Du-par's? Do Tell.

One of L. A.’s few remaining landmark restaurants re-opened last week after a long hiatus. The Farmers Market Du-par’s had been serving up the best pancakes in town since the Depression. Most of the waiters and waitresses, hired as teenagers, were in their fifties, making it the kind of neighborhood place where you could go away to college, come back with an advanced degree, and find the same person serving up coffee and pancakes and caustic remarks about how much your acne had improved.

Du-par’s closed in the middle of 2004, amid rumors that it had bee bought by Tiny Nailers. The employees, most of them too young to retire but to old to find new jobs, were summarily fired – dismissed without severance pay, without pensions, without so much as a thank you. The building was gutted, the doors were closed, and a sign was hung in the window that read, “Opening early, 2005,” which turned out to be fairly optimistic.

Tiny Nailers apparently used the same planning team for renovating Du-par's that Bush used for invading Iraq. When it finally did re-open lasts week, the alterations were stricly cosmetic, just enough to let people know the management had changed. An outside eating area was added, for those who enjoy the sun and don’t mind eating in a parking lot adjacent to one of the city's busiest intersections. The counter was replaced with a “farm table” (the restaurant’s original name was Du-par’s Farmhouse) about twelve feet long with seating on both sides. It’s unique, and affords oppor-tunities for up close people-watching.

The staff is thoughtful, and with two supervisors in constant motion, perhaps overly attentive. At any rate, your coffee doesn't get cold. Unfortunately, the pancakes, the raison d’être for going to Du-par’s in the first place, are no longer the best in town. They’re not bad, but they’re not Du-par’s. I don’t know if it’s new ingredients, or new chefs, or old memories, but they’re not the same.

It’s just as well. I won’t be going back. Frankly, I don’t want to give any business to a place that throws people out like cold French fries. “A promise is a promise,” my mother used to say, and when you hire someone, in fact, you make a promise. You promise that if they do their job, they’ll always have one. Now, if La Brea Tar Pits explodes and covers everything with 50 million year old sticky crap, that’s a whole new ball game. But if you just decide to sell because the golfing is better in Florida, then goddammit, make arrangements for your people.

This doesn’t’ make me a communist or a radical, I just think people do a better job when they are undistracted by fear, when they know they have some sort of mutual bond with their employer. When Home Depot fired its CEO, they gave him a world-class, lifetime income. Would they do the same for a guy at the check-out counter?

The moral of this story is, if you have to eat at Farmers Market, eat at Charlie’s. The pancakes are just as good, the French toast is better, and the people are there for life.

A foot on either side

Bartley B