Busy Bee Cafe

Busy Bee Cafe

478 E Main St

Ventura, CA 93001-2627

(805) 643-4864

The Busy Bee Cafe is one of the places I visited first some 20 years ago, when I would bug out of Pasadena to spend a cool weekend in Ventura. 

I don't not like the Busy Bee. I just don't like it enough to go there that often. Generally being a sucker for a diner theme, and knowing that it's been owned by the same people since the 60's, I would think that I'd be there all the time, but there's something that just isn't working for me. It's clean, and everyone is friendly, but there's something. 

It's not cheap, so that's part of it. I think it might just be the lighting. It's a narrow space with 50's style booths and decor. But unlike a place like, say Johnny Rockets, which has the retro vibe in bright white, Busy Bee is tan with no natural light once you get past the first few booths. It vaguely reminds me of classrooms that I used to teach in back when I was in LA Unified. The red naugahyde I like, but it's just not that bright.

Joe's Special

That being said, I've eaten a variety of things there over the years, and all have been fine. On my way to the Roadshow Revival (I'll get to a more detailed review of that later this week), my father-in-law picked that place because he wanted chicken fried steak. I almost ordered the same thing, but saw something that I really like and can seldom find-the San Francisco Joe, or "Joe's Special." Three eggs scrambled with hamburger, spinach, mushrooms and onions, along with the Busy Bee potatoes, an apple and a biscuit and gravy.

Chicken Fried Steak

"Joe's Special" occupies an interesting place in my mind that I think I'll go into briefly. In my mid-20's, I had broken up with my long time college girlfriend, and was dating what I considered to be a "woman," a divorcée five years my senior, and I always had a vague feeling that I was in over my head. She seemed a bit more sophisticated, having grown up with the moneyed Jewish people on the Westside, compared to my more working class upbringing. She was an only child, who's parents had recently died-I went to her father's funeral after we'd be dating just a few weeks-and everything about her in my mind seemed grown-up. As I look back on it, her family hadn't been any better off than mine, and she really wasn't any more sophisticated than me. It just seemed like it at the time.

She took me to the Daily Grill in Brentwood at  a time when eating out still meant a chili burger at Tommy's, and though I went to UCLA and had hung out on the Westside, I was still hitting college type places. The clientele at Daily Grill seemed a bit more upscale, and I thought that if anyone looked at us, they would wonder who the kid was with the pretty woman. That she generally paid didn't help my inferiority complex any. She paid because she made more money then me, and though I would pay, what I could pay for was a bit different than what she could pay for. A sandwich at Phillipe's or a beer at Gorky's I could swing, and though she'd go with me to those places, she also had a taste for finer living, and she could afford to pay.

Back to Joe's Special-it looked like a fascinating dish to me, something that I wouldn't have dreamed of ordering for reasons that made sense to me then but not now. She said to try it, that it was good, and so I did and found it to be delicious. I was master's swimming at the time, so I easily powered down that and whatever she didn't finish. I would order that pretty much every time we were at the Daily Grill. It's not that we went often, but somehow she and Joe's Special ended up seared together in my mind.

The Busy Bee Joe's was good enough to bring the last three paragraphs back to me with a vengeance.  Joe's was good, crowded with a bunch of other memories, as well as the ones I just shared. The chicken fried steak looked good. My biscuit and gravy was very tasty, too. Service was quick, my coffee was refilled regularly, and on the whole, I left thinking that maybe I should spend a bit more time in the Busy Bee.

I just wish it was brighter.