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It s lunchtime, and 83-year-old Michel Bordagary sits alone at the center of the long Boarder s Table at
Centro Basco in Chino. All that surrounds him in the empty dining room where he has eaten lunch and dinner for the past 55 years are old photographs on the dark wood-paneled walls.
He can t say for sure how many meals he has had here since 1966, when he boarded a train from Stockton for Chino, with only the clothes on his back and whatever belongings he could carry. Today, he s having Poulet Basque (braised chicken with tomatoes and peppers) and a glass of red house wine.
The words Hottinger s Family Meats stretches above the doorway of a one-story, red-tile roofed building in an industrial corner of Chino near warehouses and railroad tracks. The business is one of the last reminders that ranches and dairies that once ruled this swath of the Inland Empire.
Ben Hottinger at work at Hottinger Family Meats in Chino. (Courtesy of Hottinger Family Meats)
Founded in 1948 by Swiss immigrant Henry Hottinger, the intimate butcher shop has been owned by the same family for four generations. When we built this place, there wasn t anything here, it was wide open, says 79-year-old Ben Hottinger, Henry s youngest son. My dad bought 12 acres but what we have left here is an acre. That s it.