Altadena chef loses home in Eaton fire, says visiting restaurants is more important than ever
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- Restaurants offer a much-needed sense of normalcy during times of disaster.
- Perle restaurant in Pasadena has reopened after its chef and owner lost his home in the Eaton fire.
- For those in a position to do so, it’s more important than ever to support your local restaurants.
Over the past eight years, Dean and Pauline Yasharian built a life for their family in a quiet corner of northeast Altadena. They live near the top of an area known as Christmas Tree Lane. Their two children attend the school down the street. And the couple own and operate a small French restaurant called Perle, just 10 minutes south of their home in the heart of Old Pasadena.
On the evening of Jan. 7, the life they knew forever changed with a text message from a friend, whose husband is a local firefighter.
“He was like ‘You guys got to get out of there,’ ” Dean says.
Over the years, the Yasharians had seen a few fires on the mountains just north of their Altadena neighborhood. When the Eaton fire started, Dean remained optimistic, never imagining that the flames could reach them.
Some residents are beginning to assess the damage to their homes as firefighters appear to turn a corner in containing the blazes. But officials say there is much work to be done.
Pauline packed a few valuables and left with the children. Dean decided to stay back with their dog and wait it out.
“Me and my neighbors were watching the fire,” Dean says. “When the winds came through, they were bellowing and the flames looked like they were 50 feet high. We were praying they stayed on the mountain.”
But the fire quickly made its way south, and by 11:30 p.m., the smoke was heavy in the air, and there was no power. Dean decided to leave and come back in the morning.
The next day, the couple received a text from a neighbor who lives across the street. The neighbor’s house was gone, and Dean and Pauline feared the worst. They got in the car and drove up to check on their home.
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“It was like an apocalypse, like somebody had dropped a nuclear bomb on our whole community,” Dean says. “There were power lines everywhere, everything was still on fire, houses catching fire, but we finally made it up to our street.”
They drove as far as they could, then walked the rest of the way to their home.
“We walked out to our house and just broke down and held each other for a while,” he says. “It was just something you would never have expected in your life to happen. It was gone. Everything was gone.”
The Yasharians are one of thousands of families who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires. They’re part of a community of survivors now deep in the throes of navigating how to house their families and rebuild. Instead of taking the time to grieve and fully process their loss, the Yasharians switched gears to focus on their restaurant and the 30 employees they consider family.
“The next day it was still snowing ash everywhere and all the restaurants were more or less closed and it was like a double whammy,” Dean says. “How are we going to survive this?”
Even before the closure, the restaurant was entering what Dean calls an annual “drop-in-sales period” after the holidays. With their general manager, Nikki Langworthy, and a handful of other employees who were also displaced because of the Eaton fire, they made the difficult decision to close the restaurant to regroup and assess the fire’s full impact. He continued to pay his salaried employees and shared resources for how to file for disaster unemployment with anyone paid hourly.
Dean held a “crisis meeting” with his staff on Jan. 9. Was the water safe at the restaurant? What about the air quality? How was he going to afford to pay his employees with an empty dining room?
After numerous mixed messages regarding water contamination, Langworthy received confirmation from Pasadena Water and Power that the water in the area was safe.
Dean kept a close eye on a text chain he shares with a number of the surrounding restaurants in Old Town, including Bone Kettle, Osawa, Pez Cantina and Union. The restaurants shared how many customers they served each day to help inform if and when Perle should reopen.
Dean and Pauline let themselves get lost in the inner workings of the restaurant, a welcome distraction from the trauma they were facing at home.
The French restaurant is one of the most celebrated in the city. L.A. Times restaurant critic Bill Addison included Perle in one of his 101 Best Restaurants lists. I’ve featured (and frequently visit for) Yasharian’s perfect tarte tatin.
“We were starting to itemize the things that we lost,” Dean says. “It’s a hard process and they want to know roughly what year you bought something. To put a cost on these possessions is a long, tedious task, but with the restaurant stuff, you have to put all of your focus into it at that moment. It’s a nice escape to think about food and restaurants for a little while before we have to go back to dealing with everything else.”
The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed or damaged several restaurants, leaving many workers without work and income. Community funding aims to help.
During the week the restaurant was closed, its working capital dropped to an all-time low, and the team made the decision to reopen on Jan. 15. Dean reengineered the menu, brought on a skeleton staff of 10 and reduced opening hours in order to operate conservatively without running out of money.
The reservations showed 10 tables and around 30 covers. Normally, he needs around 75 to 80 covers on a midweek evening to stay afloat.
After being evacuated from my own home in Pasadena for a week, I found comfort in a corner table of the Perle dining room. When disaster strikes, restaurants offer a sense of normalcy, and it felt good to be around other people, sharing French fries and a tarte tatin.
By 7 p.m. that evening, with multiple air purifiers running, the dining room was nearly full. Dean recognized most of the names in the reservation book. The table behind me told their server that they had seen Dean’s Instagram post about reopening and wanted to come out and support him. At another table, a man wearing a sweatshirt from the school the Yasharian’s children attend got up to give Dean a hug. That school burned down in the Eaton fire.
“We really appreciate everyone coming out to support us, and it gives us hope that maybe the restaurant is going to bounce back,” Dean says. “We are a close-knit community. And the restaurant community have all been great, too.”
These L.A. restaurants and coffee shops are staying open to shelter evacuees, offering discounts and, in some cases, free food to evacuees and first responders to the numerous ongoing fires in Southern California.
With their own future uncertain, Bone Kettle reopened on Jan. 11 and donated proceeds from that weekend’s sales to the Yasharian family.
The restaurant, located around the corner from Perle on Raymond Avenue, reached out to its nearly 30,000 Instagram followers for help.
“Words can’t even begin to describe what a blow this is to this sweet family,” reads the Bone Kettle Instagram post. “Nothing makes sense about this, the only thing that makes sense for us to do is to support our neighbor when they needed it the most.”
For those in a position to do so, it’s more important than ever to eat in or order takeout from your favorite restaurants. They are the lifeblood of communities across the city, providing employment, safe spaces and nourishment.
“We lost our house, the restaurant is in jeopardy, but it relieved the pressure a little to know people are still coming out to eat,” Dean says. “Restaurants tend to really be affected during these disaster situations. It’s a huge help for people to spread the word about Perle and to just go out and support your local restaurants.”
Dean is looking to a steady stream of upcoming events and holidays to keep the business going. He signed up to participate in DineLA, the semiannual food event that includes prix fixe lunch and dinner menus at restaurants around the city.
“The goal is to get the restaurant back operational, and then kind of maybe take a little time to breathe as a family,” he says. “We’ll find time for that.”
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