Three days after Eaton's fire devoured his home in Altadena, Leo Bulgarini traveled through his level neighborhood, passed burned houses and dethlized businesses, to control his restaurant.
When he approached the corner of Altadena Drive and Lake Avenue, half a mile of his incinerated house, he immediately noticed carbonized rubble where the peculiar bunny museum and the open road bike was found once. He was less than a football field away from his restaurant and gelateria, Bulgarini cucina.
I hoped that his business would have fulfilled the same destination.
It is not so.
Hidden in the courtyard of a shopping center, his restaurant was still standing.
“Why is my business one of the only ones who don't burn?” He thought for himself. “Why is everything else burned?”
He felt a mixture of relief but helplessness.
Inside, the gelateria and the restaurant seemed intact.
Then Bulgarini smelled the smoke. He saw the ash on the ground. He realized that the water from the roof, probably from the firefighters trying to preserve the mall, had accumulated in the kitchen floor and some spilled in their ice cream machines, probably ruining them.
There was no power. There is no running water.
It was then that he click.
His restaurant had survived Eaton's fire flames, but it might not survive the consequences.
Leo Bulgarini inside his restaurant and Glateria in Altadena after Eaton Fire left her business standing, but her neighborhood almost destroyed.
(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
Bulgarini is not alone. Several restaurants in Altadena survived the fire, but, with so many of their dislocated customers, they now have to deal with what comes next, an uncertain future combined with the growing cleaning costs, rent and other operating expenses for companies that cannot Operate.
“It's an open wound,” Bulgarini said about his neighborhood. “The majority of the population here is. They are not thinking of getting ice cream with their family. They are no longer here. His houses have left. ”
Bulgarini knows at least 12 of his clients from his restaurants lost houses in the fire. In Altadena alone, the fire destroyed more than 9,400 structures and damaged more than 1,000.
“I do not anticipate anyone who comes here and spends two hours at dinner,” he says. “This business is quite dead for at least a year.”
Bugarini said he will probably temporarily relocate his restaurant elsewhere, possibly Eagle Rock or Montrose. I would keep Altadena's location, but I can't imagine reopening it in the short term. His restaurant, he said, is unusable as a safe space to serve or eat food.
On the other side of the Bulgarini courtyard, the Greek coffee of Nancy and the adjacent bakery also resisted the fire.
The owner Shawn Shakhmalian had tried unsuccessfully to enter his restaurant for days.
On Monday, he entered his coffee for the first time.
Inside, the restaurant remained unharmed.
Shakhmalian wore a N95 mask while sailing through the kitchen and dining room, some dust cuts and ashes. The smell of smoke permeated the air.
He did not dare to open the refrigerator and freezer. The business had lost electricity for several days and did not want to unleash the stench of spoiled food.
Shawn Shakhmalian, owner of the Greek coffee of Nancy, says he does not know when he can reopen his restaurant and bakery Altadena.
(Cindy Carcamo / Los Angeles Times)
Shakhmalian said he had lost at least $ 5,000 in food alone. He had no way to recover that loss, he said. Last year, she left her commercial insurance because the cousin had doubled. He said he couldn't pay it.
Until Monday, your coffee still had no current or electricity water. He said he would have to wait for officials to turn on before being able to bring a special team to clean what he said it can be “toxic” ashes and debris.
Before the fire, the business was already slow in Nancy's, Shakhmalian said. The location of the restaurant, which is far from the street in a dark shopping center, is difficult to detect.
“Now, with all missing,” he said, “it's going to be even more difficult.”
But he doesn't want to lose his employees, who are already looking for other jobs, he said. At least two of them, including their chef, lost their homes against fire.
Shakhmalian said he planned to open in two or four months after recovering energy and water, but said he can lead to “another stage of loss.”
“There is a lot of responsibility for opening again, facing payroll and rent,” he said, “but there are no clients.”
For now, Shakhmalian began a gofundme to help rebuild his business.
Bulgarini spent three days cleaning its restaurant, pulling mimada meat, fish, pasta and 2,300 pounds of handmade ice cream. He estimates that he lost $ 100,000 in food due to the specialized ingredients he uses and all the work hours needed to make their ice cream and pasta from scratch.
Only your lobster sauce takes three days to reduce before you are ready.
Among the few foods that survived were their artisanal butter that he uses for its frozen artisanal dessert and a piece of Parmesan of $ 1,200.
Bulgarini, born and raised in Rome, learned for the first time to ice cream in Sicily. He opened his Altadena gelateria in 2006 and obtained praise from former Times restaurants Jonathan Gold and Patricia Escárga and the former editor of the Times Food Section, Amy Scattergood. He built followers due to his reputation to elaborate the Italian dessert of some of the best ingredients. The nuts they use come from Italy, like the precious pistachos of Bronte de Sicilia. Buy them directly from nut producers, ASA and extract oils to make your ice cream.
Leo Bulgarini has a sample of his ice cream outside his altadena gelateria in 2007.
(Stefano Paltera / For Times)
The 55 -year -old man said he had insurance in his restaurant, who can cover some of his losses, but probably not all.
A gofundme started to raise money to start again in a new location and support its employees until the Altadena restaurant can reopen it safely.
Bulgarini has problems with strangers who believe that it must be well because their restaurant is still standing while many burn.
“Bulgarini is not right,” he said about his restaurant. “We are not a winner at all in any of this. You have lost your home, so you have lost your sanctuary and really lost your business at this time because you will not be close for a while. There is no winner here. “
Bulgarini and Shakhmalian have spent most of their days trying to ensure help and housing for them or their employees. They are browsing the paperwork required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Insurance Companies.
Bulgarini said that he really had not had much time to cry the loss of his house, a Spanish bungalow of 1923.
Leo Bulgarini at the site of his destroyed house of Altadena after the Eaton fire.
(Albert Lee / Los Angeles Times)
He and his wife, Elizabeth, are too busy, between finding a new place to open the restaurant and make arrangements to maintain some kind of 17 -year -old son, Lorenzo.
Bulgarini pushes to continue. He needs to work to pay his bills and also maintain his sanity, he said.
But there are moments, usually at night, when Bulgarini can't help feeling depressed. The impotence sinks and the questions take over.
“Why couldn't you do more?” He thinks for himself. “Why couldn't you save your friend's house?”
Over the years, he realized that he helps to leave this type of funk if he writes what he is thinking.
On Tuesday night, he put pencil on paper and wrote: “I'm still alive.”
