Diner owner always had something to say

Deepa Bharath

Hilda “Hidi” Helwig was a walking book of insults.

Helwig, who was as famous for her sharp zingers as she was for her

large heart and delicious lobster and cheese omelets, died in Palm

Springs on Sunday after a brief illness. She was 78.

For about 25 years, Helwig ran Hidi’s Cafe, a diner on the Balboa

Peninsula, which she named after herself and her husband, Dick. And

people came there just to hear her talk.

“She had quite a mouth,” said Dona Dempsey, who worked as a

waitress in the cafe in the 1970s. “She cussed, and she threw insults

at people. She was quite a character. But they loved her for it

because she was so funny and it was hard not to laugh.”

Helwig didn’t just dish it out. She could take it, too.

“It was my job to ‘talk’ to her,” Dempsey said with a laugh.

Helwig moved the cafe to Palm Street in 1980, but the crowds kept

coming. Her clientele included celebrities Johnny Weismuller, the

star of “Tarzan”; Reggie Jackson; John Wayne; and President Richard

Nixon.

Helwig didn’t know how to cook when she started the restaurant in

1968 on Main Street, longtime Peninsula resident Gay Wassall-Kelly

said.

“She didn’t know how to flip pancakes,” she said. “She couldn’t

even fry an egg.”

But she was determined to learn. She stayed back at the cafe all

night splashing batter on the walls and sending eggs flying in the

air, Wassall-Kelly said.

“But when Hidi learned to cook, boy, could she cook,” she said.

The restaurant closed in 1993 after Helwig’s husband died and she

took ill. But locals still remember her sharp wit and smiling face,

Dempsey said.

Dempsey remembers several moments, many of which, she says, are

not fit to be published. But one story she would tell was that of a

man who had eaten breakfast and then found out that he had forgotten

his wallet.

“Hidi was furious,” Dempsey said. “She called him names and cussed

and said things. And the man told her he’d come back in the evening

and pay up.”

Helwig let him go, and the man did return.

“Turns out he was an Episcopalian minister,” Dempsey said,

laughing uncontrollably. “He came in all his regalia, and when Hidi

found out, that was probably the one time I saw her at a loss for

words.”

But the minister had a good laugh and continued to send a dozen

yellow roses to Helwig on her birthday every year, Dempsey said.

Helwig’s faux pas didn’t keep her quiet for long. Another time,

she took off on a man who walked into her tiny cafe with his bike.

“Hidi threw him out of the cafe,” Dempsey said. “And guess what,

everyone in the cafe cheered for her. They loved it.”

Helwig had her “rules.”

“She never took names,” Dempsey said. “People had to wait in line

outside, take their place and walk in when seats became available.

But she would never, ever take names.”

But Helwig had a heart to match her mouth, Wassall-Kelly said.

“She was extremely generous,” she said. “She would go out of the

way to help people.”

She went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church for Sunday

mass without fail every week.

“Even during the days she was sick, she would come in to the

restaurant,” Wassall-Kelly said. “She always had a joke up her sleeve

and a smile on her face.”