Filling Up on Civic Tradition, Ethnic Roots and Swordfish

It is a little past noon on a Friday, and the high-ceilinged ballroom in San Pedro’s venerable Dalmatian-American Club is packed with people and redolent with the scent of pasta and swordfish steaks.

Black-and-white-uniformed waitresses carry trays from the upstairs kitchen down elegant staircases to the long rows of cloth-covered tables laden with china and carafes of white and blush wine. Greetings and gossip from the lips of some 400 diners flow as freely as the wine. Business cards change hands between courses.

The bimonthly Fish Luncheon is in full swing.

Part tribute to portside San Pedro’s roots as a fishing community populated by Slavic and Italian immigrants, part modern business and civic get-together, the Fish Luncheon has long been one of the hottest tickets in town.

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“We started with about 12 of us around 1960, mostly people who worked around here, as kind of a PR thing,” recalls Rudy Svorinich Sr., a longtime member of the Dalmatian-American Club and its president for four years in the early 1980s.

“Now we have people coming from all over, and sometimes they’ve had to wait to get tickets because we’re sold out,” says Svorinich, whose son, Rudy Svorinich Jr., is a Los Angeles city councilman and a former Dalmatian-American Club president.

Sixteen dollars (plus a tip for the basket circulated at meal’s end) buys generous portions, served family-style, of salad, rolls, tomato-based, vegetable-laden clam chowder, the sauce-covered tubular pasta known as mostaccioli and juicy swordfish steaks. Dessert, for those who have room for it, is an iced cookie.

“I hope you’re hungry,” club President Anthony M. Misetich deadpans to a first-time Fish Luncheon participant. “You’ll have to pace yourself.”

The menu never varies.

“People would complain if they changed it--it’s part of the tradition,” says Eva Frlekin.

And Frlekin knows a lot about tradition here. Born and raised in San Pedro, she met her husband-to-be on New Year’s Eve at the club (then known as the Yugoslavian-American Club) in 1938, when she was 17. She is heading a committee to erect a fishermen’s memorial, to be unveiled this spring in John S. Gibson Jr. Park near the waterfront.

Like countless other Fish Luncheon-goers, Frlekin knows people don’t attend just for the food--good and plentiful as it is. They go also to make business, social and political contacts--and to catch up on happenings in one of Los Angeles’ most colorful communities.

Although the club has a rule against politicking (no campaign literature, no speeches allowed), the Fish Luncheon has long been a must-do stop on the campaign trail for once and future candidates.

On this particular Friday, they include Rep. Steve Kuykendall (R-Rancho Palos Verdes), Assemblyman Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn and his sister, Janice Hahn, a member of the elected city charter reform commission who is said to be considering another run for the City Council.

They are part of the attraction for Odie Powell, who lives in Huntington Beach but who has been a regular at the Fish Luncheon ever since his friend Augie Bezmalinovich brought him to one about four years ago.

“You get to associate with people you wouldn’t normally get a chance to talk to,” he says.

The tradition-laced tenor of San Pedro and the luncheon reminds him of the ethnic neighborhoods of his native Chicago. There’s a reason. Founded by Starkist tuna cannery owner Martin J. Bognanovich in the 1920s, the club helped its immigrant members keep customs from their homeland of Dalmatia, on the Adriatic Coast of what is now the Republic of Croatia.

Over the years it has become a touchstone for the entire San Pedro community, hosting social events from weddings and holiday parties to sports banquets for Mary Star of the Sea High School. Councilman Svorinich sweated out election night returns here, surrounded by several hundred well-wishers. Mayor Richard Riordan included the club on his first Harbor area visit as leader of the nation’s second-largest city.

Not everyone, however, has found the club’s traditional leanings to their liking. Three years ago the Los Angeles City Council canceled plans to hold a meeting here because of suspicions of sexism at the club. Learning that the club had no women members, several council members threatened to boycott the meeting. Fearing that it could not get a quorum, the council switched meeting places after a highly publicized debate that embarrassed and frustrated Svorinich.

None of this apparently has affected the popularity of the Fish Luncheon, whose organizers were scrambling at the latest session to set up enough tables to accommodate last-minute ticket-seekers.

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Like the menu, the format never changes: a welcome from the president, a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance. While others are passing the steaming platters and digging into the food, First Vice President Bezmalinovich sits at the head table, busily sorting the 50 to 60 business cards and scribbled notes from people who want their names mentioned during announcements later in the meal.

In addition to the politicians, the business owners, the civic group leaders, there are several officials from various city departments and agencies, a couple of judges and three representatives of the Croatian consul general.

Bezmalinovich deftly arranges the cards “in order of importance,” and tries out his pronunciation on a few of the more daunting names. He stumbles over a couple of them, but grins as he comes across a more familiar name.

“I do OK,” he jokes, “as long as it ends in ich.”

It’s part tribute to portside San Pedro’s roots as a fishing community.