Heading east on Interstate 8 from San Diego, I climbed 3,000 ft. to cross the In-Ko-Pah mountain range.

Desert Tower at In-Ko-Pah, photo by the Kuraoka family
Atop, a 1950s style tourist edifice known as the Desert View Tower signaled the descent to the Sonoran desert back at sea level. On this stretch of road, I’ve gone from freezing cold and snow-flurries to baking desert in just an hour.


I was driving my RV, headed for a work assignment in Yuma, AZ. As an aerospace engineer based in Long Beach, Calf., I did some flight-testing at our Yuma Flight Test Center, nicely remote to suit its purpose. The RV made the long waits between tests more comfortable, providing captain’s chairs and a table, stove and refrigerator. I took the RV whenever the schedule allowed. And, if I was free on weekends, it became my desert getaway vehicle.


After the descent from the Desert View Tower, I passed the U.S. town of Calexico, which borders the Mexican city of Mexicali – similar but contrasting names – a reflection of each other. Four or five hours after leaving Long Beach, I arrived in Yuma, the sunniest city in the U.S. and my home for two weeks.

 

A famous train route and a desert frontier – Yuma has been enriched by snowbirds and the military, and by an eclectic collection of a hundred or more restaurants to serve the modest population. The restaurants were like an oasis after a very long day spent in flight-testing. I remember them as much as I do the flight tests themselves. As I had learned, Yuma’s dining choices extend beyond diners and burger joints, coffee shops and cafeterias.


Bad things happen.

 

Basque pipperada 
Chateau Basque was an extraordinary restaurant in a drab nondescript building on the once-main road heading east from Yuma. The owner, a former English model named Joanie Arretche, used to greet me at the door. Joanie ran this Basque restaurant with her husband, Jean Baptiste, here and in other western locations for 65 years. Mrs. Arretche was a gracious and accomplished restaurateur who lived and worked on the premises. She enjoyed knowing that gourmands drove 150 to 200 miles from the west coast to eat here. I was no gourmand, but she delighted in serving fine continental cuisine to downhome Yumans and me, anyway.  From starters like pickled beets and beef tongue, to entrees like marmitaco (fish stew) with pipperada (onions, tomatoes and Basque peppers cooked in olive oil), Chateau Basque was a five-star incongruity in its desert setting, much beloved by a wide circle of devotees.

 

The bad thing is that Chateau Basque has closed recently with Mrs. Arretche’s retirement. The premises became home to Bubba’s, and it’s now the Ranch House - Yuma being the sadder. But Mrs. Arretche deserves every moment of her retirement, an unassuming lady whose restaurant was a diamond in an unlikely setting.


Bad things can happen twice.

 

The Hungry Hunter steakhouse on the main drag, South 4th Avenue, served mouth-watering steaks. To

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set the scene, know that a typical flight test day may start at 5 am, when one heads out to the airfield in the dark (and desert-cold), equipped with a banana and apple for breakfast, to be supplemented by a donut and coffee at the briefing room. The plane inevitably dispatches late, perhaps at 10 am, which feels like lunchtime because of the early wake-up. Not long into the test, one grabs for a cardboard box containing a flight lunch. Now flight lunches are infamously the same - a sandwich, sachets of mayo and mustard, a bag of chips, an apple and a cookie, to be washed down with a soda. They hit the spot but do not impress the palate. By the time the workday ends at about 4 pm, one is ready for a shower, and then for a real, piping hot meal - relaxing and social if the test results permitted that escape.

 

And that's where the Hungry Hunter came in – a quintessential American steakhouse, setting a high standard even in (and please forgive me, dear Yumans) the boonies. A salad, a juicy T-bone steak with a baked potato and sour cream with chives, and a cold beer just made for that moment. The Hungry Hunter was the best moment of any day you went there.

 

So how do bad things happen twice? The Hungry Hunter closed its doors last year.

 

And, sometimes, bad things come in three’s. But this time, the restaurant in question has not closed like the others. No, Chretin's lives.

 

Chretin’s, a restaurant since 1946 after a previous life as a dance place, used to serve Mexican food in a crutty, partly corrugated iron, single-story warehouse out of the way down at 485 South 15th Avenue. The place was less decorous than a chicken coop. Diners arrived at the dirt parking lot generally in clunkers, and then experienced slow yet harried service. Except for the chile relleno, melted cheese nicely stuffed into a decent-sized poblano pepper, the cuisine was decidedly ordinary. I do not remember Chretin’s as being inexpensive, but it was a hugely popular greasy spoon anyway, drawing hundreds of guests at the weekend. For reasons hard to pinpoint, old Chretin’s had so much atmosphere that it was unforgettable.

 

Photo by Welcome to Yuma
Now Chretin’s has been taken over, and moved to 505 East 16th Street, into what was Johnny Carino's - so the new Chretin’s premises are respectable. Not only that, but you can find the place. The military memorabilia that faded into the background in the old location are now front row center – such as patches and certificates of thanks from flyers based at the Marine Corps Air Station. The service is about the same, while the parking lot is now asphalt. So things are on the uptick, you might think – but, sadly, there’s just one problem.


What problem? Well, some people say that the food has improved - not much, but at least finitely. That's the third bad thing. Given that I liked the old place so much, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

 

My friend, Jerry, says that he’d expect Yuma cuisine to consist of a bucket of mixed road kill, marinated in Pabst and seasoned with a light toss of road gravel in lizard sauce. He does not know Yuma.


The end of a flight test series is like a release from military service. Next morning at dawn, I climbed into the RV, and headed west for the coast. “The Ambulance” was a trusted friend. It hummed along even as a rough spot on the rear axle produced a rythmic tramping noise. With its V8 engine, it climbed the In-Ko-Pah range with ease.


The sun was from behind, and shone brightly on the Desert View Tower at the top of the pass, making it a beacon for my return to office life. Once I passed it by, my Yuma adventure was over until next time.


But it was oh-so-hard to forget.


Read Daryl’s other columns.