Dorothy’s Chuck Wagon building sold

Listed for $1.3M, sale forced closure of long-time Old Town restaurant



CLOSED–Dorothy’s Chuck Wagon Cafe on Ventura Boulevard was empty Monday morning. DANIEL WOLOWICZ/Acorn Newspapers

As if awaiting the next round of customers, coffee mugs were stacked in the middle of the horseshoe counter that dominated the middle of Dorothy’s Chuck Wagon Cafe.

The chairs and tables remained, too.

But the place was empty and locked up even though it was nearly noon on a recent Monday, a time when the restaurant’s booths usually began to attract lunchtime patrons, replacing those who had lingered over cups of morning coffee.

Everything else was gone.

Gone were the license plates, bumper stickers and small signs that crowded what Dorothy Johnson, the owner, called the “walls of wisdom.”

Gone were the mugs that hung below the busy order window.

Gone were the jars of ketchup, the bottles of syrup, the tins of cream, the packets of jam and all the like that had made the long-standing restaurant at 2344 Ventura Blvd. feel like a place frozen in time.

Gone, too, was Johnson, the bespectacled owner, who, often alongside her two daughters, Emily Harris and Mary Johnson, ran the breakfast and lunchtime spot for nearly 40 years.

Aside from the coffee mugs and empty booths, what remained was a sign on the window of the family-owned business.

Dorothy Johnson inside her restaurant in 2018. ACORN FILE PHOTO

Signed by Dorothy Johnson and her staff, the sign announced the restaurant’s abrupt closure last week.

The sign, written by Harris, cited Chuck Wagon’s ongoing struggles during the pandemic but noted that the decision to close was made for them with the recent sale of the building.

“The last few years have been tough on so many of us,” the sign read. “We fought gallantly to remain open through the COVID-19 closures, mandates and new, strict restaurant guidelines only to be confronted with our long-term landlords’ decision to sell the property.”

According to a listing by Los Angeles-based Crexi Commercial Real Estate, the 3,200-square-foot building was put on the market in December for $1.3 million. The building also includes four other businesses: nail, hair and lash salons, as well as a tailor shop.

Multiple calls made to Crexi agents were not returned.

“It saddens me that the sale of the property has resulted in such an immediate closure. There are so many people we never got to say a proper farewell to,” Harris said in an email to the Acorn. “The news came so suddenly.”

Harris’s letter affixed to the restaurant’s front window noted that her mom’s proudest accomplishment was the relationships she and the staff made with countless patrons.

“It makes me think,” Harris wrote. “How many meals have we prepared? How many cups of coffee have been poured? How many close conversations between loved ones have been shared in these seats?”

She wrote about how Dorothy Johnson had “put her blood, sweat and tears into her passion for feeding her friends and family and all who have stepped foot through these doors.”

Harris added that her family is “deeply rooted in their community, and we hope to stay in touch and continue to foster our relationships with all of you, our friends and family.”

The cafe opened in 1946 on Old Conejo Road, which became Ventura Boulevard once the 101 Freeway split the city in the 1950s. The restaurant has gone through several name and ownership changes in the decades since.

Johnson told the Acorn in 2017 that the restaurant’s name, Chuck Wagon, comes from the style of chow that ranchers would expect, “such as pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage—in big piles.”

Harris wrote that her mom was born at the restaurant in 1955.

“A young pregnant woman walks through the door of a quaint town cafe and suddenly finds herself in labor,” Harris wrote of Johnson’s birth. “That woman was my grandma and that baby was my mom, Dorothy. As fate would have it, she was quite literally born to spend her days in that little cafe.”

Harris ended her note: “It truly is the end of an era, a very sweet, sweet era! So it is with gratitude and love that we send off with these words one last time: ‘Thank you for coming! Take care and see you soon!’”

DEAR CUSTOMERS–A good-bye note has been taped to the front window of Dorothy’s Chuck Wagon Cafe. DANIEL WOLOWICZ/Acorn Newspapers

 

This article was edited May 20, 2022 at 2:56 p.m. to reflect that the building includes four other businesses.