Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg

Neighborhood gem

Four generations and thousands of customers later, La Perla still shines

It’s not every Valley restaurant that can say it has been entered into the nation’s Congressional Record, but then not every restaurant has been in business 60 years.

La Perla Café, the family-owned, family-run Mexican restaurant in central Glendale can claim both. Four genereations have been a part of the restaurant, with countless cousins and relatives involved as well.

La Perla Café was started in 1946 by the late Joseph (Joe) Peralta Pompa and his wife Eva Macias Pompa. La Perla Café’s 60th anniversary was honored by Ed Pastor before the U.S. House of Representatives last May 10, with the honorarium entered into the Congressional Record.

"In an industry where small business owners sometimes struggle to survive, the Pompas have thrived by following one simple rule: serving food as good as what you make at home," said Rep. Pastor.

As would be expected, after 60 years in the same neighborhood, La Perla has its share of regulars. A few have been eating at La Perla for nearly 50 years.

Dr. Rocky Maynes is one of them. He started visiting La Perla with his mother, father and brother when he was a freshman at ASC (as ASU was known in 1948).

A former Spanish teacher at Buckeye High School, and later Glendale High School, Maynes had both Joanne and Butch Pompa as students. He came to know the family well, but claims the good grades he gave the two high school students had no affect on his service at La Perla.

Still, familiarity has had its perks.

"I’m a family member now," said Maynes who has a Ph.D. in Spanish literature and linguistics. His son, Jay, entertains musically in La Perla’s "little bar" as Juan Oskar.

"They make a lot of their food old style, the way my grandmother used to make it," says Maynes, whose grandfather emigrated from Chihuahua. "I also like the way they make their quesadillas, and the red chili sauce on the enchiladas."

While many of us could never hope to prepare food at home that tasted as good as La Perla’s exquisite Mexican dishes, Rep. Pastor was right on about the "struggle to survive." The family has struggled, not only to make it in the business, but as immigrants in a country where they often find it hard to get ahead in many areas.

And for the Pompas, whose patriarch’s family originated in Sonora, their way began in hardship.

Joseph Pompa’s father abandoned his wife, seven daughters and his new son when Joseph was only a year old. After the family moved to the mining town of Jerome, Joe went to work in the copper mines to help the family. He was 14. A scrappy fighter, he took up boxing and was later named Welter Weight Champion of Arizona. He retired from the sport after meeting his wife to be, Eva Macias.

Eva, too, knew struggle early on. She was born in Chihuahua, Mexico and came to the U.S. with her widowed mother when she was only a year old. After her mother remarried and her stepfather grew too ill to work, she left high school to clean houses to care for her family that now included five siblings. She would later tell her family she had loved school, even when it meant cleaning the family house and making three dozen tortillas before she walked the five miles to the Clarkdale, Arizona schoolhouse.

These two stalwart young people met and married in 1935. Joe studied electronics through correspondence courses (after working long hours in the mine) and eventually earned his degree. He was hired at Goodyear Air Research as an electronic engineer.

Daughter Joanne Pompa Sandhagen says the La Perla Restaurant was started to "keep my mother happy and busy." The very name is a tribute to her, for as the family tells it, Joseph named it for Eva, because his tall, fair-skinned wife reminded him of a pearl.

"She was such a good cook; she could cook anything – spaghetti, the best fried rice ever, even Japanese noodles. There was absolutely nothing she couldn’t make – often giving it a bit of a Mexican flair, " says Sandhagen, who now owns Unique Real Estate in Phoenix.

Her father, Joseph, continued his engineering work, but was on hand at the restaurant, overseeing administrative duties like firing and hiring.

"The women told me they would jump when they saw him coming," laughs Sandhagen. "He could be tough."

The Pompas had four children: Sylvia Pompa Chavez, who became a teacher and is now retired; Gloria Pompa Espinoza Overton who followed in the footsteps of her mother to became head cook at La Perla; Joanne; and Joseph R. Pompa, or as his family and friends call him, Butch.

He took over running the restaurant, following Joseph Sr.’s passing in 1961. Like his father, he started working to help the family at an early age. He was only 14. Eva died in 1976.

Today, Butch’s son Gabriel (Gabe) is head of catering and oversees the kitchen, food and drink ordering and the restaurant’s cooking assistants. He’s inherited the love of good cooking and added panache as a graduate from the California Culinary Academy/Le Cordon Bleu Program in San Francisco.

Joseph and Eva Pompa’s offspring have worked at the restaurant. There are grandchildren working now, even if it’s summer vacation between going to colleges or universities. There are aunts, uncles and cousins. There was even the inimitable Auntie Amelia Anderson, Eva’s sister, who was a La Perla waitress for 50 years.

"The United States has brought such wonderful opportunities to so many ethnic backgrounds – the Pompa family has been one of the many fortunate," said Sandhagen. "There is so much more to say about all the great gifts, and we want to thank God and this great land - with much pride being of Mexican heritage."

"The four generations of Pompas number into the hundreds and are part of the great American success stories woven into our U.S. heritage," said Pastor before the House. "Working as cooks, chefs, lawyers, teachers, salespeople and real estate agents, all the Pompas have contributed to this country in pursuit of the American Dream."

As for the café’s customers, the family’s most outstanding contribution is its culinary legacy.

La Perla’s chiles rellenos is a must-order of another long-term patron, Glenn Hickman. He, too, first crossed the threshold of the La Perla restaurant in 1948 as a high school student accompanying his father and mother.

Today, he and his wife Delores frequent the restaurant often, as they live nearby.

"I like everything, really, so I don’t always stay with the same dish," said Hickman, who is now retired.

His wife Delores is a vegetarian, but says she can be wooed away from her normally strict veggie regimen by La Perla’s tacos and other specialties.

"I really like the rellenos, they’re always fresh chiles and it comes out a golden brown. When you cut into it, there’s all the wonderful pepper and cheese oozing out," she said. "And their refried beans are so delicious I could simply eat them cold for breakfast, and the margaritas! They’re very good."

She also lauds the catering service, having experienced it first-hand recently when she chaired a pot-luck committee for the historic Glendale Catlin Court. "It was absolutely fantastic, everything was hot and good. I can recommend them highly."

As the Hickman’s point out, La Perla may not be the Valley’s fanciest place, but "it’s just so comfortable, you feel right at home."