My kindergartener had a school fundraiser recently in which families dined out at California Pizza Kitchen and partial proceeds of the receipts went back to benefit his school.
Watching him giddy with anticipation all day at the thought of being in close proximity to his friends and teachers at a restaurant reminded me of how excited I used to get when my elementary school used to do the same thing. But this was a while ago and before the existence of the comparatively ritzy locale of CPK.
To raise money for my son’s school, a dine-out is held in a different restaurant every month but when I was little and attending Kenter Canyon, we had just one Pizza Night a year and it was always held at the same place — an iconic restaurant familiar to Brentwoodians of a certain generation: Regular Jons.
Located where the sleeker Coral Tree Cafe now sits, Regular Jons was a sprawling, somewhat dark, old-fashioned pizzeria with thick plastic tables painted in red and white checks. You ordered at the counter and sometimes on Pizza Night the school kids were allowed to throw on an apron to help bus tables or pop in to the kitchen to assist the chefs.
Either you loved its cracker thin crust or you hated it but no matter what, you had an opinion and no one was ever on the fence about a preference. Big pitchers of soda on the tables signified a big little league win, sawdust on the floor probably intended to hide the obvious pizza toppings droppings, kids of my generation flocked to Regular Jons as the go-to meeting spot for years. We climbed and played on the permanently parked fire truck stuck in the sidewalk out in front.
We competed on the Ms. Pac Man and Centipede video games and who among us did not get excited seeing those very games in a cameo scene from the classic John Hughes movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? It was like seeing someone we knew in the film — not terribly rare since growing up in Brentwood meant often knowing someone on the silver screen but still exciting nonetheless.
Regular Jons might have been the first restaurant on San Vicente to offer a salad bar but no one would have experienced organic quinoa or tempe paste concoctions here. We are talking ambrosia, red Jell-O and cling peaches chilling in fake silver bowls embedded in crushed ice. Tacky, tasty yet totally progressive at the time.
I think what I love most about my memories of Regular Jons is that it represents what I know to be the Brentwood of my youth. When I tell someone where I am from and they give that look of Aaaha, privilege! — I know they do not really have an understanding of the old days, back when the eighties disco lights of Hamburger Hamlet predated the Tavern or the Jumping Frog Saloon was the hippest bar in town — long before Katsua set up shop in that same location.
Brentwood may be slightly ritzier now than when I was growing up. It has been well over twenty years since Regular Jons shut its doors and even longer since I enjoyed my last Pizza Night.
I got a kick out of watching how excited my son was at his version of pizza night and wondered if it might be genetic — that feeling of how fun it is to see friends and teachers outside the classroom and breaking bread in a shared location.
He might not be able to climb on top of a parked fire truck outside or break health codes by helping out in the kitchen but he was as happy as could be and had a great time nonetheless.
