Globex Corporation Newsletter

LONG BEACH - Chuck's Coffee Shop in Belmont Shore boasts two slogans.

"Home of the Weasel" is one.

"Locally world famous" is the other.

Both phrases, painted in red outside, hint at why Chuck Tinkler's pie-shaped diner has been in the breakfast and lunch business at 4120 E. Ocean Blvd. since 1964.

The Weasel - scrambled eggs with chili on top - is the most popular menu item. In the diner's early days, a trucker asked for eggs with something extra to take the bite out of a hangover.

Chuck added chili. The trucker said the dish looked like a weasel he had seen on a haul to Montana. None of the guys around the counter had seen a weasel, and they all cracked up. The name stuck.

The Weasel has been curing hangovers ever since.

The second line came from a sailor who had won a small regatta.

"We're locally world famous now," he said.

"I stole that phrase," says Chuck.

With permission. Chuck may serve the Weasel, but he isn't one.

That may explain why some of his employees have stayed more than 20 years in an industry where workers turn over as fast as the tables.

"The employees are all the best," Chuck says of his crew of 11. "I can't run this place without all of my staff. They're wonderful. They treat me the best. I treat them the best."

Employees say the tips are generous, and Chuck pays bonuses. And you can't beat the location facing the Belmont Plaza Pool, the bike path and volleyball courts.

"He's a good boss, my hero," says Ricky Uriarte, who began washing dishes 22 years ago and worked his way up to assistant manager. "It's a good place to work. We're always working. We usually never stop."

That's because crowds pile into the 49 seats inside and a smattering of tables outside during daily business hours, 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Lines of patrons waiting for a Whistling Pig (two hot dogs in a burger bun with bacon and cheese) or a Jimmy the Greek (an omelette with chopped ham, black olives, onions and Swiss) form on the weekends.

Kellie Mountain of Seal Beach came to Chuck's so often with her parents, Sheri and Gary Butterbaugh of Long Beach, that Chuck hired her as a waitress.

"He keeps us on our toes," Mountain says. "He's a very fair boss and very generous."

She has served food in other places, but finds Chuck's clientele tops.

"The customers are awesome," she says. "They're loyal. They're so friendly. It's almost like an extended family."

Indeed. Mountain's parents were eating there on a recent weekday.

"I like the cooking because it's homemade to me," says Sheri Butterbaugh, who favors the chicken chef salad. "The location is great, being by the beach."

Longshoreman Gary Butterbaugh, who likes the breakfast pork chops, stops in before going to the docks.

"It's a slice out of time that never changed," Butterbaugh says. "I hate newer, yuppie places. I am an old-school guy."

Jerry Borisy started coming to Chuck's about 40 years ago. He has seen his children grow up in the same-as-it-ever-was interior: vinyl booths surrounded by historic photos of Catalina and the Belmont Pier, a potbellied stove and an oar suspended from the ceiling.

"The food is good and consistent," Borisy says over a Popeye's Delight, a Spinach omelette with jack. "It's a very comfortable place to come to. A lot of locals hang out."

Mallory Mims, a recent Long Beach State graduate, deferred admission to medical school for a year (she got accepted at both UCLA and UC Irvine) in part to take it easy and work for Chuck, her neighbor in the Shore.

"I love the customers, I love the people," she says. "You develop a rapport with them. You develop relationships."

One of those regulars has a great birth name, John L. Quick, and an even better nickname, "Alligator."

He lives on a boat in Wilmington and drives eight miles each way a couple of times a week to eat at Chuck's.

Quick usually wears an alligator-print T-shirt (not an Izod Lacoste) and puts figurines of alligators on the napkin dispenser of his table, a middle booth on the Ocean Boulevard side.

"He's a hell of a nice guy," Alligator says of Chuck. "He comes around and talks to you. It's a neighborhood breakfast joint."

Now that Hof's Hut on Second Street is gone, Chuck's and the Shorehouse Cafe are among the last traditional breakfast places in the Shore (though nearby Belmont Heights is well served by The Coffee Cup Cafe, Egg Heaven Cafe, The Pot Holder Cafe and others).

With rent, insurance and other costs, Chuck says he wouldn't get into the business now. His grown children live out of the area and aren't interested in taking over.

"It's tough," he says. "I wouldn't want to start again unless you're a big corporation."

Chuck, who declined to tell me his age, grew up in Naples and went to Wilson High and Long Beach City College.

"I was supposed to go to State but my grades weren't good enough," he says.

Instead he enlisted in the Army from 1962 to 1964, and learned to cook for the troops.

Chuck's father had bought the property where the cafe is now - oldtimers may recall the Beach Cafe before it - and the adjacent building, now a dry cleaner.

"He thought I needed a job," Chuck says. "He helped me. Everybody helped me. I was up to here in hock."

When he took over the restaurant in earnest in 1966, a newly hired city health inspector named Frank Colonna signed his license.

When Colonna went on to become a two-term city councilman for the Belmont Shore area, he had regular breakfast meetings at Chuck's, as did another regular, former Mayor Beverly O'Neill.

To this day, Colonna goes to Chuck's at least once a week.

"He's an enormous complement to a family of businesses that are now so \ in Long Beach," Colonna says. "We're lucky to have them."

# posted by Blind Orange Julius @ 4:05 PM