A Taste of New Orleans--in Chatsworth

The first thing you should understand about Les Sisters’ Southern Kitchen ‘N Bar-B-Q is that there aren’t any sisters there and they aren’t Southern, either. And even though Sisters advertises “A Taste of New Orleans”--jambalaya, gumbo and Creole--owner and executive chef Kevin Huling has never so much as set foot in Louisiana.

But at least Huling could translate the phrase painted on Les Sisters’ storefront window: Laissez les bons temp rouler.

“Let the good times roll,” Huling says with a smile.

It was the downtime between lunch and dinner, and though Kevin Huling, 38, was busy paying bills, he seemed the picture of contentment. Sisters has been serving good times and good food in Chatsworth, of all places, for nearly nine years now, building a loyal following drawn by its down-home food and down-home atmosphere. To the uninitiated, Sisters comes as a revelation. Everybody wonders what a restaurant that specializes in Cajun and Southern soul food is doing in Chatsworth, which is not exactly at the hub of L.A.’s black community, or even the Valley’s.

There’s a story in that, and if you ever have a chance to savor, say, the Smothered Chicken or the Catfish ‘n Hush Puppies or the Kitchen Sink Burger, it would be good to know a bit of Sisters’ history.

The late Clara Huling, Kevin’s mother, had the idea. Used to be that Clara and her husband, Bill, also known as “Dr. Bill,” hung out at a Northridge watering hole called Our Place. This was, as Bill Huling tells it, the watering hole of the Valley’s middle-class black community. “It was our Cheers,” he says. And since Dr. Bill was a practicing psychologist and a professor at Cal State Northridge, he was the Frasier Crane of this bar. People would always bend his ear.

Clara, according to her husband and son, was “a Lucille Ball type of character.” She was fun, energetic and full of ideas. But she also tended to have a short attention span.

Anyway, Clara got to talking with Willie Stanford, the proprietor of Our Place, and her friend Roda Hadi, a chef at the Fireside Inn. This was the mid-’80s, and suddenly Creole cooking was all the rage. Restaurants were serving blackened this and blackened that. Clara’s mom had a cafe back in her hometown of Yuma, Ariz., so Clara decided the three women should take some of Dr. Bill’s money and start a restaurant. “You ladies argue like sisters,” Dr. Bill observed, “so why don’t you call it ‘The Sisters?’ ”

The Sisters was taken. They made it Les Sisters, for that French Quarter touch.

When Dr. Bill and the “sisters” started looking for a location, they got a rude sense of the Valley’s lesson in race relations. Landlords, it seemed, were not interested in leasing space to black entrepreneurs interested in starting a Southern restaurant.

“How did we end up in Chatsworth? Well, every place they went and got a little bead on, at the last minute there was some complication,” Dr. Bill recalls.

Finally, they were about to close a deal in a Mission Hills shopping center when the landlord balked. He was candid about his reasoning. “He told us he didn’t want to rent to blacks--that we’d bring in the wrong crowd,” Dr. Bill recalls. “That was only 1986. We’re not so far away from that.”

They didn’t want to file a lawsuit; they just wanted to start a restaurant.

And in Chatsworth, they found a more enlightened landlord. He offered a good deal on vacant space on Devonshire, just east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Now the Hulings think they were better off coming to Chatsworth. “It was a blessing in disguise,” Kevin explains.

The Hulings suggest that their out-of-the-way location, away from landmark shopping centers and big anchor stores or theaters that attract the crowds, required them to focus on the quality of the food. Roda, as Kevin puts it, “could really burn. “ Translation: cook. “For people to come all the way to Chatsworth to eat,” Dr. Bill adds, “it has to be good.”

Les Sisters was a destination, not a place you settle for along the way. Initially, Roda served up gourmet Cajun fare, but after she and Willie dropped out of the business, they went to a more standard menu. After a few years, Clara, being Clara, grew restless and wanted to try something else. Another regular from Our Place, television actor Ed Bernard, took over the restaurant for awhile and introduced more barbecue dishes with a sauce from his old neighborhood in South Philly.

Business complications brought Clara back. One day in June, 1992, Kevin Huling, then working as an insurance investigator, learned how Sisters’ employees were like a second family.

That day, inexplicably, his mother didn’t show up for work. Although Clara had the key to the cash register, the chefs and servers opened for lunch, making change from their own pockets. They did the same at dinner. “They never missed a step,” Kevin says.

After hours of mystery, it was learned that Clara Huling, 55, had a fatal cerebral hemorrhage while shopping for the restaurant. With Dr. Bill out of town and Kevin at work, it had taken a long time for authorities to notify the family.

Kevin was on the verge of obtaining a private investigator’s license, but after his mother’s death, there was no question that he had to take over the family business. His second family--Susan, Ermila, Gabby, Raul and the rest--helped out.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to do this?’ Basically, I was told to stand back,” Kevin recalls. He describes the staff as “the hardest-workin’, easiest-goin’ people I’ve ever known.”

Dr. Bill credits his son for stabilizing the business. These days, Sisters is exploring options for opening a second restaurant. They nearly signed a lease in Calabasas. This time, they decided to back off.

The next Sisters may be a little fancier than the original. Maybe there will even be separate bathrooms for men and women, and customers won’t have to walk through the kitchen to get there. Still, I hope they have a bulletin board at eye level tacked with memorable comics to pass the time.

At the next place, Kevin says, he hopes to capture the romantic ambience of the French Quarter.

That’s one reason Kevin is hoping to visit New Orleans before the year is out. To finally see it for himself.

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