The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin uncovered a story from Route 66’s past about the long-gone RoVal’s steak house in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., at 11871 Foothill Blvd. (aka Route 66).
The restaurant’s namesake, RoVal Jones, died at age 89 last week.
RoVal’s first restaurant was on Ninth Street in Rancho Cucamonga. But its second location on Foothill Boulevard, built in 1958, was the one that endured for the long-term.
RoVal’s signature feature was a big, round smoke oven, which was placed in a corner of the dining room. Jack acquired it from a restaurant in Arizona. As described by Bill Jones, a grate above the oven’s firebox was where all the meat was seared: chickens, ribs, steaks, even lobsters.
At one point, a lobster dinner would set you back $3.50. Of course, that’s not as cheap as it sounds. Not after you add 35 cents for a tip.
“A killer place,” recalls reader Philip Montgomery, who told me RoVal’s was the valley’s premier steakhouse.
But the first thing you’d see inside RoVal’s wasn’t the oven. It was RoVal Jones.
“She was hostess,” Bill Jones said. “Very outgoing, very personable. Never met a stranger.”
The restaurant was eventually turned over to a son in the 1970s. It went through several ownership changes, including its conversion into a topless bar in the early 1980s. It finally closed for good in 1992.
The writer of the article, David Allen, has more interesting tidbits about RoVal’s on his blog, including a drawing of the restaurant and one its ads from the phone book.