Against all the probabilities, Tyler Wells Altadena is still standing. Like approximately 10,000 houses and structures in the area, many of the surrounding companies burned in January Eaton, changing the community and landscape of the mountain city forever.
After the destruction of the neighborhood, Wells thought that his restaurant would never open again, but on Saturday, Betsy, previously called Bernee, will serve his rustic and seasonal cuisine once again. It will interrupt customers for the return of their home menu in what Wells expects will be a lighthouse of light and a meeting place for Altadena after so much pain.
Betsy, near the corner of Lake Avenue and Mariposa Street, is flanked by remains of the destruction of fire: to the west, a hollowed brick structure that once contained the local hardware store, its metal lamps still withered the heat; to the south, a level lot that was once a school in Spanish; And to the north, there is what remains of a ceramic study and the Café de Milk and Rancho Bar neighborhood.
“The fire is something incredible, and will also tithe an entire city and ruin people's lives,” Wells said. “The charm for me is not to control it, and this is becoming spiritual, but to find that harmony. Maybe we can make our little smaller part to restore part of that balance.”
Betsy Chefs Man The Wood-Fired Hearth at the Altadena restaurant.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Bernee debuted on December 7, 2024. In his month of service before the fire, the guests had dinner fillets, cast iron potatoes and rich and fluffy cheese cakes in the brightness of his home to firewood. The oven, supervised by the main chef Paul Downer, burned through almond wood and red oak, required personnel almost on the day of the 24 years, and worked as an oven for baking of day and a burning grill and roast oven for meat, fish, beans and carbonized vegetables at night.
Wells had poured into space, building their own tables, shelves and elegant wooden walls. Through personal coercion, including the dissolution of his marriage to Ashley Wells and his association at the Popular Restaurant Los Feliz All Time, he found hope and focus on his new Altadena restaurant.
On January 2, he moved to a new home, closer to what is now Betsy, which bears the name of his late mother. Eaton's fire told his therapist: “I don't know, man, I could see me happy here. There is a little crack with the light shown.” He had a apocalypse and optimism morning. That night, located practically along the Eaton Canyon path, his new house was directly on the road to fire.
The owner Tyler Wells talks with guests in the dining room of his restaurant, Betsy, in Altadena on August 24.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Wells never imagined that the fire would reach the city. On January 7 he worked at the restaurant until the end and helped his staff to leave early and draw safer routes back to their homes.
“I thought, 'The restaurant is fine, you get home safely,” he said. “Like, this restaurant is so far from the mountain, a fire cannot burn all this. Little knew about these embers on the size of a grapefruit that spill through the mountain.”
That night he evacuated some of his own belongings. Then he woke up with approximately 150 text messages, many simply sharing statements like “everything has left.”
“I was like, 'ok, the restaurant is gone. My house is gone. I'm separated. I just had this moment:' I'm out. I'm going,” he said. “I thought, 'I will not return to Los Angeles, this is all'”.
He began to imagine starting again, maybe in another state, maybe in Mexico. Not two hours later, Paola Guasp, owner of Amara Kitchen, who also burned, came to hand: Wells restaurant was, somehow, still standing.
He led Mariposa Street to see Bernee and found one of his staff, who had also decided to visit the restaurant at that time. They hugged them, then Wells grabbed two cases of the most expensive wine in the building and led to the north without a destination.
Wells had made friends with Potter Victoria Morris and her husband, Morgan Bateman, occasionally going through the ceramic study housed in the building behind Bernee. He burned in January. So did his home.
In addition, he led to the north, called an Ojai hotel and booked some nights there, then called Morris and Bateman, who have a home in Ojai. Morris told him to cancel his hotel. “I thought, 'What? What do you mean?'” He asked. “And there was a long pause, and she says: 'Tyler, F— You. You live with us now.'”
For eight weeks they processed the fire and its losses and pain. Those meals and months with them, he said, are moments that he will appreciate for the rest of his life.
Rib eye with bone with grilled Roman beans and roasted potatoes in Betsy.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
He then traveled to Mexico City to visit his friends, and his return to California, he promised, would only be temporary.
A call from the Ecology Center, a great farm and a market post in San Juan Capistrano, changed its course. Could you help remodel coffee on the site, mold its menus and program closer to the generosity of the farm? No, he thought, he wasn't ready. Wells traveled to Colorado, but could not get the center of the ecology of his mind; He shortened his trip and returned, throwing himself into work on the farm, his coffee and dinners and events with a ticket. Then he called Bernee's reinforcements.
Focaccia of cast iron with tomatoes, burrata, basil, olive oil and salt of western virginia in Betsy.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Joey Messina, a Betsy chef, agreed to move temporarily to the farm. Wells annulled Airsam's trailer on the property and assumed a new residence in the property yurt. When they needed Waitstaff, they called Tom Okes, also in Betsy; He walked to join them and Wells moved again, this time throwing a tent between two oranges. He remained there for eight weeks. It remained more personal.
They called him “Dirtbag Summer Camp”, working 18 hours a day, then cooking luxurious meals with products taken from the floor. These dinners convinced him to stay.
“It has some challenges that are really difficult for me as a business owner, but this is my people,” he said. “These are the best friends I've met in my life … it's hot and it's expensive and it's pain doing business here, but the biggest people in the world are here.”
After its closure, the majority of Bernee staff found work in other restaurants. Some, like Server Courtney Johnson, the new curator on Betsy's wine list, told The Times that they were ready to abandon the industry completely, unless Wells reopened his restaurant.
“They made the decision that the restaurant is reopened,” Wells said. “I had to get some levers here and there, as 'here is your restaurant'. I can't believe it.”
Guests in Betsy's dining room in Altadena.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
The moment, he said, also began to feel good. The first months were horrible, full of trauma and smoke. In spring, when construction teams began to clean the lots, it felt a bit optimistic. During the summer, the grass began to grow. The air felt cleaner. He saw signs of life returning to the community.
“I just reported: we are right at the bottom of this climb, and it is an infernal climb, and I want to be part of that,” he said. “This is where I fit.”
What kind of member of this community would it be, did he think, if he only returned once all the damage would have cleared?
He renamed the restaurant and modified the menu for seasonality, but almost everything remains as he did during the Month of the Single Service of Bernee. He has made that firewood run again. He deeply cleaned the air ducts and filters and resumed his kitchen.
On August 3, he launched his first dinner to Betsy, cooking for friends, family, neighbors and guests who cut off dinner the night when the fire began in January. Wells gave the staff a speech prior to the opening that was so unexpectedly emotional that it made him cry in front of everyone.
Within the lighting there is dim and the fire roars on the home grill, but outside the Betsy seats it is calm, sunny and relaxed.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
“I thought: 'This restaurant is not a restaurant,” he said. “That is nonsense, but what it represents is something much bigger and deep, and what it means to people in the community.”
On August 24, during another dinner service practice, a client approached Wells in the dining room and hit him gently on the shoulder from behind.
He did not know her, he said gently about the rumble of the guests, but she lives in the neighborhood. She said she needed to tell her that the return of the restaurant felt like the beginning of something new for Altadena, and that she was very happy to return.
“I think people see it as a lighthouse, just to let some light in,” Wells said later. “We will not be alone, obviously, I think we need another 1,000 examples of that, but it is very significant for me. That is what restaurants have always been for me, but being able to do it in this type of time and place is really powerful. It feels like a call for all of us.”
Betsy It is in 875 E. Mariposa St. in Altadena, open every day from 5 pm to closing.
