The Last Basque Restaurant in Southern California.

The Centro Basco restaurant is one of the few places in the South Californian region where you might hear the Basque language, Euskara. During a meal of stewed lamb shanks and braised oxtail, it’s not uncommon to hear four languages being spoken: English, French, Spanish and Basque — sometimes all during the same conversation.

Centro Basco was founded in 1940 and has been operated by the Berterretche family since 1970. Bernadette Berterretche, the youngest of the five Berterretche children, runs Centro Basco along with the restaurant’s head chef, her brother Joseph. Their parents, Monique and Peyo, have roots in Basque Country, on the French side of the Pyrenees mountains in a small town called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

When the Berterretche family purchased Centro Basco’s property in the ’70s, it was already established as a full-service restaurant and housed small apartments for 32 “boarders” who already lived there. The boarders comprised Basque men who worked on local farms nearby and would receive all of their daily meals at the restaurant. 

For recreation, there was a full-sized pelote (handball) court which still stands today. While many of the occupants have passed on or moved away, there remains one resident who worked at a nearby grain factory and has lived at Centro Basco for the past 53 years and still faithfully shows up each and every day for all of his meals.