Saturday, November 5, 2016

A Slice of Americana

In the historic mining town of Randsburg, CA there is an old grocery store, restaurant. We stopped there for lunch on our way down 395 yesterday. Here's what we found.
Dirt bikers taking a lunch break. All of them long, lean, ageless and friendly as could be. Note that Dean is the only one in a clean blue T shirt.
The food was good plain American lunch food: burgers, sandwiches, and more kinds of dairy desserts than you can imagine. The shakes I saw looked great and if I ever go back to eating sugar, I'm stopping in here again for a shake or a sundae. 


Next to our table were shelves full of handmade replicas of buildings around the town.

Another wall was covered with a California flag and pictures of celebrities who had been there - think  old time cowboy movie stars. There is a even a little sign that was posted in several places asking the question you are probably asking yourself: Where the hell is Randsburg?

The outside of the building. We found out the owners were new, having taken over on July 1st with three aims in mind: 1) Be friendly to the customers (which she said hadn't been happening), 2) have really good food, and 3) get it out in a timely manner. They cut the menu to the basics and fed all the bikers, a family of 6 and us very quickly. Dean's hamburger was a good old fashioned '50's hamburger. My grilled cheese came with pickles and chips on traditional white bread (although I was offered options). We walked away rather regretting our decision to forego the shakes.

The building next door. 

While we were there a huge Coors beer truck unloaded cases of beer to the bar down the street and the food service truck unloaded dollies of food to the restaurant in preparation for a packed dirt-biking weekend when the "ghost town" of Randsburg will come alive with people having fun and enjoying good food. It is definitely worth the stop.

1 comment:

MikeC said...

That's a stretch of 395 we're not familiar with. We know the segment from CA 58 to I-15 rather well. If we're ever in a position to do a vacation in the Eastern Sierra again (something we'd love to do) we'll remember that as a place to stop.