New Restaurant Serves Up Hope, Jobs in Watts : Rebuilding: It is the first large family-style facility to open in the area since the 1965 riots.

Sporting broad smiles and clutching their morning newspapers, two men pushed open a pair of restaurant doors at 6:10 a.m. Monday and uttered words that have not been heard in this part of town for 27 years.

“Two for breakfast, please. We’ll take a no-smoking booth,” said Carl Henderson as he and his friend Robert Edwards made history by being the first customers of the first large, family-style restaurant to open in Watts since the 1965 riots.

The order of the day? French toast, sausage and a ham and cheese omelet.

In many Los Angeles communities--where scores of restaurants serve everything from spicy Thai food to sushi to hot pastrami at midnight--the opening of a Denny’s franchise would be routine. But in the Watts-Willowbrook area, the coffee shop debut has been long anticipated.

Located on Wilmington Avenue across the street from Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and adjacent to a towering overpass of the Century Freeway, the Denny’s is one of the few non-fast-food restaurants for miles.

“Finally, we have a place to serve our needs,” said Henderson. “We’ve been waiting years hoping for a restaurant where we can get some quality service and good food.”

For weeks, owner Donald J. Bohana said, people have peered through the windows and tried the locked doors, hoping that the restaurant was open.

“This means a whole lot to the community,” said Jimmy Thomas, 59, of Compton, who found locked doors Sunday morning, but was greeted by a team of employees Monday. “There are some soul food restaurants, but that gets old after awhile. We have to drive to Carson, Downey or Lakewood to get a hot breakfast.”

Bohana said 800 people applied for 78 mostly minimum-wage jobs. He said he hired the “cream of the crop” from the community, those whose applications did not have misspelled words and who dressed neatly for an interview. About 40 employees are coming off welfare to join the working world. He has hired 24-hour, uniformed and undercover security.

The challenge, he believes, will be keeping his restaurant safe and keeping employees--many with limited work experience--on their toes.

“I want to keep the riffraff out,” Bohana said. “I want to make sure that the community feels that this is a safe place to bring their kids, their grandparents.”

Because the restaurant is in a Los Angeles County redevelopment zone, Bohana was able to get a low-interest $635,000 construction loan, and he invested another $165,000 of his money to complete the job. The location, near the county hospital and next to a large Metro Blue Line station, should provide a steady flow of customers.

As he greeted the first round of customers for breakfast, Bohana boasted about the rose-color upholstery, ceiling fans and specially designed artificial plants.

“This coffee shop can compete with the ones in Beverly Hills,” he said.

For many, the restaurant stands as a bright spot in an area demoralized by the spring riots and the sights of burned-out building hulks.

“I know there are restaurants like this everywhere, but I love that this one is black-owned, bringing jobs to the community,” said Lenny Du-Brey, 41, of Inglewood, who works at the hospital. “I’m going to be a regular here.”

About half an hour before opening, waitresses gathered around a Denny’s corporate trainer, studying a map of tables as if in a team huddle. In the kitchen another trainer supervised four cooks who were firing up the grills.

“Everyone told me to watch out because this is Watts,” said trainer Ed Maher. “But this restaurant . . . the team here is no different than South Phoenix.”

For Mayra Delgado, 20, her hostess job brings an end to four months on welfare and the hope that she can be promoted to waitress to earn more money through tips.

“I hated sitting at home and waiting for the money to come every month,” said Delgado, who is a single mother. “But it was so hard to find a job.”

In a recession-gripped economy, cook Israel Montes, 18, said that even though his wife was in labor and about to deliver their second child, he did not want to miss a day of work. He and his mother took her to the hospital at 4 a.m. He left her at 6 a.m. to make it to work on time. “I didn’t know what my boss would think,” he said, adding that he would call the hospital on his first break. “She probably had the baby by now.”

For others, though, the focus of the day was on new jobs and new customers.

Artermeisec Jackson, 25, had been unemployed for nine months before landing her job as a waitress. She lives a few blocks away and can walk to work.

“All my friends, my pastor at church, everybody is real excited about this place opening,” said Jackson. “People around here have been begging for a sit-down restaurant. Now if we can only get a walk-in theater.”