Put a Fork in Them (!)

Like a lot of folks in town, we've been wondering what happened to The Forks Chop House. The overpriced eatery located in Unit 7 of the Claremont Packing House has been closed since the December 17, 2008, fire that gutted the kitchen and a stairwell. Ever since, the restaurant's management has been promising that they would reopen, but the place just sat there.

We tried checking The Forks' website, but that is no longer working. That was our first clue as to an official demise. We didn't have to search very hard to discover what had happened. The Packing House website's business directory told us that Unit 7 has a new tenant coming in the Winter of 2010:



Eureka!Burger currently has just one location (in Redlands), and their website informs us that they're supposed to open another in Fresno some time this month. There's a menu posted online that, among other things, has exhausted the company's exclamation point allotment for the next decade. They serve craft brews and upscale Angus beef burgers, as well as sandwiches and salads. The burgers are all around eight or nine bucks and include fries.

We couldn't help thinking that this is just what our town of 35,000 people needs - yet another place to get a beer and a burger. Burger bars in Claremont have suddenly become the equivalent of hair salons. Lookout, Back Abbey and Burger Bar.

A one-minute walk from the Packing House to the Village Expansion will be all that separates the Eureka from Back Abbey. We're anxious to see how those two higher end establishments compare. Eureka!Burger's fare looks good, and, if you include a soft drink with your burger and fries, that's all probably about $10 cheaper than the same order at Back Abbey, though the twice-fried pommes frites at Back Abbey are probably going to be a couple orders of magnitude up from Eureka!Burger's. On the other hand, the burgers may be better at the new place.

By the way, we thought we had a real scoop with this stuff, but we just now checked City Manager Jeff Parker's latest weekly report and learned that Parker beat us by one day:

EUREKA BURGER The City has recruited a new restaurant (Eureka Burger) to fill the former Three Forks location on the west end of the Packing House. The new restaurant is described as an authentic one-of-a-kind burger bar experience, serving a wide selection of Angus beef burgers, gourmet tossed salads, signature hand cut fries, and a distinctive assortment of craft beers and wine. For more information, see their website at http://www.eurekaburger.com/.

Looks like Parker cheated the new Packing House tenants out of an exclamation point or two.

It's a shame The Forks didn't make it, but they might not have survived the Great Recession anyway. We don't know how well The Forks was doing before the fire. When it first opened, the joint seemed crowded for dinner. Their business was no doubt aided by a glowing review from S. Irene Virbila in the Los Angeles Times review of the place.

We came across a lawsuit filed in LA County Superior Court by one of The Fork's suppliers, Premier Meat Co, a subsidiary of the Wayne Distribution Center. The defendants were Bollicorp LLC dba Three Forks Chop House aka The Forks and Mark Bollinger, along with a DOE or two. The plaintiffs sought $25,953.29 - the unpaid amount the plaintiff claimed was owed on a Forks account with Premier Meat Co.

The suit was filed on 11/25/08, about three weeks before the fire, so it's possible that business was slowing even before the fire occurred. A default judgment in the matter was entered on 5/9/09, and the plaintiff filed a satisfaction of judgment on 11/23/09.

To indulge the prying eyes among us, we dispatched the Insider Copy Service to downtown LA and got the actual filing. Here's the complaint:

Claremont Packing House Fire-UPDATED

Told Fire Started in Forks Kitchen
Estimate a Quarter Million in Damage

See below for Wednesday evening update

An early morning fire damaged the Packing House early Wednesday morning. A brief story was posted on the Daily Bulletin website. No injuries were reported.

Our later information is that the fire started in the Forks Restaurant kitchen, and may have caused some $250,000 in damage. The restaurant will apparently be closed for at least a few weeks--the height of the holiday season.

No word on damage to the Claremont Art Museum [click on the preceding link for an entertaining error message that the Art Museum has evaporated from cyberspace. All we can say is, it was here this morning] or about water damage in the Packing House due to its sprinkler system. Since the Packing house is constructed primarily out of 100-year old wood, and the floor at least is impregnated with polyurethane resin, comparison to a tinder-box is not inapt.

We understand that once the fire-safety sprinkler system goes off, it can dump a whole lot of water in a hurry. Don't know how the system is plumbed, or whether it goes off in zones or all at once.

We'll update as information becomes available. Nothing on the City website as this is written.

UPDATE: The Daily Bulletin has a more detailed article with a photo gallery. It seems that the fire started in a wall and gutted the kitchen. We are not trying to minimize the damage, but truth be told we've seen many kitchens in everyday use that looked in worse shape than the one in the pictures in the photo gallery. Smoke damage--again from the pictures--appears minimal; but then you smell it when you don't see it. See the pictures in the photo gallery at the Bulletin.

Arson was on everyone's lips today, so it was somewhat comforting to see in the article that "arson was ruled out", at least according to owner Mark Bollinger.

The fire started about 3:30 a.m., and was out by 4:30 a.m. Casa 425, across the street, was evacuated.

Kitchen Fires Can Get Out of Hand Quickly

The Forks Celebrates One-Year Anniverary

The Forks Chop House (formerly Three Forks) is celebrating one year in the Claremont Packing House this Saturday, August 9th.

The Claremont Courier had an ad for The Forks that announced The Forks' First Anniversary Champagne Celebration Saturday from 5pm to 7pm. The ad invites us to enjoy hors d'oeuvres and cool jazz at the restaurant Saturday night.

The ad also says that there's a $25 donation to get in. The donation goes to benefit the Children's Fund. Call the restaurant for more info or click on the ad image to get the contact information.

The Forks is also offering a Summer Games Special in honor of the Beijing Olympics. $88 per couple buys two four-course prix fixe menu dinners. Call for reservations.

The Forks Chop House
580 West 1st Street
Claremont, California 91711
(909) 625-3875

Three Forks Reviews

Meg at the M-M-M-My Pomona blog went over to Three Forks Chop House on Sunday and has come back to report on her foodie venture into the Claremont Village Expansion.

Meg thought the overall dining experience was was good, but she had some qualifiers (the three saddest letters in the English language, B-U-T):

We ran into friends who live in Village Walk, the condos right next to 3F, as we moseyed to the restaurant. When we told them we were planning on trying the Farmers Market Dinner (a Sunday special every week -- three courses for $45), they put on brave smiles and bid us goodbye as if we were heading off to a tax audit or a biopsy. Apparently the Farmers Market Dinner is precisely what NOT to have at 3F (she told me afterward).

Our verdict: Okay. Pretty good for the 909. Ambitious (and it took me three years in college to realize that when a professor wrote that on my paper, it wasn't high praise).

See Meg's post for more good comments and descriptors. Meg liked he ambiance, especially the music. If you've been to Three Forks, you can also weigh in with your own comments.

David Allen also visited Three Forks in March and had a blog review. He seemed to generally like the food. But he didn't much care for the price:

Total bill, by the way: $144.51. Gulp.

That said, the experience was a cut above Fleming's, the steakhouse in Victoria Gardens, if a cut below Ruth's Chris in Pasadena. Would we go back to Three Forks? On a rare occasion, sure. Perhaps to try the farmers market dinners on Sundays, which sound intriguing.

Plus, you never know when you might want the Three Forks specialty, a reduction of your bank account. And a dose of rusticity.

Three Forks hasn't changed it's name yet. In February when we wrote about the chop house called III Forks getting bent out of shape over the similarities between the two restaurants, it looked as if Claremont's Three Forks might have to find a new name. But owners Mick and Mark Bollinger seems to have dug in their heels and haven't changed a thing.

Three Forks Makeover

Will Bigham in the Daily Bulletin posted a brief piece about Three Forks Restaurant in the Claremont Packing House having to change names after receiving a letter from a Texas restaurant called III Forks:

CLAREMONT - One of the hottest new restaurants in the area will likely be changing its name.

Three Forks Chop House, located in the city's downtown Packing House, received a cease and desist letter in December from the owners of a Texas-based restaurant called III Forks, said Mark Bollinger, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother.

Bigham's piece said that Three Forks will be changing its name soon to "The Forks."

We wrote about the problem and the similarities between the two places last month.

Is There a Problem Here?

Claremont's Three Forks Chop House (logo, left) has made a huge splash in the short time it has been open, serving exotic wild game, cuts and chops.

We are no experts on trademark and copyright law, but we wonder if there might not be storm clouds on the distant southeast horizon due to the similarity of name and business with the III Forks Steakhouse of Palm Beach Gardens (also Austin and Dallas)--logo, right.

Just wondering.

Shop Claremont

Claremont's PR machine grinds on.

The city of Claremont in partnership with the Claremont Chamber of Commerce invested $84,000 a couple months ago in a print and TV advertising campaign to draw customers to the new Village Expansion.

Some of the older and non-Village businesses have felt the ads focused too much on the Village Expansion and didn't benefit Claremont as a whole, so they started their own business-owners group, the Claremont Merchants Association.

A number of our readers wrote it questioning the ad campaign as vapid and déclassé. They seemed to feel that the ads didn't really encompass the Claremont that they knew and loved, a Claremont that is rapidly and vapidly disappearing.

Quite independently of the Chamber PR effort, the San Francisco Chronicle picked up an article, written "Special to the Chronicle," that ran in the paper's January 6th travel section.

The Chronicle article, written by Claremont-based freelance writer Vanessa Hua, seemed as if it were commissioned by the Chamber and was pretty much centered on the Village businesses, talking about Three Forks Chop House and listing only one hotel, the new Hotel Casa 425, which has only 28 rooms and which seems to get its name from its room prices. Not necessarily the place the average Chronicle reader would go if they happened to be in town for a weekend. It seemed odd too, that the Hua would omit other non-Village accommodations like the Doubletree or the Hotel Claremont.

And Jared Cicon, the independent adman who was in the local news last year for entering a couple amateur TV ad contests for Doritos and Heinz ketchup, has been enlisted into the City-Chamber promotional campaign as well:




Blogger and former Claremonter Juliana Brint picked up on the Chamber ads and had a few comments:

speaking of city planning and douchebagery: i'm a big fan of claremont's village expansion HOWEVER its accompanying ad campaign (financed by the city) plays into the worst of southern californian tendencies: superficiality, vapidity and a heightened sense of entitlement. it implies that the only worthwhile part of claremont is the village (only one of the seven "points of interest" on the agency's website is outside the village). the campaign's slogans range from self-satisfied spoiledness ("mia needed couture jeans to go with her superiority complex") to the inane and inarticulate ("claremont: shop, dine... chill").

NOTE: When we originally posted this, we listed Vanessa Hua, the writer of the Chronicle travel article, as "Riverside-based." Ms. Hua actually lives in Claremont. She also has written in to correct us about any notion that her Chronicle piece was commissioned by the city or the Chamber. It was not.

Three Forks Discussion Thread

Three Forks, the chophouse in the new Claremont Village Expansion, is the subject of a discussion on Chowhound.

Reader reviews seem mixed. High price and poor customer service seem to be the biggest complaints - something that the folks at M-M-M-My Pomona noted quite a while ago when speaking about Village West in general. Another comment questioned the glowing review Three Forks got from S. Irene Virbila in the LA Times at the beginning of November. (See our November 8th post for more details.)

More on Three Forks Chop House

We received a note from Drew at Three Forks Chop House relaying a mini-review from a satisfied customer. The customer's business is in Norco, so you know she is telling the truth when she says she knows good food.

This place was amazing! After reading the write up in "Westway" magazine, my "foodie friends" and I headed out to give this place a try. We were not disappointed. My son cooks at Craft, (3 Forks menu intrigued me, and is in line with the type of food served at Craft) and I know good food! After sampling a great deal on the menu, our favorites were the agreed the duck sausage was outstanding, and the wild boar was wonderful. We were also delighted to taste the Ahi appetizer brought out "on the house", but not currently offered on the menu. (BOO) The service was warm, friendly and impeccable, we were also visited by the Maitre D to ensure we were happy with our meal and service. We went there expecting "sticker shock" but were surprised when we got the bill and it was lower than expected. By the way, they pour a great vodka tonic! I am in fact headed out again to sample the Sunday brunch a week later. I plan on impressing my brother, coming in from SFO who thinks we live in a cultural wasteland, maybe So Cal may move up a notch on the ol' totem pole! Please give this place a try, and support them, we need more great places to dine south of LA!! By the way the Three Forks Chop House website is live, threeforkschops.com, though not ready for prime time. It is still under construction from the look of "Insert Tag Line Here" message on the home page and the numerous typos.

(Jane would've written this post, but she is in intensive care after tucking into the 32 oz. Porterhouse at Three Forks. (See earlier post here) While many can relish, nay, thrive on that much red meat, Jane's vegan constitution was not up to the challenge. (Oh. That steak is for two. Who knew?) Jane is on life support but expected to recover nicely by tomorrow. Next time we will send root2 who can eat anything.)

Three Forks Chop House Reviewed

S. Irene Virbila reviewed Three Forks Chop House in Wednesday's L.A. Times. It is one of the new restaurants in the Packing House in Village West.

Virbila had good things to say about the food and wine selections, but she didn't seem to focus much on price, which for Claremont seems a bit high, as some comments on the M-M-M-My Pomona blog touched on. (you really do have to bore down into the comments; the main post is on another restaurant.) We are especially interesting in tying in to that 32-ounce Porterhouse, even if it is a little gamy. Look for the frail white-haired lady on the floor in red-meat shock.

The restaurant is getting some buzz, even if some of it is a little idiosyncratic. For example, the Chowhound website weighed in with this:

Read today's review in LAT...sounds pretty good, however don't think I'll be driving 50 miles to spend $40 on an entree and sit next to a dude in a TANK TOP!!! [referring to a photo accompanying the print version of the Virbila review.]
And, the OC Register correspondent opined:
They lost me early on, when I asked to have the lettuce wedge salad served without pancetta; the waitress responded that the chef won't prepare ANYTHING differently from the description on the menu.So much for the idea that the customer is always right.

Virbila seems to have that visitor mentality without seeing what changes the Village expansion represents and without considering if Three Forks may have priced itself out of the local market.

Still, for the definitive review, see Chef Jeff.

Chef Jeff: Where's the Beef?

Shortly after our post of City Manager Jeff Parker's review of Three Forks Chop House, we received this email from a reader, one of the most thoughtful observers in Claremont. Our correspondent re-states our point in three or four very clear sentences:

Thanks for calling the City Manager on the restaurant review. Having been to Three Forks myself (and not finding it one of my highest dining experiences in Claremont or elsewhere) I wanted to know what the review said. I discovered, as you point out, that 14/20 (70% in my book) is one hat. Harumph! I said to myself. What is he talking about? And why is he telling us about it anyway? Every newsletter tells me in excited terms about the newest chain retail that is opening. I would prefer an explanation of the $1,000,000 discussion (held in closed session apparently) or perhaps what the security consultant is costing us or even when the city archives will be back.

[emphasis and double emphasis added]

This is the problem. There is nothing much substantive in the City Manager's Update or, for that matter, in much of the so-called city news. We in Claremont deserve better. Most in town have the intellect and maturity to handle real information, but instead we are treated like first-graders, talked down to in a way that would embarrass even an elementary-school teacher, or made to read stuff that is frankly pimping for trade for Village West or the latest redevelopment or planning fad.

A tip of the Insider toque to our commentor.

Jeff Parker, Restaurant Critic

We have commented before that the Claremont "City Manager Update" has in recent months become somewhat laughable with its puffery. Before it became just another obligatory PR vehicle, it would contain real information for the councilmembers to keep them up to date on events in the city. It would inform council about things such as significant police contacts, street closures, infrastructure work--things that constituents might be asking them about.

Now, however it has degenerated into a weekly piece flogging the town for another Money Magazine award, or perhaps recognition from the California League of Cities.

The example at hand today is city manager Jeff Parker's comments on the Three Forks Chop House (click on the image or here for a larger version). He lifts a review from gayot.com and makes this comment:

The review...gave it [Three Forks Chop House] one of the highest ratings, 14/20.

We here are no experts on restaurant ratings, but 14/20 didn't seem all that stellar to us. So we went to gayot.com and checked the website's rating scale. Take a closer look by clicking on the image.

It seems that a rating of 14/20 merits only one chef's hat. Far from being, as Parker asserts, "one of the highest ratings", this rating is in the bottom half of the numerical ratings. Of course, the rating system appears to be skewed to the high end--a little "grade inflation" in the restaurant criticism biz. Aren't there any "poor" restaurants? We've been to some in Claremont that would reasonably fall into that category, if fairly defined. But maybe if you are a restaurant critic, like Jeff Parker, with a city credit card, it doesn't pay to visit poor restaurants.

Just to be clear: Parker tells the City Council and the community that the restaurant received "one of the highest ratings". In fact, it received one star out of a possible four.

This is not all that different from Parker's comments at the council meeting. We watched the rebroadcast of the September 25 council meeting, and heard Parker "justifying" the use of $1,000,000 in general fund money for Johnson's Pasture after he made sure council knew that--we paraphrase--"the city never admitted any wrongdoing in the $17.5 Palmer Canyon fire settlement".

Everything is perfect in Claremont, the best of all possible worlds.