By SUSAN TAM Special to the Daily Press
At Fred Deni’s Back on Broadway, the restaurant’s entrance is adorned with numerous humanitarian awards, newspaper clippings and plaques honoring Deni’s devotion to the community. Further inside the restaurant, Deni himself seems to be in a state of perpetual motion as he cheerfully moves from table to table to greet friends and regulars as they dine.
Born in New Jersey, Deni, 56, has been a long-time fixture in the Santa Monica community and is known by many for his giving nature.
“He’s very generous, very ready to extend himself for community groups that support good causes and schools,” said former mayor Denny Zane of Deni. “It’s amazing, Fred has probably one of the biggest lists of testimonials from people who live in the community.”
Deni, however, is not a California native, but an East coast transplant that landed here as a young actor looking for the silver screen. He confesses that back then he knew nothing about running a restaurant, nor did he have any experience with food — with the exception that his mother cooked often. He said he could not have worked for anyone else, which is, in part, why he chose to begin and run his own business.
Recently, Deni sat down with the Daily Press to talk about how he ended up “Back on Broadway,” his secret to staying in business, hosting charitable Thanksgiving dinners and traveling to a war-torn country.
Tell me a little bit about your background. How old are you? Where did you grow up?
“I won’t lie, I’m 56 years old. I was born in New Jersey outside of New York City, and was an actor when I was a child from the time I was 7 to 24, on Broadway in ‘The King and I’ in 1955, and came out to L.A. to screen test for Screen Gems for a TV show, for ‘Here Come the Brides’ with Bobby Sherman, and I didn’t get the job, but I fell in love with California, and thought, ‘Oh, I’ll stay here.’ I didn’t care for film, but I just decided to stay and thought, ‘I like the lifestyle here in California better.’
“So, but then, from my savings as a child when I was working, I went through that money very quickly and had to do something, and so I found a location on the beach where I opened a restaurant in 1979.”
Did you come straight to Santa Monica from New York City?
“Via Hollywood. [laughs] Coming from the East and never being here, I thought you had to live in Hollywood, and then when I got there, I thought, ‘I don’t think I like this. I could have just stayed in New York for this,’ so in a very short amount of time, I quickly moved to Santa Monica in 1974 and loved it because it was such a nice little sleepy beach town. It sort of left the hustle and bustle of the city.
“In 1979, I went into business for myself and opened the Ocean Café, which I sublet from the Sand & Sea Club. When we had to leave that location we came to Broadway, and opened Back on Broadway, which, when I walked in it was a really little coffee shop that was very, very run down. There was nothing in this neighborhood except St. John’s Hospital, and I sort of stood here, rather defeated, because it was so much work. I looked around and thought, ‘Well, little did I know I’d go 20 years full circle and wind up back on Broadway.’ And my friend, who was with me, thought, ‘What a great name!’ And I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Fred Deni’s Back on Broadway,’ and I said, ‘Oh no, you’re out of your mind.’ I thought about it for a couple weeks, and I said yes, and did take the name and was really uncomfortable with it. It’s really sort of funny to have a restaurant with your name on it. Then, after a while, I sort of liked the association, and I grew to like it, and now it’s part of my name.”
Tell me about “Back on the Beach,” your other restaurant.
“We opened here (Broadway) in 1982 and thought that my life on the beach was pretty much over. And then in 1989, when there was the proposition about the hotel and the development of 415 PCH and it was voted down, the city asked me to be a temporary business operator at that location, and this is 2004 and I’m still there, and I had no problem being convinced of that name (Back on the Beach) because we returned to the same location.”
You often open your restaurant as a donation to the community, whether it be for PAL, Thanksgiving dinners or other events. When did you start doing this and why?
“Well, it’s interesting, because the way it all started was that the restaurant was-n’t, you know, all that successful. I was raised doing charity work, my parents were very, very community oriented and were always involved in doing things for other people. I just felt that I still had to do it, so my easiest way to be able to do it, because I couldn’t just write checks for $2,500 dollars all over town because I was still struggling so much, was that I could open the restaurant and get people to start volunteering to start feeding the homeless starting in 1979. We actually were the first to start homeless dinners because when I brought up the subject that we were going to feed the homeless for Thanksgiving, many of the people that I said it to said, ‘This is Santa Monica, there’s no homeless people here!’ And at that first dinner that we opened to them, we had like 700 people show up. Many of my volunteers just sat there and went, ‘Oh my God, where did all these people come from?’ We tried to create a real restaurant experience instead of a soup kitchen experience, with tablecloths on the table and so on. There was such great satisfaction in doing this that everyone said, ‘Well, we’re going to do this next year, aren’t we?’ And I said, ‘Well, uh….OK.’
“The point was not to become a tradition, it was just that we were doing it because it felt right, you know. I mean, every Thanksgiving prior to that I had over a lot of friends who, I called them ‘home orphans,’ because they weren’t able to go home because it was only a weekend, they lived farther away, or they didn’t have money, so I had everybody at my house for dinner, and the last year I did that, I guess this would 1978, there were like 90 people at my house. It was a great system, all of a sudden everybody got up and they left, and I’m like, ‘What a mess! I’m not doing this anymore! Next year, I’m going to make everybody work, and we’re going to do something that’s worthwhile.’ And that’s really how it started.
“We have some people who have been coming since that original dinner, and there is a corps of volunteers that literally, I don’t even tell them to, they just show up on Thanksgiving. It’s like such a choreographed situation. They all have their little duties that they’ve had all these years, and they take these responsibilities and they do them. And I just sort of stand there. Pretty much it’s out of my control now. Since then, a few homeless dinners have popped up, and the last year we did the homeless was probably eight years ago, and it was very funny because we were all competing (with the civic center, and other churches and organizations.) So I said, ‘Next year, we’re going to do something different, we’re going to take (another) group, and we’re going to feed them.’ So I contacted the Santa Monica Senior Services Center, and they loved the idea because they were combining the seniors with the homeless, and some of the seniors were a little uncomfortable. So I said, ‘Let’s make this a senior dinner,’ and no one has stolen my senior citizens.”
You gathered 5,000 bears for patients in a mental institute and for orphanages in Bosnia. What’s the story behind that?
“In 1992, I was traveling in Italy, which is where my family is from, and decided to go to Yugoslavia. I found myself in a place where they were evacuating refugees because the war was quickly moving. The only way I could get (from one part of the country to another to return to Italy) was by bus because they had blown up the tracks for the train. We finally gathered for passage on the bus, it was about 100 miles or something like that but it took about 10 hours. The thing that really opened my eyes were people that were carrying their life’s possessions with them. There were chickens in coops. Refugees were really leaving from a war-torn area to get to a safe area. It really moved me, and I said, ‘I’m coming back here, and I’m doing something about that.’ It took me until about 1996 to get there, but I had assignment with the Red Cross, and I did unannounced inspections of orphanages in Sarajevo and Bosnia and learned an awful lot and really found great, great satisfaction that moved me to an international consciousness. As soon as the war was over and there were UN troops in there, that’s how the Teddy Bear Project started. So it just went from feeding the homeless in ’79 to finding myself in a war zone.”
You’ve been in business here so long that you’ve seen Santa Monica go through a lot of changes. What do you think of the city right now?
“Well, it’s a two-sided sword for me, because, way back when — I live in Sunset Park — I remember when I moved there, that a friend of mine that lived north of Montana said, ‘You’re living South of Pico? Nobody lives South of Pico.’ I love the neighborhood. I lived there and, a million years later, I still live there. I couldn’t move. I’m so attached to that neighborhood that I couldn’t go anywhere else. But anyway, the thing is that when you lived in Santa Monica in those days, if you wanted to go to a movie, you went to Westwood, you know, everything you went some place else for. We had very little. First-run movie houses — we had none. Restaurants were very limited. The Promenade, at seven to eight o’clock at night, it was just deserted and dark. But with the (existing Third Street) Promenade, it was very exciting to have restaurants to go to, movies that you could just go downtown and see, and so it was a great experience and that I love. But on the other hand — (now) I think twice about going downtown. So I kind of miss my sleepy beach town. I know times change, and I sort of have mixed feelings about the success of it all, but I’m also, on the other hand, very proud of it, when I have friends visiting from Europe or other countries, I take them there, and I’m proud of it.”
How do you feel about being such an integral part of the community? Do you feel like you personally make a difference? What do you think is your impact on Santa Monica?
“I’m glad I’m here, I mean, I sometimes wonder — I think it’s a compliment when people say, ‘You’re an institution,’ I feel like the Smithsonian Institute or something when they call me that. But it’s wonderful being thought of as not just a place to get a quick donation for a cause, but part of a cause. On many occasions people have said to me, ‘This is about Santa Monica. We couldn’t think about having it anywhere else, you have to be involved.’ And I say, [pause] ‘OK.’ So it’s an honor, actually, it really is very much an honor. I would not be here today or be able to do anything that I’ve been able to do if I didn’t have the support of the people who live in Santa Monica or the City of Santa Monica. They both have been very supportive.”
I’ve been told that it’s difficult to do business in Santa Monica, or at least hard to start an operation in this city.
“In my day, it wasn’t difficult. Again, we were a small town, a sleepy beach town. You knew people at City Hall on a first-name basis, and you could get things done. But I think growth happens, and has to be, I mean, I don’t want it to be, but there has to be a little more bureaucracy. Sometimes, (there’s) too much, and I think you could expedite faster... like I said, I love it and I hate it.”
You see SMRR and related organizations and the Chamber butting heads. Any thoughts?
“I think that the Chamber has taken on some scare tactics. I know there was one mailing that was very tasteless about the homeless.
“I take the candidates at face value on what they say and what they believe, and not that they are a member of SMRR, or backed by the Chamber, or whatever it is. But when you talk about the Chamber, I really think it needs to enhance — part of what I define as the Chamber of Commerce is enhancing the city, and not fighting the city. It’s not a political group. I mean because the City has been here a long time, and they’re going to (stay) here. I mean the Chamber’s been here a while, and I think it just needs to be aware that they (need to) coexist in a way without it being such a fight.”
At the end of the day, how do you spend your free time? What do you enjoy doing?
“Well, I’ve been back to acting. I work at the Ruskin Theater based at the Santa Monica airport. I just finished a show not long ago which ran for 16 weeks which was terrific. So I have such a blessed life, I leave my garage door, my house, jump in my car, and five minutes, I’m at the theater, 10 minutes and I’m at this restaurant, and 10 minutes from my house I’m at another restaurant, and I sort of live in a bubble. I also own a catering company, which gives me the opportunity to stage events and large functions. When King Hussein and Queen Noor come to town, I’m lucky enough to work with them. So it’s definitely exciting. I study voice, I plan on studying piano. Also, I travel, I love traveling.”
Do you have a whole lot of time to do all this?
“Well, the way I get to do it is, I don’t get somewhere for a month. I take 10 days... three times a year. Just the other day, I was running out the door for a voice lesson, and someone asked me, ‘How do you have time to do this?’ And I’m going to do a show in March, and a show at another theater, and I like to keep active. I mean, I get up in the morning, and I want to start doing something until I have to go to bed at night.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 18, 2004. Read the original PDF.