Steve Roberts: the South Bay’s palate shifter
Steve Roberts and Charlie Byrd at Charlie’s: a New York Italian Joint. Photo Steve Roberts goes his own damned way. Others tend to follow. Never was this more apparent than when he opened Café Boogaloo in 1995. The concept wasn’t complicated, but it was plenty audacious: a blues and roots music bar serving downhome Southern food, fine wine and beer. By beer he meant craft beer. When he opened his doors, he erected a sign stage right that contained the house rules. “Stay off the stage. No smokin’. No cussin’. No Mustang Sally.” But if you looked at the line of 27 tap beer handles behind the bar, you realized there was another, unwritten rule. No bad beer. He’d opened up a blues bar that didn’t contain a single mainstream brewery. Every last handle was from a craft brewery. At that time, this was high-nigh unheard of, outside of beer lovers Meccas such as Naja’s Place in Redondo Beach and Father’s Office in Culver City. Roberts recalls a Budweiser rep walking through the door one day. As he walked away rebuffed, he told Roberts Café Boogaloo was doomed. “Budweiser told me you’ll never make it carrying just microbrew,” Roberts recalled. “’You are not going to make it without our…
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