In the back kitchen of Chapter One, a neighborhood gastropub in downtown Santa Ana, the restaurant’s chief busser and utility worker, Alfonso Lira, is in constant motion. He takes out the trash. He cleans a prep station. He refills a customer’s water glass. Even standing at a sink to rinse dirty dishes, he shifts his weight from side to side as if he were a boxer waiting to deliver his next blow.
Almost everyone on staff — from the dishwasher to the servers to Chapter One owner Jeff Jensen — describes the 61-year-old grandfather from Michoacán, Mexico, as indispensable to the restaurant’s everyday operation.
SERIES
Stories of often-overlooked restaurant workers making and serving our food.
“Watching him makes you want to work harder,” says server Natalie Harris. “He’s the glue that keeps everybody working. He keeps this restaurant moving.”
For much of the week, Lira is either in the kitchen working as a prep cook or in the dining room bussing tables. But on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays he is Chapter One’s utility worker, a job that requires a little bit of everything — washing and bussing dishes, bringing out patio chairs and tables, working the sound system, making pizza dough and, when needed, repairing equipment.
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1. Alfonso Lira reaches for ingredients to make pizza dough in the kitchen of Chapter One. It’s just one of his many duties as the restaurant’s utility staffer. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 2. At right, Lira talks to a delivery worker while sweeping the entrance during the first of his double-shift at Chapter One. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times) 3. Lira is also Chapter One’s chief busser, clearing dishes and getting tables ready for the restaurant’s next customers. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Behind-the-scenes workers like Alfonso Lira are the cornerstone of the restaurant industry. But they are rarely in the public eye.
Nearly every dining establishment has a utility worker. The job often goes to the most veteran worker on staff — someone with knowledge of all the ins, outs and in-betweens of the restaurant. Many are immigrants who may have had another profession in their previous lives — welders, mechanics or electricians with skills that come in handy at workplaces where something always needs fixing. Frequently utility workers do tasks that might otherwise be done by the owner, who often trains them directly.
At Chapter One, Lira, with more than a decade on the job, has become the restaurant’s elder statesman. Most of his colleagues affectionately call him “abuelo” — Spanish for grandfather.
But the restaurant’s chef, Luis Pérez, has another nickname for Lira.
“¡Máquina!” the chef teasingly shouts out, using the Spanish word for “machine” as Lira darts from the dining room to the kitchen and back again. Not only is Lira quick, says Pérez, he’s precise.
Behind-the-scenes workers like Lira are the cornerstone of the restaurant industry. But they are rarely in the public eye. Usually, a restaurant’s media spotlight is reserved for chefs or owners. To find out what one of these less visible jobs entails, we shadowed Lira on a recent Friday as he worked a double shift.
7:58 a.m.
It’s three hours before Chapter One will open its doors for lunch and the restaurant is quiet. Lira is the first one to arrive. He clocks in a few minutes before 8 a.m. and is ready for a long day. On Fridays, he picks up a double shift — from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then 5 p.m. to nearly midnight.
With a dish rag, he wipes down the kitchen ovens, outside and in. Short and stocky, Lira puts his entire body into the task, cleaning in silence. Minutes later, he drills new brackets and screws into the wobbly legs of a few restaurant chairs.
As the Santa Ana gastropub Chapter One’s utility worker, Alfonso Lira works in the front and back of the house. Some of his duties also include dishwashing and clean up. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times) (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Lira stops to check his phone. It connects him to a live feed hooked up to a camera that watches over his house in his hometown of Zamora.
“Good,” he says to himself. “Everything is good.”
The camera serves the practical purpose of allowing Lira to keep tabs on his property more than 1,000 miles away. But in reality, he says, the livestream serves as a reminder of what he’s missing. It fuels his desire to excel at his job, he says, and make more money so he can return to his family in Mexico earlier rather than later.
In 2012, Lira left his wife and five children in Michoacán for the United States to find a job that paid better wages. He was drowning in debt after a few failed business ventures and needed to make good money fast. He was a 49-year-old taxi driver starting over in a new country. Thirteen years later he’s paid off most of his arrears and saved enough to buy a hot dog cart and taxi cab that his now-adult children manage back home.
Lira works nearly every day at Chapter One. He’s tired. After more than 10 years away from Mexico, he says, he plans to return home this year before Christmas. He wants to set flowers on his wife’s grave. He yearns to embrace his children. He longs to cuddle up to his grandchildren for the first time.
8:44 a.m.
Lira hears the sound of others arriving for their shifts and dashes to the kitchen, where preparations for some of the restaurant’s dishes have begun. Chapter One’s eclectic menu includes steaks, chops, burgers, tacos and pizza, as well as empanadas and Filipino-style lumpia spring rolls.
“Hola, caballero,” Pérez says to Lira. The pair shake hands and side hug.
Alfonso Lira makes red pepper and goat cheese empanadas during his double-shift at the gastropub Chapter One in downtown Santa Ana. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
A food delivery has just arrived. Lira unpacks the boxes filled with cheese, chicken breasts and corn tortillas, storing it all in a walk-in refrigerator. Without much pause, he pivots to rinse off the last of the dishes from the previous night before setting them in the washer.
After he sweeps the patio and helps maneuver the chairs and tables outdoors, he hustles to the kitchen. He kneads pizza dough before cranking out several dozen tortillas.
He takes pride in his speed.
Sometimes, he times himself. He likes to brag about how he can fill and roll 25 lumpias in 6 minutes and 35 seconds.
“It takes others a half-hour,” he whispers.
But lately, he says, he’s slowed down. He never quite recovered after getting sick with the COVID-19 virus.
He’s still heartbroken that he didn’t get a chance to visit his wife before she died of pancreatic cancer during the throes of the pandemic. Lira says he doesn’t regret leaving home to make more money abroad. He just had to do it, he says. But he regrets getting into so much debt, describing it as a drug. He sacrificed watching his children — three daughters and a son — grow up.
“Don’t leave us, apá,” his 12-year-old son told him before he journeyed north. That boy is now a man.
After a quick midmorning coffee break, Lira launches into his prep work shift, crafting goat cheese and red pepper empanadas.
Three months ago, Pérez taught him how to make them. Now, Lira is something of an expert, instructing other staff on how to make the pastries.
Pérez describes Lira as “a jewel” who does the jobs of four people.
11:09 a.m.
Lunch service is underway at Chapter One. The restaurant has the vibe of a upscale yet relaxed pub complete with dark wood furniture and jovial bartenders who tend the lengthy and prominent bar. Shelves are lined with books — a nod to the restaurant’s name. On weekends, the restaurant becomes a boisterous community gathering spot, packed with locals. On weekdays, the lunch and happy hour crowds tend to be city and county workers from the nearby civic center.
On this Friday, the kitchen hums with activity. The smell of caramelized onions, garlic and tomato sauce perfumes the air. Timers chime every few minutes and music emanates from a speaker with what seems to be every sort of musical genre, from ’80s pop to Spanish rock.
Lira dices strawberries and basil for dessert empanadas. At the same time, he’s thinking ahead.
“I still need to make that lumpia,” Lira says. “And the trash is piling up.”
After he finishes the empanadas, he cleans his station and squeezes his body around a tight space.
“Knife. Knife. Knife,” says a line cook, warning colleagues that he’s walking by with something sharp.
Lira, remembering the garbage, quickly takes out the trash.
There was a time when Lira would wake at 5:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. shift where he would clean the restaurant before anyone arrived. He’d work all day and into the late night. He downed energy drinks to keep working.
In October 2023, the long hours caught up with him. He fell ill and was rushed to the hospital. Lira learned that he had high blood pressure and diabetes. After that scare, Jensen says, he hired a crew to come in early and clean. Lira stopped downing energy drinks and now watches what he eats. He says his diabetes is under control.
With 10 minutes to spare before his first shift of the day ends at 2 p.m., Lira finishes the meat filling for the lumpias. He scrubs down the prep station and clocks out on time.
Alfonso Lira walks to his car during a three-hour break from his double-shift at Chapter One in downtown Santa Ana. Often he drives to a gym between shifts but sometimes he’s so exhausted he goes home to take a nap. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
On occasion, Lira visits a nearby gym to walk on a treadmill in between shifts. But on this day, he’s worn out and would rather nap. He heads to his Santa Ana home, a bedroom he rents in a house with other men — all immigrants from Latin America.
5 p.m.
Lira walks through the back door of Chapter One and hangs up his backpack. “Good day,” he says to his colleagues in Spanish. “Here I am.”
Lira washes his hands and ties on an apron. This evening, he’ll work in the dining room.
The restaurant is abuzz with music and chatter. The bar quickly fills up with patrons sporting suits and ties. Done with the workweek, they are eager to slake their thirst. A private party gathers near the back of the dining room.
Six minutes into his shift, Lira picks up a pizza from the food line and serves it to a group of women who barely acknowledge him. On his way back, he notices patrons at one table have yet to receive water. Two minutes later, he appears at the table with full water glasses. On his way back to the kitchen he looks around, picks up a dirty dish and empties water glasses before delivering them to the dishwasher.
“Better check if the bar recycling needs to be emptied,” he says.
He’s right. He dumps out the bottles.
He grabs a dish rag and scans the room before he wipes down a table that he’d just bussed.
Patrons continued to walk in. He counts.
“That’s six more waters,” he says under his breath.
Making sure customers have ice water is one of the key jobs of a restaurant busser. At the Santa Ana gastropub Chapter One, Alfonso Lira rushes across the dining room with two glasses of water.
Later, after he notices a new table of six customers has been seated, Lira delivers a tray of ice waters to their table. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
He spots one server beginning to bus a table. He takes the dishes off her hands and hurries to drop them off at the sink before delivering those six water glasses.
“I didn’t even have to ask you and it’s already done,” Miranda Clark, a server, tells Lira and flashes a smile.
Clark, one of the more senior servers, says restaurant workers like Lira are hard to come by.
“He’s always one step ahead of everyone else,” says server Ayda Madrigal.
Lira’s “hands are always right there” to help, says Harris.
Jensen, the restaurant owner, playfully teases Lira about a notebook he once kept with a detailed tally of how much each server owed him in tip-outs for the day. Before tips, he earns $16.50 an hour — the minimum wage —and works 35 to 39 hours a week. Lira can make anywhere from $70 to $80 in tips on a Friday evening shift. If servers forget, Lira gently reminds them, Jensen says.
“Abuelo, you shake them down,” he says and laughs.
Lira flashes a huge grin. Now, Lira says, he just makes a mental note.
6:03 p.m.
There’s a bit of a lull in the dining room as Lira scans the tables. Now is his chance to set up the sound system on the patio.
With the help of a hostess, he lugs a speaker outside. He wipes down the patio tables and chairs and plugs in the sound system. Ten minutes later, he’s back in the kitchen, stacking plates and silverware into the washer.
With a plate of empanadas in one hand, Lira navigates around the crowd and sets the food on the table for a private party in the back. He takes delight in seeing a line quickly form to grab one of the appetizers he’d made earlier in the day.
“We’re done,” a woman tells him. He picks up her plate and silverware and carries it to the kitchen.
Smaller than most of the patrons, Lira gets through the crowd with ease — nearly unnoticed.
Alfonso Lira during Chapter One’s busy dinner service, which is the second half of his split shift.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
On his way, he spots a stray napkin and a water glass out of place. He takes those too. He notices a fry on the floor. He picks it up. A spoon left behind. He grabs it.
Cameron Baxter, a former bartender at Chapter One, walks in for a visit. When he spots Lira, he rushes to give him a bear hug.
“¡Abuelo!” he yells out.
“He’s the hardest worker you’ve ever seen. And he’s always so kind,” Baxter says. “That’s a beautiful thing. To have so much on your plate and still be so kind. It’s amazing.”
During his time bartending at the restaurant, Baxter says he never heard Lira say “no” when someone asked him to do something.
10:30 p.m.
A smattering of patrons lingers. The restaurant’s dinner service is about to wrap up, though the bar usually stays open until 1 a.m.
Harris reckons it’s time to bring in the patio tables and chairs. But Lira has already gotten to it.
She tries to help him bring in the last of the chairs.
“No, no,” he says, brushing her off.
“Gosh darn it, abuelo,” she teases. “You are making me look bad.”
Lira laughs.
With a couple hours before closing, few customers remain. Lira asks server Miranda Clark if he’s still needed for the night.
She says he can go. But, she adds, she still needs to tip him out. Could he wait a few minutes?
“It’s OK. Tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
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