Eat Well and Be Happy at Jodie's Restaurant

It's just after 8 a.m. and Jodie Royston is busy cooking up his invention of the week. On a recent Friday morning, it was chicken chorizo, a grilled english muffin and cheese melted on scrambled eggs over grits. This is the only dish his regulars, members of a group that calls themselves "the Breakfast Club," get. They don't have a choice. They get what Royston serves.

"Here come the nacky sacky," he says, as regulars walk in. What's a "nacky sacky"? That's just what Royston calls his customers. 

As another's walking in, he jokes loudly, "Oh, here comes that womanizer." Then, pretending to be surprised, "Tom! How are you?"

Throughout the morning, Breakfast Club come in, take a seat and exchange good-natured jibes along with updates about sick family members, work and world news. (On this particular Friday, the World Cup was a popular topic.)

Ronald Rhone hunkers down at a counter that seats seven. Rhone had just had his 52nd birthday, and other customers start singing "Happy Birthday," and give him a piece of cake baked by one of Royston's regulars, David Phillips of El Cerrito, who is stationed behind the counter helping out.

"I'm already late for a meeting in San Francisco," says Rhone, a business agent for labor unions, whose partner, Christine, took him to Jodie's for their first date 12 years ago. "But I cannot miss Friday."

Fridays are the most important day of the week at Jodie's Restaurant and Bar-B-Que in Albany. Inside one of Northern California's smallest restaurants, regular customers, who call themselves "the Breakfast Club," savor Jodie's newest dish, joke with each other, and help Royston decide if his invention should be added to his selection of more than 100 regular dishes.

At Jodie's, Breakfast Club members don't bother to pick up the regular menu, decorated with an illustration of Royston's face, from the counter. Members call it "the pedestrian's menu" because you're only allowed to read it if you walked from your home to get to the shop. What matters to most regulars is the special menu on "The Wall." Foregoing the pedestrian's menu is one of the many rules you'll discover if you stumble into Jodie's.

"The Wall" boasts all the specials that have been "approved" by Breakfast Club members. Some items, such as the "Obama Special" and "Michelle's Delight," were created for special occasions like the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Some specials are named after Breakfast Club members.

There is no formal application to be a Breakfast Club member, but love for Jodie's cooking and a keen sense of humor and wit are highly recommended.

Take "Dai's All That." It was named after Dai Watkins, a 65-year-old civil engineer from Wales. The menu consists of meat, sautéed vegetable and grits.

"They named it after me because I don't like grits," says Watkins with slight Welsh accent.

Royston smiles when he hears Watkins' comment.

"We mix hash brown with grits when Dai isn't looking," says Royston mischievously.

Skip Fowler helped create "The Wall," laminating the special menus for Royston.

"You see 'The Wall' menus with portraits on them?" asks the 69–year-old massage therapist from Berkeley.

"You get your picture up there when you're dead," says Fowler, who has a dish named after him called "Skip-a-roo," a dish with two eggs and italian sausage (or vegetarian), reduced fat cheese and a grilled English muffin, as well as "secret sauce hash browns" with spices and bell peppers. There are about seven menus with portraits, such as "Jerry's Sautéed Vegetables" and the "Tom Mix" of sausage and bell peppers.

Even though Jodie's is a gathering spot for regulars, first-timers are more than welcome. Royston will be your attentive personal chef, asking if you're vegetarian, or if there are foods you can't eat. No matter what your response, he promises to fix something you'll love.

"Once they cross my threshold, they will come back to my place," says the 7o-year-old chef, after seeing one possible customer run out skittishly after seeing the lack of seats inside.

For Royston, an Arkansas native who lived near Albany, in Berkeley, for years but now lives in Brentwood, cooking is in his blood. His mother and uncle were chefs, he says. He learned to cook from his mother and helped his uncle at a country club in Little Rock, AK.

After moving to the Bay Area for school, his cooking career took off. He became a cook at the Forster's chain, manager and head chef at Jack London Inn in Oakland and chef at Solomon Grundy's, which is now Skates, in Berkeley. In the 1960s, he became the first African American chef at Ole's Waffle Shop in Alameda.

He then worked for Chevron Chemical Co. for 15 years, which he describes as "cooking chemicals." But when he hurt his back, he decided to come back to what he loved most. He started Jodie's in a 200-square-foot storefront, at 902 Masonic Ave., 21 years ago.

It has become a family business. His wife, Bettye Sue, used to make Jodie's creamy and moist cheesecakes, until she died from cancer in 2009. The cheesecakes, which are light and fluffy with fruit folded inside, are now made by his oldest daughter, Sherrylyn "Cookie" Larkin. His grandson, Charles Garrison, 24, helps Royston with cooking and prep work. His daughter Michelle, who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in San Francisco, invented the sauces Royston uses and takes care of the catering.

DJ, or djovida, probably the restaurant's oldest customer, found Jodie's by accident. Twenty years ago, he said, his doctor told him he needed to exercise to lose weight. The now 67-year-old broadcast engineer at KQED-TV started bicycling from his Richmond house to Oakland, and he stopped by Jodie's for a bite. These days, he is the chairman of the Breakfast Club.

DJ says he keeps coming back to Jodie's because of the familiarity and the relationships.

"Other restaurants have tables and good service," said DJ. "But Jodie's is like family. If you don't come on Fridays, people get worried about you and start calling."

"I got everybody's cell phone number," Royston adds. "If you don't show up, I'm gonna call. Never say 'goodbye' to me either. I don't like that. I say see you later."

In fact, Royston will take good care of you, just like family, once you start coming to Jodie's. The walls of his restaurants are plastered with pictures taken by Fowler of all the Breakfast Club members.

For David Phillips, 59, who has been coming to Jodie's for 17 years, Royston and the rest of the club are true friends.  

"Jodie called me every day after my wife passed away in May to see if I was all right," said the 60-year-old, whose wife, also a long-time regular at Jodie's, died of cancer at 54. Breakfast Club members sent him flowers, said Phillips, who works for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Phillips volunteers at Jodie's on Fridays to take orders and serve dishes. He bakes cakes, free of charge, for the birthdays of each Breakfast Club member.

For Dai Watkins, Royston, in a way, is a health consultant.

"I used to have high cholesterol, but when it went down about two years ago, my doctor wrote 'Congratulations to Jodie' on my test results," said the Oakland resident, who has been coming to Jodie's for 15 years.

In fact, Royston is meticulous about his cooking and his ingredients, which are always fresh. He cleans the cooking surface after every dish so smells and flavors don't transfer to the next order.

To prepare his famed fried chicken, he soaks it in lemon water for several hours, then removes all the fat. He seasons the chicken and marinates it from Monday to Saturday. It's then fried in canola oil in an iron pot. On all his dishes, he avoids direct salt and uses low-fat cheeses. And he mixes peppers, which he grinds, from all around the world to make his special spice.

But the key ingredient that attracts customers is Royston, who is seasoned with a dry sense of humor and immense warmth for others.

"If Jodie's ever closes, I don't know what I'll do," said DJ. "Coming here makes me healthy, because I laugh a lot here."

See the photo gallery here.

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