Thankful Not to Cook

Not everyone in Ventura County slaved in the kitchen Thursday. From the Ranch House in Ojai to the Rendezvous in Newbury Park, restaurants were filled with people who decided to leave the cooking to someone else.

The reasons were many. Dad burned the turkey last year. Too many dishes to wash. Mom doesn’t know how to cook. The grocery store is too crowded.

Both the Holiday Inn in Ventura and the Hyatt Westlake Plaza in Westlake Village expected more than 600 diners to visit their all-you-can-eat buffets, and several other restaurants offered a complete Thanksgiving meal.

Tomi and Ben Mori of Oxnard are veteran Thanksgiving restaurant-goers. They arrived early at the Holiday Inn’s rotating rooftop restaurant, where they piled their plates with salads, turkey, stuffing and seafood.

Why do they shun the tradition of preparing a Thanksgiving meal at home? It’s simple.

“I don’t know how to cook,” Tomi Mori said. “I’ve never cooked a turkey in my life. So every year, we go out to eat.”

But Mandy Ross, 24, defended her grandmother’s culinary skills. “She knows how to make good sushi,” Ross said.

Every year the Holiday Inn gets a pretty good crowd on holidays, said food and beverage director Roger Iben. “This is a time for families to spend time together,” Iben said. “And it’s easier for them to do that here.”

Some might argue that families bond when they eat holiday dinners at home. But in the Conlan family, as in many families, the moms cook, the dads watch football and the kids play.

And cleanup? They’d save that for the day after Thanksgiving.

For 45 years, Dorothy Conlan held Thanksgiving dinner at her house in Thousand Oaks. She often spent three days preparing the meal, getting up early every morning to go shopping and cook.

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After her husband, former Ventura County supervisor John Conlan, died last year, she decided it was time to do something different. So Thursday, she went to the Hyatt Westlake Plaza with her four kids and 10 of her grandkids.

“Some of our traditions are changing,” Dorothy Conlan said. “And this is marvelous. It’s a feast.”

After all the others finished their desserts, one grandson returned to the buffet table for his third helping. This time around, he piled on mashed potatoes and fried chicken.

At both the Holiday Inn and Hyatt Westlake Plaza restaurants, children seemed to be among the happiest. Rather than eating Mom’s cooking, they could design their very own Thanksgiving meal. For 7-year-old Eric Goodson, that meant no turkey. Instead, he had a slice of cheese, two strawberries, a pickle, three shrimps and one crab claw.

“It’s fun that you can eat different kinds of food,” Eric said.

Then, of course, there’s dessert. The kids can eat pumpkin pie. And apple pie. And cake. And ice cream. And cookies.

Helen Boyd of Ventura said she goes out to eat because her family is picky and she can never please everybody.

“One person doesn’t like dressing, and one person doesn’t like sweet potatoes,” she said. “I said, forget them all, we’ll go out. They can choose what they want.”

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Then, on Friday, Boyd cooks a turkey for herself and her husband, and doesn’t invite her children and grandchildren. They can come if they want, but they can’t complain.

Richard and Harriett Trebisky of Carpinteria went to the Holiday Inn because their son lives in Arizona and their daughter lives in the Bay Area.

“To cook a big meal for just the two of us would be ridiculous,” Harriett Trebisky said. “But there’s one problem. There are no leftovers.”