How this Pasadena chef is rebuilding himself after losing his home in the Eaton fire

For the past eight years, Dean and Pauline Yasharian have built a life for their family in a quiet corner of northeast Altadena. They live up in an area known as Christmas Tree Lane. Her two children attend school further down the street. And the couple owns and operates a small French restaurant called Perle just 10 minutes south of their home in the heart of Old Pasadena.

On the evening of 7/1, the life they knew changed forever with a text message from a friend whose husband is a local firefighter.

“He said, 'You've got to get out of there,'” Dean says.

Over the years, the Yasharians had seen several fires in the mountains north of their Altadena neighborhood. When the Eaton fire broke out, Dean remained optimistic and never imagined the flames could reach them.

Pauline packed a few valuables and left with the children. Dean decided to stay with their dog and wait.

“My neighbors and I watched the fire,” Dean said. “When the wind came through they howled and the flames looked like they were 15 meters high. “We prayed that they would stay on the mountain.”

But the fire quickly spread south and by 11:30 p.m. smoke was hanging in the air and there was no power. Dean decided to leave and come back the next morning.

The next day, the couple received a text message from a neighbor who lives across the street. The neighbor's house was gone and Dean and Pauline feared the worst. They got in the car and drove up to check on their home.

“It was like an apocalypse, like someone dropped a nuclear bomb on our entire community,” Dean says. “There were power lines everywhere, everything was still burning, houses were catching fire, but we finally made it to our street.”

They drove as far as they could and then walked the rest of the way to their home.

“We went to our house and just collapsed and held each other for a while,” he says. “It was just something you never expected in your life. It was gone. “Everything was gone.”

The Yasharians are one of thousands of families who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires. They are part of a community of survivors who are now in the midst of making decisions about how to house and rebuild their families. Instead of taking the time to grieve and fully process their loss, the Yasharians switched focus and focused on their restaurant and the 30 employees they consider family.

“The next day it was still snowing ash everywhere and all the restaurants were more or less closed and it was like a double whammy,” says Dean. “How are we going to survive this?”

Even before the closure, the restaurant was in what Dean calls an annual post-holiday “drop-in sales period.” Along with their general manager, Nikki Langworthy, and a handful of other employees who were also laid off because of the Eaton fire, they made the difficult decision to close the restaurant to regroup and assess the full impact of the fire. He continued to pay his employees and shared resources for claiming disaster unemployment with anyone who was paid hourly.

Dean held a “crisis meeting” with his staff in January. 9. Was the water in the restaurant safe? How is the air quality? How could he afford to pay his employees with an empty dining room?

After numerous mixed reports regarding water contamination, Langworthy received confirmation from Pasadena Water and Power that the water in the area was safe.

Dean kept an eye on a text chain he shares with a number of surrounding restaurants in Old Town, including Bone Kettle, Osawa, Pez Cantina and Union. Restaurants reported how many customers they served daily to inform whether and when Pearl should reopen.

Dean and Pauline immersed themselves in the inner workings of the restaurant, a welcome distraction from the trauma they were facing at home.

The French restaurant is one of the most famous in the city. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison included Perle on one of his lists of the 101 Best Restaurants. I featured Yasharian's Perfect Tarte Tatin (and come back regularly).

“We started listing the things we had lost,” says Dean. “It's a difficult process and they want to know roughly what year you bought something. Putting a price on these possessions is a long and arduous task, but with the restaurant stuff you have to focus on it at that moment. “It’s a nice opportunity to think about food and restaurants for a while before we have to worry about everything else.”

During the week the restaurant was closed, its working capital fell to an all-time low and the team decided to reopen in January. 15. Dean redesigned the menu, hired a skeleton staff of 10 employees, and shortened hours to operate conservatively without running out of money.

The reservations resulted in 10 tables and around 30 place settings. He usually needs about 75 to 80 covers on a weeknight to stay afloat.

After a week of being evacuated from my own home in Pasadena, I found solace at a corner table in the Pearl dining room. When disaster strikes, restaurants provide a sense of normality, and it feels good to be with other people and share French fries and a tarte tatin.

At 7 p.m. that evening, with several air purifiers operating, the dining room was almost full. Dean recognized most of the names in the reservation book. The table behind told me from their server that they had seen Dean's Instagram post about reopening and wanted to come out and support him. At another table, a man wearing a sweatshirt from the school the Yasharian children attend stood up to hug Dean. This school burned down in the Eaton fire.

“We really appreciate everyone supporting us and it gives us hope that the restaurant might get back on its feet,” says Dean. “We are a close-knit community. And the restaurant community was great too.”

With their own future uncertain, Bone Kettle reopened in January. 11 and donated the proceeds from this weekend's sales to the Yasharian family.

The restaurant, located just around the corner from Perle on Raymond Avenue, asked its nearly 30,000 Instagram followers for help.

“Words cannot even begin to describe what a blow this is to this sweet family,” Bone Kettle’s Instagram post read. “That makes no sense. The only thing that makes sense for us is to support our neighbor when he needs it most.”

For those who are able, eating out or ordering takeout from your favorite restaurant is more important than ever. They are the lifeblood of communities across the city, providing jobs, safe spaces and food.

“We lost our house, the restaurant is in danger, but it has eased the pressure a little knowing that people are still coming to eat,” says Dean. “Restaurants are usually severely affected in such disaster situations. “It’s a big help for people to spread the word about Pearl and just get out and support the local restaurants.”

Dean maintains a steady stream of upcoming events and holidays to keep the business running. He signed up to participate in DineLA, the semi-annual food event that features prix-fixe lunch and dinner menus at restaurants across the city.

“The goal is to get the restaurant back up and running and then maybe take some time to breathe as a family,” he says. “We’ll find time for that.”