Watts Coffee House

THAT’S WATTS UP

It’s Sunday morning brunch and the place is hopping. I’ve ordered the chicken and waffles while my brunch guests opt for other soul food staples like salmon croquettes and grits. We’re in the courtyard dining area of the Watts Coffee House, an iconic institution of a community with a complicated past. We’re just across 103rd street from the original location of the Watts Happening Coffee House, a neighborhood institution opened in the wake of the Watts Rebellion in 1965. The current iteration continues to serve the community with more than just comfort food. “We hire a lot of people who need job skills training and help them find work,” owner Desiree Edwards shares with us, “I love this community and giving back.”

The original Watts Happening Coffee House was a bourne of a collaboration between the Unitarian and Presbyterian churches to help revitalize the neighborhood. Built into a burned-out furniture store in the area known as “Charcoal Alley” after the uprising, it quickly became a community center where original compositions of art, music, theatre and film were conceived and celebrated. From this milieu of creative expression arose the Mafundi Institute, dedicated to serving the community through job training and arts education. The Coffee House eventually closed and remained so until 1997.

The idea for resurrecting the Coffee House came from Harold Hambrick, a local businessman known by the honorary title of “Mayor of Watts” who passed away in 2014. Ms. Edwards was working as a caterer when Hambrick asked her to reopen in a building shared with Mafundi, now a performing arts academy. Edwards walks us around the interior dining room which resembles a neighborhood museum of nostalgia. A line of LPs encompassing generations of jazz, soul, blues and hip hop icons line the bannisters. Hundreds of photos of patrons and school sports teams fill the walls along with a lifesize cutout of former President Barack Obama.

My breakfast arrived and I dutifully ravaged my fried chicken before digging into the waffles, unapologetically licking my fingers as I went. My brunch partners chatted with our waitress, a young lady who went to high school nearby. Edwards had hired her for her first job. “I like it here,” she says, “everyone is really friendly.”

Along with the Watts Towers just down the street, a visit to the Watts Coffee House makes up a culturally significant and also tasty morning spent in one of Los Angeles’ most infamous neighborhoods. Times are changing quickly, Edwards notes telling us stories of gentrification and rising rents. Still, she welcomes the new faces and says of the clientele, “We get people in here from all over the city and the world, and we love to welcome them all.”

Visit The Watts Coffee House for breakfast or lunch every day except Mondays. Make sure to come by on second Saturdays for the brunch buffet and thank Desiree Edwards for keeping a piece of history alive…and for those chicken and waffles!

— Written by Pete Helvey