Mrs. Knott’s Eatery Stays High in the Pecking Order

For years, the small wooden tearoom stood by itself, a remote stop on the way to the beach where travelers could swing by for a hearty meal of fried chicken and warm homemade biscuits, not to mention the prized boysenberry jam.

The old tearoom near Beach Boulevard is still there, buried now by its surroundings: seven sprawling dining rooms, rows of new buildings, billboards and one of America’s best known amusement parks -- Knott’s Berry Farm.

Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant officially opened for business one June night in 1934 when Cordelia Knott served eight fried chicken dinners on her wedding china in the house where she and her husband, Walter, raised four children.

“When we started, there were only five tables,” recalled Marion Knott Montapert, who was born on what was then the 10-acre farm and worked at the restaurant until she went off to college. “We waitresses would have to pick up our trays, walk through our kitchen, walk through our dining room and take a step out into our living room to get to the restaurant.”

Though much has changed around the restaurant, the menu remains largely untouched. Diners can order the same meal that’s been served for more than 70 years: cherry rhubarb, salad with French dressing, handmade biscuits, cabbage and sweet pickles, three pieces of fried chicken and mashed potatoes smothered with gravy. For dessert: a slice of boysenberry pie with vanilla ice cream.

Linda Elliot, 81, has been a server at the restaurant for almost 50 years. Dressed like all of the waitresses in a green or pink dress with a white apron, she is one of the few employees who can recall Walter’s warm hugs and Cordelia’s boundless generosity.

“She was a wonderful, typical grandma. If you complimented her on a piece of jewelry she wore, at the end of the day it was yours,” Elliot said.

She recalled meeting Cordelia Knott on her first day of work. After Elliot introduced herself, Cordelia said they already had a server named Linda and that she would have to go by “Pam,” Elliot said. Her nametag still identifies her that way.

For longtime restaurant patrons such as Bob Bassett, the chicken house brings back fond memories.

“My father and mother took us there as kids probably every Sunday,” he said.

Back then, he recalled, Knott’s Berry Farm had no fence and no admission price. It was “just a place where kids could go on free rides and then eat an affordable chicken meal.”

This type of cross-generational devotion ensured that business remained strong at the restaurant, helping it dodge obstacles such as a post-World War II chicken shortage and competition from nearby eateries over the years. Even a change of ownership in 1997, when Ohio-based Cedar Fair bought Knott’s Berry Farm and the restaurant, didn’t affect business.

“It’s what people know us for,” said the restaurant’s executive chef, Bobby Obezo. “Everywhere I go, to different parts of the United States, [people ask] ‘Is the chicken still the same?’ ”

After the purchase, the new owners unveiled plans to change many of the park’s rides and attractions but insisted the restaurant remain untouched.

The eatery began as a berry stand along what was then widely known Highway 39 -- now Beach Boulevard. The stand was a way for the Knotts to buck up their struggling farm business.

The stand had a distinction, though, offering a berry that was a cross between a red raspberry, a loganberry and a blackberry. The fruit was a failed experiment of Anaheim Parks Superintendent Rudolph Boysen, who was unable to keep the vines from withering. Walter Knott tried his hand at it and after successfully turning a harvest, named it the boysenberry, whose jams and jellies became a staple at the stand, and later at the restaurant.

By the 1940s, Cordelia Knott was selling 4,000 chicken dinners on Sunday evenings and the wait grew to more than four hours, according to the company’s history. To give waiting customers something to do, Walter Knott began piecing together a ghost town that became the Calico Ghost Town attraction, the first of Knott’s Berry Farm’s themed areas. Though the park quickly outgrew the eatery, Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant kept bustling along. The place now has seating for more than 900 diners at a time and says it serves 1.5 million people a year.

“We sell almost a half a million chickens a year, and the flavor is always the same,” Obezo said.

The chicken is bought from a Georgia company and is never frozen. It’s marinated in a light seasoning, coated in flour and put into one of two 30-foot-long fryers, which move the birds through two separate oil bins. One cooks the chicken, and another gives it a golden brown appearance and crispy texture.

As for the woman who started the whole thing, her daughter Marian Knott Montapert says Cordelia Knott was shy but very strict when it came to business.

“My mother was in the kitchen all the time. She taught them the values of doing what they were supposed to do. If a waitress came by and didn’t have a hairnet, she wouldn’t let her go on the floor,” Montapert said.

Though the chicken meal is the same, the price isn’t. What once cost 65 cents now runs $19.06. The tip would be extra.