A Soulful Denny’s Banishes the Bland

Eighteen months ago Donald J. Bohana had trouble persuading the big chain restaurants that the Watts-Willowbrook area of Los Angeles was a potential gold mine. Since the Watts riots of 1965, not one family-style restaurant had opened in the area. His persistence finally paid off. Six months ago Bohana opened a Denny’s in the Kenneth Hahn Shopping Plaza.

At first things were fine; customers came out of curiosity. Then the daily totals began to drop. Bohana, a founding director of the L.A.-based Guardian Bank, knew something was wrong when the daily receipts dropped by almost half. But he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

So he talked to some of the ministers that were tapped into the community and asked for advice. They all said his problem was the food. “You can prepare chicken and frozen fish at home,� they told him. “You’ve got to do something different.�

So Bohana decided he needed a soul food cook. He found Roy Cash. “I told him my peas and string beans were very bland. He said, ‘Yeah, I know. I can fix them up for you.’ I didn’t really believe he could, but I told him I’d pay him $20 to do something with them.� So Cash, who had cooked at the old Jordan’s restaurant in the area and for a lot of church banquets, went into the kitchen and began adding ham hocks and spices to the vegetables. “The change was amazing,� Bohana says. “I sold out of them right there.�

Bohana knew he was on to something, and immediately made a deal with Cash, who is retired and living on Social Security. Now, in addition to the standard Denny’s fare, Cash lends his expertise to the restaurant’s menu adding smothered steak, short ribs, red beans and rice, chitlins and turkey wings.

“This guy is a new breath of life,� says Bohana. “We even had these little gangbangers come in and say, ‘Oh, Roy’s here?’ It was crazy.�

Business is back to what it was when it opened and it’s clearly more than curiosity that’s bringing the customers in. Denny’s was even impressed; it is now considering offering regionalized menus in its other locations. “We feel Don Bohana’s specials are terrific,� says Denny’s Elaine Richner.

Meanwhile, Bohana is in the process of negotiating a lease for a second Denny’s. This one will be located in the heart of South-Central Los Angeles, at 83rd and Vermont. Bohana says that this time he doesn’t have to sell the idea as hard as he had to for his first Denny’s. “Denny’s is so pleased with the way my restaurant is doing,� he says, “that they are now practically letting me write my own ticket.�

ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK: “What I was looking for was somebody that could operate the restaurant, that would be there and care for it, and was going to put their imprint on it,� says Kimco’s Bob Puccini. The San Francisco-based hotel and restaurant management company will soon open the Beverly Prescott Hotel on the Beverly Hills-adjacent site of the former Beverly Hillcrest Hotel. Names Puccini talked to include Bruce Cost, former chef-owner of San Francisco’s Monsoon, Wolfgang Puck (who already owns a share in Kimco’s Postrio) and former Checkers Hotel chef Thomas Keller.

Puccini has finally made up his mind. Hans Rockenwagner will run the restaurant. “I have worked 20 years for this,� says Rockenwagner, who owns the California-eclectic restaurant that bears his name as well as Fama and the sandwich shop Rock and Rolls--all in Santa Monica. “It’s the sort of project you hope eventually will come along.�

Won’t the Beverly Prescott restaurant compete with Rockenwagner’s other restaurant? “I don’t think people will perceive them as being the same,� says Puccini. “At Rockenwagner, there’s no rotisserie. There’s no wood-fired grill. No bar. It’s not a place that opens up on a pool. . . .�

ROGER’S RABBIT TRICK: Alive Culinary Resources, the management company that handles some of the world’s top chefs, announced in a recent press release that celebrities packed Granita the first night Roger Verge cooked at Wolfgang Puck’s Malibu restaurant.

Others were not as lucky. By Sunday, Verge scarcely made an appearance at the $80 dinner. “Verge’s sous chef said he flipped 15 foie gras and then was gone,� says a customer who was dining at the restaurant that night. “Wolfgang had to make excuses for his absence all night long.�

STOCKPOT: L’Orangerie, the expensive French Restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard, is now open for lunch. . . . So is Campanile, the California-Mediterranean restaurant. Unlike L’Orangerie, the La Brea Avenue restaurant is strictly self-service at lunchtime. . . . La Salsa taqueria, the Mexican restaurant chain known for its healthy Mexican cuisine, has opened a branch on the corner of 7th and Flower streets in downtown Los Angeles. . . . And Geoffrey’s/Malibu, located in you-know-where, has added seven-course sampling menus on Thursday. The new “Taste of the World� menu highlights the cuisine of a different city and country each week, beginning this Thursday with a menu from Nagasaki, Japan. Other locations include Jakarta, Indonesia; Salekhard, Russia and Frankfurt, Germany.