, most of the customers end up taking home Styrofoam containers of leftovers for the next day.

It’s easy to become a regular here--when I came in last week, some three months after the first time, Ms. Jones greeted me with a “Hiya, chicken,” remembering what I’d eaten for lunch the last time, and then asked me what I’d managed to loot . . . which made the guys at the end of the counter double over in laughter. “I didn’t get anything myself,” she cracked. “I’ve never much cared for swap -meet clothes.” Since then, she’s been calling me “the looter,” to the vast amusement of my friends. She also brings me extra plates of her brittle-crusted corn sticks: hot, sweet lozenges of corn bread that are impossible to stop eating. It all evens out.

GOOD NEWS: The Vermont Avenue restaurants Vim and Thai Kitchen, reported as destroyed in last week’s column, were in fact open--and jammed with customers--last weekend.

Red’s Cafe

1102 E. 22nd St. (at the corner of Griffith Avenue), Los Angeles, (213) 745-9909. Open Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Takeout. Cash only. No alcohol. Lunch for two, food only, $10-$12.