Ruddell’s Smokehouse in Cayucos bites the dust

December 2, 2021

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “Life On The Mississippi, 1969,” is currently on Amazon.

By DELL FRANKLIN

On the busiest, most crowded weekend days in Cayucos, the line for takeout at Ruddell’s Smokehouse usually winds out into the street and curves toward the seawall and nearby parking lot. Drivers of cars cruising past have to wait for those awaiting smoked albacore and salmon tacos, dogs in tow, to move to make room so they can pass.

Even on weekdays, when people from as far away as LA drive 200 miles just to sample a couple tacos and sniff the sea breeze, there are lines at the Smokehouse.

This has been going on for some 20-plus years, and the establishment has become a Cayucos landmark, lending the town a beach authenticity that dates back to the days well over 50 years ago when most communities along the California coast, from Crescent City to San Diego, had tiny smokehouse shacks near their piers and bought fish from commercial fishermen arriving with catches—and smoked them.

Well, those days are gone, due to beach communities on our coastline becoming too high-rent to afford these little old shacks producing the irresistible delicacies that have turned their customers into addicts—like Ruddell’s Smokehouse.

Not only that, but old shacks no longer fit in with beach ambiance. So, in our age of  gentrifying attrition, the shack and the liquor store attached to it on a downtown corner–beside our soon to be deposed bank–will be leveled and a new solid modern business building (the liquor store will remain) will replace it, and the Smokehouse really has no place to go.

There’s a lot of sadness in Cayucos these days. The Smokehouse, a rickety structure, employs young hardworking locals who, after closing around 6 in the evening, can often be found sipping a beer or two in the nearby parking lot with local surfers and regulars like Patrick and his coterie.

Watching them talk and laugh while sunset hovers on the winter horizon smacks of a time, which I enjoyed decades ago in Manhattan Beach, when young people could afford to work and live on the beach and infuse the area with a genuine camaraderie.

A sense of belonging and accepting.

Jim Ruddell had this in mind when he created the Smokehouse after Adam Pollard of the Taco Temple moved from the shack to a bigger venue in Morro Bay.

At that time, on Tuesdays, Jim always smoked great big meaty beef ribs in the morning and gave them away free at noon. There was always a line. A bunch of us locals each secured a rib and strolled to the beach wall and polished these beauties bare.

It was a simple gesture. And Jim didn’t just do it with a business sense, no, he was the kind of generous man who savored watching people enjoy his products more than he did a profit. He lit up with a grand smile when we told him how great these ribs were, like hungry dogs wagging their tails.

I guess this good karma served him well, because his business became a resounding success, its tentacles reaching clear to the east coast, and even now, years after his death, this karma still circulates around the Smokehouse. You feel it when you see Smokehouse patrons retreating to their camper shells and truck beds and vans, or to the huge tree trunks that washed up on the beach years ago to sit down upon, and savor the fragrant tacos with a cold beer or soft drink.

But it will all cease to exist when this year ends, and Cayucos will have a hole in its heart, especially when one walks past an empty and finally razed Smokehouse, and eventually a brand spanking new gleaming business building.

I can’t think of many people in town who won’t miss it, and its old time California beach town flavor.