Brigitte Bowers: Wool Growers Basque restaurant is not to be missed

The skies of the Los Banos foothills were lousy with turkey vultures. They circled and swooped and then aimed for the carcasses below.

On the ground, sheep were dying of bluetongue, an insect-borne virus. When a sheep contracts bluetongue, it slobbers. Its tongue swells, resulting in a bluish hue. Bluetongue can affect other ruminants, but it is most deadly in sheep. And what my husband Matt remembers about the bluetongue outbreak in Los Banos that year in the early 1970s is that a lot of sheep were dying. He also remembers the phone call his father Harry, a veterinarian, received from a sheep rancher late one night. He wanted to know if Harry could meet him at his ranch at 6 the next morning to vaccinate about 1,200 head of sheep.

The rancher was calling from a phone at the Wool Growers bar, a place where sheep ranchers congregated after eating at the adjacent restaurant. He’d had a tough day, and he knew the next one was going to be even tougher, and so he had stopped in at Wool Growers because Wool Growers, both the bar and restaurant, was a lot like home. Not home in Los Banos, but real home, the old country. Sheep were integral to Los Banos life in those days, and because Wool Growers had long been the hangout for sheep ranchers in town, the bar and restaurant seem to be the backdrop for many narratives told by long-time Los Banos residents.

Wool Growers is a Basque restaurant in downtown Los Banos. The Basque people are believed to be the earliest group of inhabitants of Western Europe. They occupy a region straddling an area in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, and their culture is strongly influenced by both countries. There are the Spanish Basque, who speak primarily Spanish, and the French Basque, whose official language is French. Unfortunately, the Basque language is not as widely spoken in the region as it once was, with approximately 30 percent of Basques able to speak their native language today. Still, the Basque culture is strong, and one of the things they are most proud of is their food.

The Basque culture is also a sheep ranching culture, and traditionally it is the eldest son who inherits the ranch once the parents can no longer work. For this reason, younger Basque sons often came to the United States when they were of age. Many settled in Nevada, where they managed to help the sheep ranching business grow to about 2 million sheep between the 1850s and the 1940s. Others settled in various places in California, including Los Banos. The vast stretches of open grazing land in the Los Banos foothills were well-suited for raising sheep. Eventually, Wool Growers opened to feed the Basque immigrants who longed for home. It has been in the same location for over 100 years.

Wool Growers is simple, some might say even drab, in its furnishings. The long picnic tables, where diners are seated next to other diners they may or may not know, are covered with red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths. There is no menu. Your waitress, who will be friendly, will tell you that you have a choice of beef, lamb or chicken. She will put a bottle of uncorked, unlabeled wine at your table. This is included with your meal.

Then the food will start to arrive: Bowls of soup and beans, a heaping serving of lamb stew, bread, green salad, potato salad. You will think, if it’s your first time at Wool Growers, that your waitress has made a mistake, but then you will learn she is only serving you the first course.

This is food meant for hungry people, with no pretensions. The restaurant’s reputation is so well-established that I do not need to review the food for you. Just go.

And when you go, maybe you will think about the stories Emily and Evette recounted for me.

Emily Alexander ate at Wool Growers for the first time with her husband, Michael, and her new in-laws. They had just met because Michael had been stationed in Washington, where he and Emily met, and his parents decided that Wool Growers was where they wanted to take their new daughter-in-law for their first meal together.

She was immediately charmed by the old family style atmosphere and food, and now she and Michael take their own children to Wool Growers. The kids are 9 and 3, and if you are a parent, you know that 3-year-olds are not typically contented when dining out, but Emily’s toddler loves Wool Growers, perhaps because it is a lot like home.

“What about the ice cream?” I asked Emily. “I’ve always been a little conflicted about the ice cream.” I was referring to the plastic cup of vanilla ice cream served at the end of the meal. It is the same ice cream I remember being served at my elementary school cafeteria.

Of course, her kids like the ice cream. But Emily’s in-laws taught her how adults should approach the dessert.

“Dig a little hole in the middle, and then pour some of the wine in,” she told me. “It’s really good that way.”

Evette Jasso, who was born Evette Etchetary, affirmed that this is indeed the best way to eat the ice cream. She also told me about her own history with Wool Growers.

“Wool Growers has been a big part of my family’s life,” Evette said. Her father, who was Basque, immigrated to Los Banos to work as a sheep herder and later took a job as a cook at Wool Growers, where her mother bused tables. Evette’s dad lived in an apartment upstairs from the restaurant, and later he lived there with his bride. Wool Growers was the site of their wedding reception, Mrs. Etchetary’s baby shower, and, eventually, Mr. Etchetary’s funeral reception.

My husband, Matt, has other stories about Wool Growers, but he remembers one overarching feeling about the place. “It was always a festival,” he says. “It was always a good time.”

Certainly, anyone who eats at Wool Growers will agree that it’s a fun place to dine, but for people like Emily and Evette, and for Matt, too, this restaurant has been much more than that.

This story was originally published August 20, 2015 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Brigitte Bowers: Wool Growers Basque restaurant is not to be missed."