Michele StuevenDulan’s, the beloved Black-owned soul food institution, deeply rooted in the LA community, celebrates 50 years of a local culinary legacy that started when Adolf Dulan opened his first eatery in Los Angeles, Hamburger City, in 1975.
It soon became so popular that additional locations sprang up around the city. A few years later, he opened Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch out of one of the burger stands in Marina del Rey, the first soul food restaurant in the area.
It was back in the days when the crack epidemic was starting to take shape and gang violence was raging. African Americans could not get loans to open a business, and banks weren’t lending in that part of LA, so Adolf had to draw on his retirement to purchase an Orange Julius franchise to support his wife and five kids.
The franchise was later stripped away because he felt that the Orange Julius menu at the time did not appeal to the community surrounding it. He slowly moved away from that menu and started selling chili cheeseburgers, egg burgers, bacon burgers, and pastrami burgers. He also came up with one of the first meal bundles at the time. It was called the Hamburger City special – burger and fries for a dollar.
The lines would be down the block on the first and the 15th of the month, because that was when the welfare checks came out. Conveniently, there was a check-cashing place in the market behind the hamburger stand. There would be more than 100 people in line to get a burger and fries for a dollar.
“One of my earliest memories of being in the restaurant business was back in the 1970s,” son Greg tells LA Weekly over an icy glass of lemonade in Dulan’s recently remodeled location on Crenshaw Blvd. with the thoughtful help of Gensler design.
Greg Dulan and team at Dulan’s Crenshaw (Michele Stueven)
“My dad was drinking wine with a motley group of people in the parking lot on Martin Luther King Blvd. and Hillcrest in the Crenshaw district. Some of the guys around him were alcoholics. I remember driving up to our hamburger stand as a 16-year-old teenager when it was a brand new business, seeing my dad standing around with these guys who we called winos in those days. I saw him take a bottle of wine, turn it upside down, take a swig, and then hand it to the next guy. I parked my car and was really upset. I said, ‘Dad! How can you drink with those nasty guys?!’ The bottle went all the way around. He said ‘Son, I drink with these guys because when I’m not here, they watch the business and let me know what’s going on. That’s how I connect with the community. They watch out for me, and they watch out for you. When I drink with these guys, I always take the first sip, so the bottle is empty by the time it gets back to me.’ It speaks to how he connected with the community.”
It was Adolf’s style to greet every customer from table to table and introduce himself, a trait his son Greg has inherited. It was that personal touch combined with delicious food that started the Dulan culinary legacy. One of the four Hamburger City stands flipped into the sit-down Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch in Marina del Rey, which closed in 2016. Adolf passed away in 2017.
Soul Food at Dulan’s (Courtesy DoorDash)
“When they bounced the idea off of people, everybody said my parents were crazy,” says the Brown University graduate who went to Westchester High School. “You’re going to put soul food in Marina del Rey? Those white people aren’t going to want soul food! They stuck to their guns, and everybody came from everywhere just for the fact that we were in Marina del Rey. They wouldn’t necessarily come to the black neighborhood. People would wait for two hours for a table.”
But it wasn’t all winos and welfare. The Dulan soul food became a favorite that crossed all cultural boundaries.
“One night we were getting ready to close and we got a call from Elizabeth Taylor,” says Greg. “‘I want to come in after you close.’ We set up a table for her and three guests, and they all ate soul food. She had a taste for fried chicken.”
When the former Prince Charles and now King Charles III of England visited Los Angeles in 1994, Greg served him Dulan’s signature dishes while the royal visited the Food From The Hood program in the garden of Crenshaw High School.
“He actually ate the food,” says Greg. “My only instructions were not to touch him or take pictures while he ate. His exact words to me were ‘The food is quite good.’”
The Dulan culinary empire currently includes Dulan’s on Crenshaw and two other locations run by his brother, Terry, on Manchester Blvd. and Century Blvd. You’ll see the food truck popping up at SoFi stadium, and the family just launched a prepared food kiosk in the new Vallarta Supermarket at Crenshaw and Slauson, which sells out daily. Menu items include meatloaf, baked chicken, and smothered pork chops, and classic soul food sides like collard greens, candied yams, and macaroni and cheese.
From left: Greg, Adolph and Terry Dulan (Courtesy Greg Dulan)
Navigating the current tough times in the restaurant industry, Dulan’s has also signed an exclusive deal with DoorDash, which has helped sustain the business.
“They have increased the views on our website by about 300 more views a day,” says Greg. “More importantly, it has increased our revenue by 25%. It’s become a large portion of our daily revenue, about 40% of revenue on Sundays comes from DoorDash.”
The burning question is, will his children, Brett and Alexis, dash in to take over the family business when Greg prepares for a possible 2028 exit from the day-to-day operations after 30 years?
“Passing along a restaurant business to a third generation is rare,” he says. “For years, Brett was a Hell No when it came to the family business. I was surprised when he lowered that to a No. I was shocked recently when he expressed interest in coming in to help run the business. I didn’t do this remodel for myself; I did it for my children, so if they wanted to carry on the family legacy to the next generation, they have the infrastructure to do that. A USC graduate in engineering, Brett currently works for the New York Times, helping build out the AI capabilities at the paper. He’s moving back home from Brooklyn in July, so I just might be able to pass the baton.”