Food for ThoughtGilbert Bayardo’s new San Fernando...

Food for Thought

Gilbert Bayardo’s new San Fernando restaurant, Los Molcajetes, is going to be something special he thinks.

“We’re going to have fresh lobster and the very best steaks,” he said, “and other traditional Mexican dishes.”

He can pretty much guarantee the quality of everything because he owns Norma’s market next door at 965 N. Maclay Ave.

Norma’s is something of an institution in the North Valley. Bayardo said the store, opened by Norma Vargas about 10 years ago, stocks a wide selection of quality meats, fish and poultry, and special orders lobster.

Two years ago, Bayardo made Vargas an offer she didn’t refuse.

Bayardo said he bought the market for two reasons: “I knew it had a reputation for quality and service, and I wanted to go into business for myself.”

Vargas even agreed to include in the sale her recipe for chorizo, the Mexican sausage that has such a following that two tons of it goes out of the store each month. Some of the customers live as far away as Chicago and Tijuana.

Buying the market seemed like a great business transaction to Bayardo, but the former car salesman now says he didn’t know what he was getting into.

“I thought when you ran your own business, you sort of oversaw what went on and had an easy lifestyle,” he said. He revised that idea in short order, he said.

In addition to putting in long hours, he and his staff did some fine-tuning of the operation.

He learned to pay particular attention to his customers’ likes and dislikes.

He hired someone whose only job is to go to the meat market in downtown Los Angeles and handpick the meat.

He imports bottled soft drinks from Mexico. “Almost 95% of our customers are Spanish-speaking and some are former residents of Mexico. They like to be able to purchase their soda in bottles. They say there is a definite taste difference.”

Bayardo was just settling into a comfortable routine, having gotten the market running the way he wanted it to, when he decided to open the restaurant.

“Boy, I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” he said, laughing.

“It seemed like a good idea until the licenses and building hassles and all of those headaches,” he said. “Between the market and the restaurant, I’m putting in a lot of hours, but I have no regrets.”

He said he’s looking forward to meeting his old customers in his new restaurant, which should open soon.

“I was born in a little town in Mexico near Puerto Vallarta, and came to this country when I was young. I attended Montebello High School and East Los Angeles College before going into sales.

“When I started at the market,” he said, “I realized what I’d been missing all the time I had been living in Southern California--a sense of community. San Fernando has that.”

Check(mated) Out

When the Glendale Galleria opened 15 years ago, the Game Keeper was one of its first tenants, and it still is today.

One of the reasons this small shop stayed in business when others were sinking in an economic black hole was the Game Keeper’s policy of allowing customers to become familiar with the merchandise.

“We have all the old standard games, like Monopoly, Scrabble, checkers and Trivial Pursuit, as well as all the new ones that come along,” Manager Paul Morrow said. “But the thing that sets us apart from most mall games shops is that we are happy to open any game that a customer has an interest in and teach him or her how to play it.”

During the Dungeons and Dragons frenzy in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the place was packed with youthful aficionados.

“They not only bought the game and learned how to play it here, they came back to play with other young people,” Morrow said.

That led Morrow, who has been at the shop for 10 years, to realize that the store was a natural meeting place for gamesters. So he started setting up informal tournaments in Dungeons and Dragons, mah-jongg and other games.

Now it’s chess.

“For years chess players have congregated at a shop called Players in the Silverlake district because all the people who wrote books on chess tended to congregate there,” Morrow said. “Now that shop is closed, so we’re going to try to pick up the slack.”

Morrow said that once a week, beginning Wednesday, chess tables will be set up in the shop for anyone who wants to play.

“Our assistant manager, Shoshana Edwards, is the No. 2-ranked chess-by-mail champion in the country, and she is inviting all the masters to come here to play,” Morrow said.

That means, he said, that anyone can sit down with a champion and asked to be shown strategies.

Morrow does not play chess.

Gin rummy is his game.

“I used to make a lot of money playing professionally, but now I just like a friendly game occasionally, in the shop,” he said.

Making Book on It

Background on the Middle East is becoming a common request at the North Hollywood Regional Library, according to senior librarian Harriet Newton.

“I recommend David Fromkin’s ‘A Peace to End All Peace,’ which is an historical appraisal of the way England and France carved up the area between 1914 and 1922,” she said.

She said another excellent book is “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman, a journalist who is familiar with the area.

Some people, she said, want books on Saddam Hussein because they would like to understand who he is and what he stands for. She said she recommends newspapers and newsmagazines for that.

Child Psychology

A variation on Murphy’s Law--which says that anything that can go wrong will--is that if your child is going to misbehave, he will pick the most public place to do it.

Outside of pretending you don’t know the little darling, there doesn’t seem much you can do. Or is there?

If anyone would know how to handle children who are excitable, it must be a child’s haircutter. And what better shop to call than Wiggle Worms, which advertises that it specializes in jiggling, giggling, wiggling children.

A recent call to the shop was greeted with a piercing, distant scream, followed by a “Please hold,” and then silence.

When the voice came back on the line, and the scream had turned into an accusatory howl, Yvonne Dodds, one of the cutters, agreed to talk.

It takes a great deal of skill and psychology to calm downchildren who are determined to carry on, she said.

The shop’s staff uses a number of methods including soothing voices, trying to create a comfort zone for the child and generally letting him or her know everything is all right.

If that doesn’t work, said Dodds, there is the old-fashioned method that works in the doctor’s office, dentist’s office, the grocery store and at the haircutters.

“Bribery,” she said, with a laugh. “Video games, cookies, anything that works.”

Overheard

“The other day my 4-year-old wanted to know why we are at war with a rock.”

--One mother to another in North Hollywood Park