Restaurant

Several years ago, while working in east Los Angeles, Sue Georgino used her trained palate to identify the genuine Mexican cuisine the neighborhood has become known for. “I think it’s about how everything is freshly made salsas, freshly made guacamole,” said Georgino, community development director. “It’s not over-cheesed, and the beans taste like they are not coming out of a can.” Add fresh, homemade tortillas, and the stage is set for a delicious meal, she said.

MAGNOLIA PARK DISTRICT — If Zare Dermegerdichian cannot hold on to his tables and chairs, he said his Healthy Bites restaurant will close. “If they don’t let us keep them, I am 100% sure I would have to close the shop,” he said. “Most of our customers walk here and want a place to sit down and eat.” The 1,000-square-foot eatery on Magnolia Boulevard has for the last eight months been allowed to operate under a temporary exemption from a city requirement that restaurants with on-site dining provide 10 off-street parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor area.

Gene LoGuercio, proprietor of Chili John’s restaurant, quietly passed away at 6:30 p.m. April 13 in the company of his wife and sons at his home in Frazier Park. For the past year or so, I’ve been watching my business neighbor slowly being eaten away by pancreatic cancer and the radiation therapy used to treat it. Even to an observer it’s a harrowing experience. I can’t imagine enduring it myself. Of course, he’s a good man. Hardworking, honest, sincere, dedicated to his family — an always shook-your-hand- like-he-meant-it kind of guy. It’s been a most humbling experience to see his friends and regular customers coming by asking about him or chatting him up when he was well enough to be on the premises.

DeBell restaurant is definitely up to par My husband and I recently discovered what must be the best-kept secret in Burbank: the clubhouse restaurant at DeBell Golf Course (“DeBell opens house,” Jan. 7). We are not golfers, but we decided to drive up to the top of Walnut to see the new clubhouse building. While we were there, we stopped to eat in the restaurant and were totally surprised by the gourmet meal we enjoyed for regular coffee shop prices. It was a totally unexpected but very much appreciated surprise.

In 1959, a quartet of teenage musicians from Liverpool, England, were playing small local clubs under the name of Johnny and the Moondogs. The following year, they would change their name to the Beatles. Across the pond, the United States would start the year with 48 states and end it with 50. The men who would grow up to be the 42nd and 43rd leaders of those states were in grade school, and two more years would pass before the country’s current president would be born. In Burbank, folks were doing much the same as people all over the nation — listening to Elvis, Paul Anka and Bobby Darin on the radio, watching new shows like “Bonanza” and “The Twilight Zone” on TV, and going to see movies like “Ben-Hur” and “Some Like It Hot.” That was also the year that two young entrepreneurial Burbankers named Al and Delores Thomas gathered up $5,000 and opened The Tallyrand Restaurant on Olive Avenue.

My family loves sushi. We definitely have our favorite places around town. Armed with a discount coupon I received in the mail and with some trepidation, we ventured out to a new sushi place in La Crescenta called Sakura Ichi. We were worried because we did not like the former occupant of the building, Sushi USA, which featured “All-You-Can-Eat Sushi.” There is something so very wrong with that term. It’s almost an oxymoron. As we pulled up to the restaurant, a cute little house set back from neighboring concrete businesses, we relaxed a bit. Cheery red lanterns were swinging in the breeze and little white lights twinkled on the front patio.

There has been contention — and there may be more in the coming months — over whether Burbank’s recent $9.4-million upgrade of the DeBell Golf Club was worth it during tough economic times. Whether the project, which the City Council greenlighted in 2007, was worth it financially may be up to debate, but one thing is certain: The remodeled Craftsman-style DeBell clubhouse is a marked improvement. What was once a windowless, dark, dingy clubhouse circled by several dozen sloppily parked golf carts is now a handsome, modern structure featuring a slick mix of glass, rock and wood.

Members of the DeBell Senior Men’s Golf Club weren’t used to the luxury they enjoyed Thursday following their monthly tournament. The duffers enjoyed their lunch of cheeseburgers, baked beans and potato chips in a brand new meeting room adjacent to the restaurant at De Bell Golf Club. “We just usually have our lunch on the patio outside,” said Jim Lloyd, who is one of 168 members of the organ- ization that is open to men 50 and older. “But this new restaurant is really something special.

San Fernando Boulevard was alive Thursday with the upbeat tunes of the Phat Cat Swingers as couples ducked, swooped and jived. But they weren’t dancing — they were trying to get to the head of the line for samples at Porto’s Bakery during the annual Taste of Downtown Burbank. “[A Taste of Burbank] gives us the opportunity to speak to the people who love our food,” said Margarita Navarro, one of three owners of Porto’s Bakery in Burbank and Glendale.