JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers QUITE A NAME—Camarillo Chamber of Commerce members and friends join Zzyzx Cafe owner Brian Fry, center, and his wife, Mei-Ling, as they cut the red ribbon to officially open their new restaurant in Old Town Camarillo on Sept. 10. The restaurant, which serves breakfast and lunch, is at 33 Lewis Road, a block north of Ventura Boulevard. Brian Fry knew ending his workday at 3 a.m. wasn’t for him.

During his dozen years in the restaurant business, the 35yearold Camarillo resident had spent many nights turning out the lights and locking the doors long after most folks had tucked themselves into bed.

“I was missing out on a lot. . . . I wasn’t seeing my wife,” Fry said of the last-call hours he put in as a manager at a number of big chain restaurants, including Mimi’s Cafe and BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse.

So Fry decided to go to work for himself and open a breakfast and lunch restaurant. The hours may be just as long, Fry said, but he gets to hang up his apron by dinnertime.

His new restaurant, Zzyzx— pronounced zy-zix —Cafe, opened its doors at Lewis Road and Ventura Boulevard recently.

“It was a little slow at the beginning, but people really enjoy it,” said Fry, an East Coast transplant who graduated from Santa Barbara City College’s culinary school.

“The response to the food has been phenomenal.”

The restaurant is named after the former Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa, a speck in the Mojave Desert just off Interstate 15 that’s known for its odd spelling and remote location on the way to Las Vegas.

“I wanted a business name that would be fun,” Fry said with a laugh. “I actually registered the domain name for the website before I started the business.”

The cafe’s menu offers the usual fare—omelets, pancakes and egg dishes for breakfast and sandwiches, salads and burgers for lunch—but Fry has made it a point to bring a little something different to his dishes.

“I like having fun with food,” Fry said.

And what’s not fun about ciabatta French toast dipped in Captain Crunch cereal or pina colada pancakes served with pineapple, coconut and rum cream?

“I love breakfast,” Fry said. “Everything is made to order.”

Fry likes breakfast so much, in fact, that he and executive chef Jason Corona decided to offer seven different types of eggs benedict including a steak benedict, one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes.

Corona was the executive chef at Black Angus Steakhouse in Ventura before heading the kitchen at Zzyzx. He said he has more opportunities to be creative at the locally owned cafe than when he worked for a corporate chain restaurant.

Corona, an Oxnard resident, said he likes Camarillo’s “smalltown feel.”

“When you’re in a big restaurant and putting out 500 dinners a night, you have no clue who you’re cooking for,” Corona said. “Here, I can see who I’m cooking for and like the fact that I can get to know the customers.”

On the lunch menu, Fry said the house specials include a pinot noir burger—an angus patty mixed with pinot noir wine and balsamic vinegar served with all the fixings and goat cheese. The other big seller is the seared Ahi tuna salad.

Fry said he also offers a good old-fashioned hamburger and doesn’t want his menu to be considered “pretentious.”

Although he’s a culinary school graduate, Fry said his talents lie more in management than at the grill and that his time spent in large restaurants gave him the experience he needed to run his own 45-seat cafe.

“Culinary school is nice, but it really doesn’t prepare you for the real world,” Fry said. “They don’t teach you what to do when the ice machine breaks on a holiday weekend.”

Despite the fact that the restaurant business is considered competitive and stressful, especially in a down economy, Fry said he would never have been able to open his cafe if it weren’t for the recession.

“I couldn’t have bought this restaurant without this economy,” he said. “I never could have afforded it.”

He credited his wife of eight years, Mei-Ling, with helping him get through the mounds of paperwork needed to open a new business.

Fry said he knows a restaurant’s reputation lives and dies on its food and service, which is why he’s brought the two front and center at Zzyzx.

A customer walked in late in the lunch hour last Friday and asked for the same special he’d had the day before. It didn’t matter to Fry that the item wasn’t on the menu. He had the kitchen working on the dish two minutes later, and the customer had a smile on his face.

“If it’s under this roof, I’ll cook it for you,” he said.

Zzyzx Cafe at 33 Lewis Road is open 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekends.