Altadena dining club aims to save eateries struggling after the Eaton fire

Before the fire, Lucy’s Place would come alive in the morning.

Gardeners and day laborers would come by for a morning pastry or breakfast burrito and coffee served up by owner Juan Orozco, who arrived at 5 a.m. to prepare. If he had to step out, his regulars would take over and serve coffee to customers, he said.

Orozco and his wife have run the modest cafe since 1997, serving items such as huevos rancheros, tacos, burgers and fajitas on oblong plates with a side of grapefruit. Customers who rented apartments nearby would swing by for a meal. But after the Eaton fire, Orozco’s humble cafe has become a shell of itself. He said it’s lucky if anyone comes by before 8 a.m.

“I want to close,” he said last Tuesday afternoon. “There’s no business.”

That was before the Altadena Dining Club arrived.

Members of the Altadena Dining Club meet at Lucy’s Place on Oct. 21.

Made up of local residents wanting to save eateries that survived the fire, the dining club is the brainchild of Brooke Lohman-Janz, a displaced renter determined to preserve the fabric of Altadena. That’s why, that night, she and other club members walked into Lucy’s Place and took over its patio. About a dozen people, including some first-timers and dining club regulars, spent that evening chatting about their lives, rebuilding, and of course, the night of the Eaton fire.

Brooke Lohman-Janz, the creator of the Altadena Dining Club, greets Melissa Michelson at an Oct. 21 club meeting.

Orozco, who estimates he’s lost three-fourths of his business and is now thousands of dollars in debt, said that business had been slow that particular day. Only two potential customers had phoned in orders, and they never picked them up. But then members of the dining club began to trickle in, and the restaurant slowly came alive.

“Thanks for having us!” Lohman-Janz told Orozco, who that night, and like the ones before, worked in the back, making food. He wore an “Altadena Strong” cap, representing his longtime home.

Altadena, an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, has long charmed artists, scientists and aspiring homeowners because of its seclusion and eccentric nature. Before the fire, more than 42,000 people lived in the community, and its demographics were as rich and diverse as the home styles that lined the wide, friendly streets.

Prior to the Eaton fire, Altadena was about 42% white, 18% Black and 27% Latino. Many are left wondering how, as the community rebuilds, the heart of Altadena will live on. The Eaton fire, driven by a perfect storm of hurricane-force winds, cut through large swaths of neighborhoods, at times decimating entire blocks of homes and even large business structures.

Lohman-Janz and her husband, Michael Janz, lost their rented apartment in the fire, after living in Altadena for seven years. They had stumbled across the community while trying to get around traffic, and they were charmed by it. They weren’t ready to leave just yet.

Jessica Christopher, co-owner of the Altadena Cookie Co., passes out fliers announcing the grand opening of her cookie shop at an Altadena Dining Club meeting.

Christopher fills out a survey from Altadena Baptist Church asking community members for their input on rebuilding of the church after the Eaton fire.

At the end of May, five months after the Eaton fire displaced them, the couple ended up buying a lot in Altadena and is currently living out of a Streamline trailer there. Lohman-Janz, who is vegan, learned that many restaurants that had survived the fire were struggling to get by. This struck her one day when she stopped to pick up food at El Patron, a Mexican restaurant that survived the fire but was surrounded by incinerated businesses.

“Why don’t we just start getting together and support our local places?” she remembers thinking. “There’s not a lot of them. We need to make sure they stay.”

Benji Zobrist greets Melissa Michelson and gives her a survey at an Altadena Dining Club meeting.

In June, the club held its first gathering at El Patron. It sits on the corner of Lake Avenue and Altadena Drive, across the street from where one of the neighborhood’s quirky attractions — the Bunny Museum — once stood. Kitty-corner was the Altadena Community Church. On the other side of Lake Avenue, the Lifeline Fellowship Church once held Sunday services. All burned down in the fire, leaving little but empty lots.

About 25 people showed up to the first gathering, which served as a healing space for the residents who showed up, Lohman-Janz said. The next time they met, the group nearly doubled in size, a sign that Altadenans were determined to come together — and support their local haunts.

So far, the club has visited 10 restaurants and meets about once a week, rotating through the eateries and trying to encourage other residents to come out. By the end of October, it will have added two more meeting spots.

Lohman-Janz created enamel pins and hosts raffles to encourage members to keep coming out. Recently, one former Altadena resident traveled from Palm Springs to join an outing. On Facebook, the group has grown to over 1,300 members, where Lohman-Janz, who has a full-time marketing job, spends her free time keeping the group informed about planned outings while updating the “Altadena Dining Club Passport” with a list of businesses and their opening status.

“The response, it’s both surprising and not. Altadenans just really want to get together,” Lohman-Janz said. “It’s definitely such a tragedy. People want a nice thing to focus on, at least for just a couple hours.”

Benji Zobrist, a member of Altadena Baptist Church, passes out surveys about what the church should consider when rebuilding at an Altadena Dining Club meeting.

On Oct. 21, as more members arrived, Orozco prepped the dishes while his niece, Jennifer Orozco, took orders and relayed them to the chef. Inside, an entire wall was taken up by a mural that Orozco commissioned a friend to paint, while popular Spanish songs lilted gently from a large TV.

“Fried chicken sandwich on white!” she called.

Lohman-Janz ordered the potato tacos and her husband a potato burrito. It was the first time she had been to the restaurant, she said, after someone in the dining club suggested it as a meetup spot. In a way, she said, the club was helping make up for the places she missed over the years.

Juan Orozco, owner of Lucy’s Place in Altadena, greets Brooke Lohman-Janz at his restaurant.

When longtime Altadenans Hipolito and Elizabeth Cisneros arrived, Orozco stepped out to greet the couple, who had previously lived just a block from the restaurant until the fire burned down their home.

Hipolito asked about the chicken fajitas, and Orozco asked what he thought about shrimp fajitas. “Shrimp fajitas sounds good,” he replied.

When the plates came out, Marialyce Pedersen, a dining club member, exclaimed, “Where was that on the menu? Oh my God.”

Like the Cisneroses, Pedersen has attended several dining club meetups since losing her home in the Eaton fire. She has moved back onto her lot, sharing a tiny home with her husband. The dining club has been a way to build community and visit old haunts, such as Lucy’s.

“Since the fire, I most relate to other people who also experienced it,” Pedersen said.

Naturally, the conversations at the tables returned to the night of the fire and how they were coping. They stayed late into the evening, as the sun settled and a light rain fell for a few moments. From Lucy’s, the Altadena foothills loomed in the background.

Members of the Altadena Dining Club come together at Lucy’s Place on Oct. 21.

In the same plaza, Jessica Christopher, co-owner of the Altadena Cookie Co., was locking up for the day when she spotted the dining club members gathered at Lucy’s. As a fellow business owner, Christopher has felt the impact in foot traffic. The business had been on the cusp of a grand opening when the Eaton fire hit, and they were forced to replace all their equipment after smoke contamination. Now, nine months later, she and her fellow co-owner, Michelle Taylor, are planning once again for their grand opening this week.

As she spends most of her days preparing, she often sends her son to grab a burger at Lucy’s — no lettuce, no tomatoes, just meat, cheese and buns — to support Orozco in any way she can.

On this evening, she joined the dining club with a Lucy’s burger and fries of her own, asking: “What else is there if you can’t help each other survive?”