It’s just past noon on an early October Friday. A breezy hint of fall weather washes through the center of town, and those who are headed down 19th Street, an arterial road from downtown to the east side, are doing so slowly and with their windows down, taking in a clear valley day.  

One by one cars all seem to be signaling left and pulling into an oversized parking lot between an auto glass repair shop and Wool Growers, a Basque restaurant that was opened here in 1954 by J.B. and Mayie Maitia.

A restaurant that’s on the brink of turning 70 may sound like anything but an upstart. But Wool Growers has spent much of its life in the shadow of even longer-tenured standouts that not only gave life to this corridor, but are known throughout California and beyond as the places to come for working class cuisine that has been lovingly curated, protected and presented by generations.  

It hasn’t been an easy time lately for the legacy Basque restaurants of Bakersfield. The first to fall was Noriega Hotel. The restaurant, which was started by Spanish and Basque immigrants in 1893, closed down in May 2020 due to complications of running a business with boarding house-style dining and long tables hosting multiple parties during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While a new version of Noriega’s, which includes artifacts from the old space, opened on Stockdale Highway in the summer of 2021, the original restaurant on 525 Sumner Street — the first place that generations of the town’s Basque community came after stepping off the train at the Southern Pacific station two blocks away — sits boarded up and empty.

“Oh my God, Noriega’s!” Jenny Maitia Poncetta, daughter of the original owners of Wool Growers, told SFGATE. “When my mother heard, she was heartbroken. ‘Noriega’s can’t close,’ [she said.] She was so upset because Noriega’s is where she and my father started. Grace [Elizalde], the grandmother, the owner, was her mentor.”

Then there was Narducci’s Cafe, a Basque standard a couple of blocks away from Wool Growers on 21st Street, which dates back to 1894 and once hosted President McKinley, who reportedly spoke from the second-floor balcony. It closed its doors in August of this year.  

Narducci’s most recent owner, Edgar Ruelas, a former dishwasher who took over the building’s lease and reopened the business in 2022, told SFGATE last year during a visit that even with a steady stream of loyal clientele and an ample space — one he used to create a popular underground punk venue — keeping doors open was a nearly impossible task.

“Right now, it’s like we’re making enough so the business can sustain itself but it’s not making enough to pay my personal bills,” Ruelas explained last summer. “I still do my side hustles and stuff, and it is what it is… And all these fees and keeping staff and supplies and food coming — all the stuff you get hit with.”

Poncetta, who runs Wool Growers today with the help of her daughter, Christiane Camou, said if not for the fact that the family owns the building — combined with a strong desire to see her mother’s vision through — Wool Growers might have faced a similar fate over the last couple years.

“I’m living my mom’s American dream,” she said, acknowledging that the restaurant exists solely because of her mother and is now on its third generation of female ownership and management. “If it had just been up to my dad, he’d have given up after a couple years.”

And while the 136-year-old Pyrenees Cafe, just around the corner from Wool Growers, still packs them in for three Basque- and American-style meals a day in its historic space, the employees who help keep the lights on at Wool Growers are long on history but short on nostalgia.

“More than 30 years I’ve been here, and it’s never been harder,” said Wool Growers bar manager Jose Coscarart, who moved from Spain in the early 1970s, spent “the coldest few months of my life” on a ranch Ely, Nevada, and then made his way, like many before him, to the warmer climes of Bakersfield. “It’s not just one thing, as I’m sure anyone will tell you. But right now, we’re dealing with costs. It’s inflation. Everything is so expensive.

“We’re here to provide food and drinks for people who work, for the middle class. But who can afford anything now? I understand because I’m one of them — it’s not an easy problem to solve.”

In spite of the economic and existential challenges of helping to run a restaurant that survives solely on community support, Coscarart noted that the linchpins that remain in this part of Bakersfield, including Luigi’s Restaurant and Delicatessen, Arizona Cafe and Pyrenees French Bakery, share a customer base that is simpatico — and loyal.

“The best part of this restaurant for me, and I started working full-time when I was 19, I love the generations,” said Poncetta, now 71. “My mom saw five generations. I’m not quite there yet.”

As I was waiting for my dining companion in the Wool Growers bar, a separate room on the windowless west side of the building, I overheard the chatter of locals mixing with those who had traveled to have a drink and a long lunch. The space is exactly as you’d hope: The bartop is a warm Kiwi shoe polish brown, an unblemished Formica marvel buffeted with black vinyl armrests and cushy black barstools covered with the same material.

Even at high noon, the only daylight that creeps in is from the main door or the back one, the latter being the most frequented entry and exit by regulars.

While talking to Coscarart, along with a handful of Bakersfield-bred patrons and a couple from Fresno who were there stopping by for a drink, a game of two degrees of valley Basque separation was being played out right in front of me. I was also given a quick tutorial in French Basque and Spanish Basque — and the fact that they don’t always get along. It was eventually decided that the Fresno couple was second (maybe third?) cousins with the Maitia family.  

“We’re all a little related,” Coscarart confirmed, smiling. 

Poncetta concurs, noting the matriarchal tradition of the restaurant is not by accident. “Grace from Noriega’s, she took care of everyone,” she explained. “She taught my mother when the sheepherders came in, it wasn’t just about food or shelter. They took them to doctors’ appointments, the consulate when they got their passports renewed. They helped them with jobs, to find partners, everything.

“Those women — they were the greatest generation. There’s never going to be a generation like them.”

Upon entry through the bar area, my dining companion, a college roommate who grew up in Bakersfield, agreed with the ubiquity of the Basque community spirit. “I don’t know what it is, but all my friends in this town are Basque,” he said. “And they’re great friends to have.”

We checked in at the host stand and were quickly seated at a communal table, the flatware elegantly arranged before us at a long, rectangular eight-top covered with a black-and-white checkered tablecloth near the building’s front window. Individual booths had already filled up, which was fine with me. At Wool Growers, food is meant to be shared and conversations are meant to be overheard.  

Before we could even pick up our menus, our server dropped off two glasses of water and took our drink orders. My friend asked for the Picon, a locals’ shorthand for the famed house specialty cocktail Picon Punch. An LA Weekly article, which Wool Growers has posted on its website, quotes a cocktail historian defining the drink as “cognac, real grenadine (not the ersatz bottled stuff), and Amer Picon — at 78 proof.”  

The drink comes served in a skinny lowball tumbler, and while I stuck with a Coke (still on the clock), one sip was all it took to make me want to scoot away from the table and go back to the bar until the neon Wool Growers light outside flickered back to dark.  

The real mission of the day was to enjoy the full Basque lunch — including the several pre-entree courses known as the “setup” — which my friend confirmed we’d be having with a simple nod to our server.  

Soon after our drinks came a salad of greens with a vinaigrette, a vegetable soup with carrots, potatoes, leeks and cabbage, and pinquito beans — the original recipe of Mayie’s, who was born in France and worked at the restaurant nearly every day until health issues caused her to back away in the years leading up to her death in 2021 at the age of 92. Along with the soup and salad came a house-made salsa and Pyrenees sourdough in generous inch-thick slabs with a side of individually wrapped room temperature butter pats at the ready.  

I observed closely as the folks at the table mixed the beans and salsa in with their soup, ostensibly to give it a little kick. My friend casually slabbed some butter on his bread and balanced it delicately on the rim of the soup bowl. There it perched, patiently, to sop up the remnants. I imitated his moves and devoured the soup, then had a second, slightly smaller portion. This was not going to be a light lunch nor was this course — hearty, but surprisingly not filling — going to be the last.  

We quickly fell into conversation as the restaurant — every seat now filled with a diverse mix of families, white collar workers, friends and tradespeople who’d wrapped their Fridays early — reached the apex of busy, teetering on the edge of chaos if not for the work of a handful of hustling hosts, servers and busers.

The timing of the meal, which continued with a side of French fries, beef tongue, and fresh tomatoes sliced and doused in vinaigrette, was so seamless I didn’t even notice what had been spirited away and what had been placed in front of me.  

Another Picon was ordered, and we continued our conversation, pausing only to order our entrees (yes, more food). Though the oxtail stew and the fried chicken were on everyone in the bar’s “must haves” list, the lamb dip caught my eye. The server recommended it with garlic and some melted cheddar, and I couldn’t say no. My friend ordered the fried shrimp, a token effort to keep things on the lighter side.  

“The number-one seller is fried chicken with garlic,” Poncetta said. “I personally, I think if they want something that’s authentically Basque, it’s the oxtail. People either love lamb or they don’t have a taste for it. But I feel it’s something we do well.”

They do. The sandwich was transcendent. The lamb was tender and juicy, cooked to perfection, and while I only anticipated having half the sandwich, Wool Growers is the kind of place where no matter how much they throw at you, you do your best to honor the space and the generations of people who make it happen — and finish it there.  

“I do have a lot of new people coming in,” Poncetta said. “A lot come from the LA area. They all enjoy it, they thought it was fun, different, neat. And I think they’re always surprised that we still manage to do what we do.”

Which raises the question: In spite of all the challenges recent years have brought, and the collapse of its predecessors in the neighborhood, is Wool Growers on safe ground?

“It’s not back to normal. It’s a new normal, I guess,” Poncetta said, then took a pause. “For the young people, you have to try new things to get new people to come in. But we’ll continue to do things the old ways. I kind of stood by my mom, who said, ‘If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.’”  

As we wrapped up, I checked the time on my phone. It’d been more than two hours since I walked through the door and my packed afternoon floated away. I had visions of balling up in the corner and sleeping this meal off, dreaming only of when I could wake up and start all over.