The Vagabond

The Vagabond Coffee Shop and Restaurant

760 E. Thompson Ave.

Ventura, CA

In my 5/30/14 post on the Main Street Restaurant and Steakhouse, I wrote that I miss the old diners and coffee shops that seemed to be so prominent when I was growing up back in the 70's, lamenting on how they've been replaced by Mexican places and restaurant chains. I had forgotten that Ventura also has the Vagabond Coffee Shop and Restaurant, adjacent to but not affiliated with the Vagabond Inn.

First, a few words about the Vagabond Inn. If you need a place to stay, and you don't really plan on spending much time in your room, the Vagabond is perfect. It's clean, and two blocks off the water. It has a pool, which is also well maintained. That's really about it-nothing special. My in-laws like it because it's reasonably priced and gives them some level of privacy when they stay up here for a few days. 

When my in-laws were up for this year's Roadshow Revival (the headliner, who I've seen many times in the past 30 years, was Los Lobos, but the show itself wasn't as much fun as last year's-see 7/31/13), we had both dinner and breakfast at the Vagabond. 

About the wait staff...we had two different waitresses, both older than dirt and neither very happy. But they did bring our food to us in a quick and professional way, no muss, no fuss. Both answered questions in a brisk and business like fashion, neither wanting to be engaged in much small talk. On both Friday night and Saturday morning, the restaurant was busy, and they didn't waste any time with chit-chat, either with my father-in-law, who'll talk to anybody or anyone else that I could see. Here's your food, here's your coffee, and I'm moving on. As I thought about it after, I wouldn't want to spend my 60's-and they were in their 60's if they were a day-slinging hash in a coffee shop in Ventura. My in-laws tip well, and I'm certain that both these waitresses put the time in and deserved every bit.

The decor is likely unchanged from the 70's, and somehow appeared to be dark, even with the wealth of windows on a sunny summer morning. Maybe it's something about the muted earth tones, formica and naugahyde that keeps places like this in dark light, but it always reminds me of those early 70's cop movies, where everyone is a bit ugly.

For dinner, I had a rare indulgence that both my doctor and my wife say I should never eat, the Chicken Fried Steak. There's a choice of sides, and I think I went with a green salad and a desert. At $12.95, my initial thought was it was a bit much, but as I thought about it more, I'm not sure where else I can get chicken fried steak, so it was a rare delicacy. Though not exceptional, it was good.

For those of you unfamiliar with chicken fried steak, it's breaded cheap steak pan fried and then smothered in gravy. It's a southern dish that was common in coffee shops in my youth, but kind of hard to come by now, and is bad for you on a variety of levels.

Breakfast the next day was also good. It could be something about flavors accumulating year after year on a grill, or it could be that places like this have no worries about things like "cholesterol", but breakfast food always seems to taste better at a coffe shop. My father-in-law had the Vagabond Style Huevos Rancheros, while I went with the Vagabond Original Hobo Omelette. Neither was stop the world good, but they weren't bad. They were the same as millions of breakfasts served at coffee shops around the country. 

And that is the charm of the Vagabond.