Interview with Fred Eric, Owner of Fred 62, one of the best Restaurants in
Los Feliz.
Interview conducted by Keith
Kurlander
I created and opened FRED 62, 18 years ago and it's a 24 hour diner. Our original motto was "OUT DOING LATER". I opened Fred 62 under the notion that I could transform your normal Mom & Pop type food and bring it to another delicious level without compromising the integrity of the original dish. We've been open 24 hours for the last 18 years serving breakfast lunch and dinner and we're kind of a staple in this neighborhood.
When I first started thinking about FRED 62 I was the Chef and partner of a restaurant called OLIVE on Fairfax in Hollywood and I always liked the diner notion of food for people to eat, every day, all the time, so I built out this this model for Fred 62 and then I tried to get the lease, on this building but it didn't work out, so I opened VIDA , a high end dinner restaurant, in a different location. It was open for about two years when the property owner Rudy came over and asked me if I wanted the current location, so I closed VIDA and opened FRED 62.
Well these are two completely different sets of moving parts. FRED 62 is 24 hrs so there's never a down time, you're constantly working and supplying the public with service and food. With VIDA it was more of a splash, we opened at 6pm, you'd get your roster done by 2pm in the morning and it was a completely different business model but they both served food. VIDA was a place to dine and Fred 62 is a diner, a place to stop in and feed yourself.
When I first opened Fred 62, the neighborhood was very quiet and the whole notion of a 24 hour restaurant in Los Feliz seemed pretty insane. After a while we started to get comments from the press like Los Feliz and Silverlake are starting to become this new hip area when at the time it was still completely quiet, it was a ghost town. However that has dramatically changed now, it's gone through being hip, to being gentrified, to being overpopulated.
Since Fred 62's has been open for 18 years different customers say different things. Kids have had their birthday parties here since there were 7 and now they're coming back in their 20's. You know there are people who highly associate with our late night scene. After our service, there's people who identify with certain dishes or type of salad so I think I would say that the customers love the fact that we have bright flavorful food at a reasonable price 24 hours a day.
I think about the famous adage that says customers are always right and I always look at it more like customers are always right out of their minds. Just the idea that you open a business and and you make it for the customer and at some point they take over and mix it with what they want it to be too. There's a book called "Brain of the Firm" that Brian Eno was really into and shared with me. It's about about management patterns and how you make something you created for the potluck and then they take what they see it as and they use it for what they wanted and then you can use that as a Feedback tool that accentuates more of what it is that they are experiencing.
Certainly :)
Yes I've really been working on a Ramen place that serves only Kimchee and Broth. if I could do just one thing I would like to sell really yummy good Ramen. I think if you could supplement maybe 4 meals a week eating Ramen you'd be a happier person.
What they don't know is how many moving parts there are and the fact that we, in the food industry buy stuff, manufacture and produce that salad, right there, it's not made in China. We're basically local manufacturers of product that is perishable and that gets processed right now. Restaurants really started in France and it's only a 200-year-old business. It's pretty amazing really that you can walk into a place and have them prepare some food at a really reasonable price, when you consider where the products are coming from and that you can get just about any kind of food you want and that it's relatively inexpensive to get that service.
In Chicago I had role models like Rich Melman who started Lettuce Entertain You. He taught me how to run a restaurant as a business. I like Robert Wilson the the opera director, Gucci certainly David Bowie is a big influence and Brian Eno who I was fortunate enough to have actually met and to have cooked for, but there's so many different influences, right now I'm really influenced by Pono music versions of Aretha Franklin and Billy Holiday.
Right at the moment I have to say I like to go to the Griffith Observatory and where else do I like to go I like to go to see Fred 62. Also I like to go to other restaurants like Pine and Crane and I like to go to Beverly Hot Springs.
Shopping locally is important because you're buying food that is being kept at a right place, not sitting on a shelf. I'm into organic agricultural techniques and making healthy food. I think in general the idea of shopping local is to put the money you spend back into the community and then it stays in the community and progresses on to buying other things within the community.
We've been buying from the Farmers Market for 18 years. We used to have a green truck and we'd go on Wednesday's to Santa Monica and Sundays to Hollywood. We did that before it was even popular so I've done this for a long time and have relationships with many of the growers, It's just primarily finding the best tasting product for a customer.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefred62/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fred62
Website/Blog: http://www.fred62.com