The customers pour in daily at Noodle World in Alhambra, usually expecting nothing more than a heaping plate of Thai pad see-ew or a steaming bowl of Vietnamese pho.
But on occasion, they react the way Martin Moreno did when entering the restaurant for the first time.
"Oh my God, there's a Bob's Big Boy," the furniture seller said, staring at a statue of a boy in checkered overalls. "In an Asian restaurant?"
The statue is a curiosity that has endured for 12 years, puzzling and delighting patrons who either remember eating double-decker cheeseburgers or wouldn't know Pappy Parker fried chicken if it landed in their wonton soup.
For Thai American owner John Mekpongsatorn, the statue is an essential part of his bustling business -- a perfect symbol of the Southern California melting pot he wanted his chain to reflect. The result is a restaurant many affectionately call the "Asian Denny's" for its no-fuss diner decor and a menu that spans Japan to Malaysia.
And in this fiberglass figure, this symbol of mid-20th century kitsch, is the story of how Noodle World settled into its place as a cross-cultural success -- and won over a changing community.
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Before Noodle World became a stalwart on Valley Boulevard's ethnic restaurant row, battling rival noodle houses that could pass for ones in Saigon or Taipei, it was one of hundreds of Bob's Big Boy restaurants that flourished across the nation.
By the 1980s, the hamburger chain, founded in 1936 in Glendale, was beginning to fall out of favor and closed dozens of locations. Along with a national shift away from burger joints came a huge demographic change in the largely white and Latino San Gabriel Valley. Between 1980 and 1996 -- the year that this Bob's Big Boy closed -- Alhambra's Asian population nearly quadrupled, to 47% of residents.
The 37-year-old Mekpongsatorn, who was born and raised in North Hollywood and now lives in Monterey Park, loved Bob's Big Boy as a child. He liked trying to reach up and touch the statue's hamburger when he wasn't quite tall enough.
When he heard the restaurant was up for sale, he was overcome with nostalgia. Mekpongsatorn quickly made an offer and considered the possibilities. Noodle World could be an Asian riff on an American classic, he thought.
But not all went according to plan. When Mekpongsatorn was in escrow for the property, Bob's Big Boy corporate offices had movers reclaim some of the company's decorations, most notably the statue.
Mekpongsatorn was crestfallen. He'd lost his prized mascot. At the same time, it was becoming clear that, symbolically, the neighborhood had lost something too. As much as the area's new residents might welcome a noodle house, for some old-timers the disappearance of Bob's Big Boy -- the burger joint as well as the statue -- was an uncomfortable reminder that the community had changed. Some could not accept that the ketchup and mustard on the tables were gone, replaced with chili oil and jalapeno-spiked vinegar.
"I remember older ladies coming in thinking it was still a Bob's Big Boy, putting the menu down and asking, 'What's going on here?" Mekpongsatorn said. "They'd get up and walk out."
Mekpongsatorn was troubled. He did not feel the need to apologize for the community's changes, but he also did not want to erase some of its fonder memories.
As the months passed, Mekpongsatorn gained more Asian clientele, but he did not see much of the non-Asians who had filled the place when it was a Big Boy.
Then Mekpongsatorn stumbled upon a slightly smaller Bob's Big Boy statue at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. Perhaps this would do the trick, he thought, and reach out to those who felt left out as the community changed. He paid $200 and lugged it onto his pickup truck. It was installed above a divider between the kitchen and the dining room.
The chubby figure was a hit. People heard about it through the neighborhood grapevine, as one old-timer told another that a Big Boy statue had taken up residence inside the noodle house.
Mekpongsatorn started seeing more whites and Latinos venture in.
"The families started coming back," Mekpongsatorn said.
One of those longtime patrons was Nora Escobar, who has lived in Alhambra since 1979. For years, she would cozy up to the counter and order hash browns, bacon and black coffee.
Breakfast would often stretch to lunch as she bantered for hours about finances and city politics with the regulars. When she heard that the restaurant had been converted into a noodle house, Escobar felt a slight disbelief.
"I decided to drop by and see if the statue was still outside," she said. "I was sad to see it was no longer there. I thought, 'The immigrants are taking over.' Then I walked in and I saw the boy up there."
"There's so many different places now it's hard to reminisce," said Escobar, 55. "Everything is new now. Nobody has any respect for what's old. But they didn't forget what the boy represents."
