\u201cOh, boy,\u201d said the restaurateur, who is this year\u2019s winner of the Los Angeles Times\u2019 Gold Award. \u201cThat was my dad. I\u2019m Greg Dulan. Thank you for the memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dulan\u2019s roots in the neighborhood are deep. When you walk into his restaurant, which reopened last year after two years of construction to expand and modernize the space, the walls are covered with reminders of his history. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe tell the story of one African American family,\u201d Dulan said, \u201cfrom the end of slavery to today.\u201d<\/p>\n
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His great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Dulan, seen in one of the restaurant\u2019s many black-and-white photos with the patriarch\u2019s wife, Annie Dulan, and seven of 14 children, was born in 1865 and traveled from Missouri to Oklahoma, \u201cwhere he signed up to participate in the Oklahoma land run in 1889<\/a>,\u201d said Dulan. \u201cHe was able to secure an 80-acre farm where our family comes from.\u201d <\/p>\n Another picture shows his grandmother surrounded by chickens on that family farm in Luther, Okla. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true,\u201d Dulan noted, \u201cbut they said she was getting ready to make fried chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n Greg Dulan <\/p>\n (Dania Maxwell \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Amid the trove of memorabilia \u2014 including photos of the many dignitaries, celebrities and politicians on the campaign trail who have come through the restaurant since its 1992 opening \u2014 there is one artifact that Dulan calls \u201cmy most prized possession.\u201d<\/p>\n Framed under glass are two faded yellow legal pad sheets, taped together to form a scroll-like document with the name \u201cGREG\u201d handwritten across the top in oversize capital letters and the time and date in the upper right-hand corner: 4:45 a.m, May 26, 1978. <\/p>\n At Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw, a framed display of the handwritten business advice from owner Greg Dulan\u2019s father, Adolf Dulan.<\/p>\n (Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Underneath, outlined in Roman numbers with key words underlined twice, is business advice from his late father that concluded with this directive to his oldest son: \u201cIf you are ever going to be a business man, this will be your bible to use … [for] \u2018making the nut.\u2019 … You must start this job 6-1-78 without fail!!\u201d<\/p>\n At that point, Adolf Dulan, a social worker-turned-entrepreneur, who started out with an Orange Julius franchise, had established his first independent restaurant, Hamburger City, which he expanded into a small fast-food chain. The elder Dulan later open the Southern food mecca Aunt Kizzy\u2019s Back Porch and would become known in many parts of Los Angeles as \u201cthe king of soul food.\u201d<\/p>\n But what neither father nor son knew back in 1978 is that a few years after that 4 a.m. missive, Adolf Dulan would fire his son from the family restaurant. <\/p>\n Greg Dulan, whose first restaurant jobs involved a lot of onion chopping at his dad\u2019s Orange Julius and Hamburger City, graduated from Howard University and spent time working in New York\u2019s banking industry. He returned to Los Angeles in 1984 to help his father and stepmom, Mary, convert one of the family\u2019s least profitable Hamburger City locations into Aunt Kizzy\u2019s Back Porch, a name inspired by Leslie Uggams\u2019 \u201cRoots\u201d character Kizzy Kinte.<\/a> Located in Marina del Rey, it was one of the first Los Angeles-area restaurants to serve soul food in a largely white neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cI came back with ideas that were different from my dad,\u201d said Greg Dulan, who had gotten an up-close view of what made a small business work from his time working in the Bronx office of what was then Chase Manhattan Bank. \u201cMy ideas were so different that he fired me.\u201d<\/p>\n All these years later, Greg Dulan \u2014 a three-time nominee for a James Beard Award as best restaurateur \u2014 can\u2019t specify which ideas especially riled his father. But he does remember what happened next. Perhaps to soften the rejection, Adolf Dulan suggested his son might start a catering business. <\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018People are requesting catering and I hate catering,\u2019\u201d Greg Dulan said his father told him.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but when he fired me, he wanted to see me be successful. While I was very angry and upset with him,\u201d said the restaurateur, \u201cit turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Several of the popular soul food dishes at Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw include fried chicken, meat loaf, cornbread and macaroni and cheese.<\/p>\n (Dania Maxwell \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n But there were hard lessons to learn first.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got a call from the Los Angeles Raiders,\u201d Dulan said. The team was doing a video shoot and food was needed. \u201cMy dad said, \u2018OK, son, this is your shot.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cThey said, \u2018We have 60 players.\u2019 I took enough food for 70 people so I\u2019d have a little extra. But as soon as I saw the first football player, I knew I was in trouble. I was by myself so one of the players offered to help serve the peach cobbler.\u201d Bad decision. \u201cI looked over and two of my three peach cobbler trays were gone and only five players had gone through the line.\u201d <\/p>\n He asked his \u201chelper\u201d to step aside and managed to portion out the food so everyone had something on their plates. \u201cYou learn from your mistakes. When they tell you 50 football players, you\u2019ve got to take food for 250 people.\u201d <\/p>\n Operating out of Aunt Kizzy\u2019s after opening hours and later in his own space, young Dulan spent his nights prepping food for catering jobs and his mornings learning to improve his cooking techniques from chef Flossie Vence (a.k.a. Miller), who had closed her own soul food restaurant in Palos Verdes to work for the Dulan family. <\/p>\n \u201cShe was the best cook I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Greg Dulan said. \u201cNo recipes. Everything in her head. You send her in a room with a cup of flour, cold butter and a teaspoon of sugar and she\u2019d come out with with a beautiful cake. She taught me how to cook.\u201d (She later went to Torrance and opened Flossie\u2019s Southern Cuisine, known for its fried chicken and Mississippi Delta-style hot tamales<\/a>, until its 2015 closing.) <\/p>\n By 1992, with Aunt Kizzy\u2019s thriving but much of the city in need of investment after the L.A. riots that spring, Greg Dulan was ready to start a restaurant of his own. Using the family name, he opened Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw in the heart of Black L.A.<\/a> serving his interpretation of classic soul food. Almost immediately, the restaurant was seen as a vital part of the community, with pastors such as the esteemed Rev. Cecil Murray of First African Methodist Episcopal Church \u201cbeseech[ing] his flock,\u201d as former Times reporter Nina J. Easton wrote<\/a> of the then-1-month-old restaurant, \u201cto try the sour cream waffles and smothered chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n 1 <\/p>\n 2 <\/p>\n 1. Politicians on the campaign trail often visit Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw. In June of 2018, former L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, then running for governor of California, greeted a diner as future L.A. mayor Karen Bass, then U.S. representative of California\u2019s 37th district looked on. (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times) 2. During his successful run for president in July of 2019, Joe Biden, seen with owner Greg Dulan, behind, helped serve breakfast at Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw.<\/p>\n (Gary Coronado \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n Nearly 10 years later, in 2001, Adolf Dulan \u2014 inspired by a New York trip when Greg\u2019s younger brother, Terry Dulan, gave their father a tour of cafeteria restaurants \u2014 opened Dulan\u2019s Soul Food Kitchen, first in Inglewood, then on Century Boulevard near Jesse Owens Park. <\/p>\n The Dulan name had become a soul food powerhouse. <\/p>\n Terry Dulan, brother of Greg Dulan, sits beneath a wall of family\u2019s history inside Dulan\u2019s Soul Food Kitchen, the restaurant that Adolf Dulan, Greg and Terry\u2019s father, opened in 2001, nearly 10 years after the opening of Greg\u2019s restaurant, Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw.<\/p>\n (Mariah Tauger \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n However in 2002, business at the Crenshaw restaurant had slowed just at the moment Greg Dulan was presented with an opportunity to provide meals for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He closed the restaurant and for several years returned to his catering roots.<\/p>\n \u201cI started off with 200 meals a day and grew the business to over 10,000 meals a day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was great until competitors came from other parts of the state into the Los Angeles market and started a pricing war.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2012, with his LAUSD business winding down, Greg Dulan took stock and noticed a dwindling number of soul food restaurants in Los Angeles. He decided to reopen Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw, switching from its previous sit-down format to the cafeteria style his father had found success with at Dulan\u2019s Soul Food Kitchen. In a stroke of good timing, the restaurant opened the week before the Space Shuttle Endeavour was towed from LAX to the California Science Center through the streets of Los Angeles. Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw became one of the key gathering spots to watch the spectacle, giving free publicity to the revived business. <\/p>\n The space shuttle Endeavour seen through the window of Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw on October 13, 2012. <\/p>\n (Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cNot only did my original customers come back,\u201d he said, \u201cthey came back with their children and, in some cases, their children\u2019s children. So I had three generations. We were able to pick up where we left off.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, he\u2019s worked diligently to ensure that soul food remains an integral part of the mosaic that makes up Los Angeles cuisine. It\u2019s just one of the reasons Greg Dulan is this year\u2019s winner of the L.A. Times Gold Award. As this paper\u2019s late restaurant critic Jonathan Gold put it in 2017 when he established the prize, the Gold Award is given to a local chef or restaurateur \u201cwith the idea of honoring culinary excellence and expanding the notion of what Southern California cooking might be.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe have so many people in the city who have deep roots in the soul food tradition,\u201d said Greg Dulan. \u201cIn addition, there are a lot of people who have never experienced soul food. A big city like Los Angeles needs soul food.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, whenever he can, Dulan helps out other chefs and entrepreneurs in need of advice and sometimes partnerships. When Kim Prince, a daughter of the family who brought the world Nashville hot chicken, lost her Hotville Chicken space in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, he teamed up with her to create the Dulanville food truck. He didn\u2019t want to see the city lose Prince\u2019s essential fried chicken.<\/p>\n After this year\u2019s fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, Dulan and Prince were quick to bring their Dulanville truck to the affected neighborhoods, often starting work at 5 a.m. to serve hot meals to those who had lost their homes.<\/p>\n Recently, however, Dulan himself has needed a helping hand.<\/p>\n Earlier this summer he posted a callout to the community on social media: \u201cI bought some adjacent real estate with the goal of building parking for the restaurant and a culinary kitchen for training and workforce development,\u201d he said on a video collaboration with radio station KJLH. \u201cThe real estate portion is dragging down the restaurant. The restaurant is doing great but the overall business is in trouble and maybe won\u2019t survive unless I get some kind of support.\u201d<\/p>\n The expansion of L.A. Metro\u2019s K Line also put pressure on the business. \u201cWe lost a lot of parking,\u201d Dulan said. <\/p>\n To mitigate the Metro line\u2019s damage to the neighborhood, the nonprofit Destination Crenshaw is creating an open-air museum of Black art and culture. These efforts helped prompt Dulan\u2019s most recent renovation. He\u2019s transformed the space back into a sit-down restaurant and was involved in commissioning a mural along the side the restaurant by Terrick Gutierrez depicting scenes of Black life. The costs of rebuild further stretched his cash flow. <\/p>\n \u201cI can run a successful restaurant,\u201d he said, \u201cbut real estate development is a whole different animal.\u201d<\/p>\n Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw is situated along the portion of the Crenshaw corridor that has been divided in the middle of the boulevard by L.A. Metro\u2019s K Line.<\/p>\n (Dania Maxwell \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Fortunately, the community has responded and for the moment at least, Dulan is out of the woods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re getting calls from a lot of celebrities and people from the community,\u201d he said. \u201cRevenue is up 40% at the restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n Most important, an angel investor emerged to help Dulan refinance the business and even help him expand his operation preparing heat-and-serve meals for the Hyde Park location of Vallarta supermarket. He\u2019s also hoping to put in a successful bid to help feed athletes and visitors when the 2028 Olympic games come to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no idea that my little soul food restaurant would go viral,\u201d Dulan said of the community response, \u201cbut apparently we built up a lot of goodwill that I underestimated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s almost impossible for Greg Dulan, owner of the longtime soul food gathering spot Dulan\u2019s on Crenshaw, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[43844,387,22590,5836,43841,1431,43845,48,52,51,29299,47,50,49,63,592,1457,43851,7756,39601,72],"class_list":["post-75460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-adolf","tag-business","tag-chicken","tag-crenshaw","tag-dulan","tag-family","tag-greg-dulan","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-late-father","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-people","tag-restaurant","tag-restaurateur","tag-son","tag-soul-food","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n
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