Clifton’s Serves as a Haven From a Harried World

You don’t need your own time machine.

There’s one located downtown at the corner of Broadway and 7th. It’s called Clifton’s Cafeteria.

Sauntered in the other day and thought Father Time had somehow wound the clock back.

Was not alone.

The quaint if campy place is packed with people who think it’s a haven from the harried world outside, where the headlines are so often too horrific to ponder.

As one 86-year-old man put it: “It’s a mess out there. But here it feels like home. Been coming here since ’42.”

It’s a place where Ozzie-and-Harrietesque values like civility and charity are extolled. There’s a sign in the main dining room that politely urges able-bodied persons to use the upstairs quarters if it isn’t too much of an inconvenience. “Main floor tables are primarily for dining guests unable to climb stairs,” it says. Another sign declares: “There is an immutable law of compensation that decrees, ‘As you give so shall you receive.’ ”

It’s not just a slogan, it seems.

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After 60-plus years, Clifton’s still won’t turn away a customer who is too poor to pay--although the staff sometimes must make a tricky call. After many people took advantage of the Depression-era policy, the restaurant had to amend it. Those who are down-and-out but who are trying to improve their lot are those for whom the policy is intended, explains manager Jose Morales.

“It’s a little more complicated than it used to be,” he says, “but we still want to help people.”

It’s a place where the decor--mock redwood forest, complete with babbling brook--also bespeaks a more innocent, if unsophisticated, time. Where even the menu and pricing scheme is as uncomplicated as it is nostalgic. Pickled beets: 82 cents a serving. Peas: 92 cents. Braised ox-tail dinner: $4.49.

It’s a place where most everybody knows at least your first name. Where customers and employees keep coming back.

Morales, the soft-spoken, polite manager, points out one customer after another whom he has met here through the years.

That elderly gentleman in the food serving line? That’s James. “He’s been coming here for lunch every day since ‘69,” Morales says.

Then there’s Richard and Vernon, with whom Morales eats breakfast each morning. Officially, the restaurant doesn’t open until 7, but it always has a line of people starting about 6:45, so the staff opens up early.

Those two women in the corner? They come in every day, too, and sit for hours at a time, the manager says. “They don’t buy a whole lot, but we go easy on them and let them stay.”

See that man in the wheelchair? That’s Robert. “I remember him when he was still walking. He had diabetes and lost his leg.”

Robert, a 65-year-old former security guard, says he has been coming to Clifton’s for virtually every meal for 18 years. Does he ever miss a meal here? “Once in a while,” he says. He says the people here have always made him feel welcome. “It’s very important to me at this time.”

At the next table sits Jimmy, a fiery octogenarian who may hold the unofficial Clifton’s record, having eaten here each day for 52 years, he swears. A retired security guard who still wears his badge--”to keep the wolves away,” he says--Jimmy says he comes here to be with his friends.

“I’m 86 years old, no sense in changing now. Any place you can relax and visit, eat good food, you’re in business.”

Besides, some of the employees have taught him some Spanish. “Learned it right here,” Jimmy says, proud and grinning.

Though Clifton’s has served many customers as a buffer against the sometimes unrelenting ravages of time, the cafeteria itself has not escaped. Customers--1,400 each weekday--and workers have fallen by half. The closed-down hotels along Broadway, once the gems of downtown, and the shuttered Million Dollar Theatre have taken their toll.

A few years ago, a civic group called Miracle on Broadway formed to infuse life into the once-fabled Broadway corridor, but the miracle never took place at Clifton’s.

“But we’ll never close,” Morales vows. “We wouldn’t close this place.”

Which is good news to the man curled up at the table in the corner with a bestseller. To another passing time with a crossword puzzle. And another who has dozed off, escaping, for the moment, from whatever troubles lie ahead.