This singular restaurant has a sturdy, small-business feel to it. Purple and yellow neon signs block the sunshine that is trying to beat down on us through the windows. The fresh spring day slips through in strips and dots onto the brick-tiled floor as though we are sitting in a lattice-shielded patio. The menu on the wall is professionally made; the choices are clear and uncluttered of fine print. The cash register is void of any superfluous data-crunching software or Internet connection. The food is served in paper-lined plastic baskets. The tables are topped with wood-looking laminate scuffed by years of withstanding large, rowdy men and wiggly children. The armless chairs with their built-in Naugahyde cushions remind me of government lunchrooms decorated in 1964. Giant slabs of seasoned meat are guarded only by a standing army of “MMM” Sauce bottles.

You can bring a crowd here in any attire and feel comfortable. Taped to the side of the Dr. Pepper cooler are snapshots of employees at play, and the way the owner and manager chat comfortably in the back on their apparent day off emits an aura of family. The guy who delivers the food from the Q is too outgoing to be called a ‘waiter’. He has a working class sense of humor and an abundant supply of smiles. He jokes with a quartet of men in ball-caps and steel-toe boots. Laughter tumbles out the front door and bounces on the sidewalk to assault passersby with happiness. The teenager behind the register has her wild, raspberry-tinted curls barely contained on her crown. She wears dark, sparkly eyes to match her little black tank top, adorned with some obscure Japanese cartoon character, but a florescent, banana-colored strap tied around her neck is a reminder of the California culture as she is wearing a bikini top in place of a mundane brassiere.

You don’t take a number; they just remember your face. If you want an adjustment to a standard dish, you simply ask for it. The cold-slaw has never seen an electric slicing machine. Order a simple sandwich and are faced the unusual question, “Rare, medium, or well done?” The taste of the chicken is fresh, delicate, and savory. It cracks the old cliché that emerged from so many culinary experiments: “It tastes like chicken.” It is perfectly acceptable to chow so heartily that beads of brown juice dribble down your forearms.

The “MMM” sauce is alive and luscious and can be liberally applied to anything you like, even if you’re diabetic or have other menu-limiting things going on. The sauce that put this place in business has no fat, no cholesterol, no sugar, and, for those heart-conscious folks I like to call, ‘my parents’, a reasonably low level of sodium. Mom won’t have a heart attack just reading the label, and Dad can pronounce everything in the ingredients without cussing out the mysteries of chemistry.

The smell of hot grill on the cool breeze is Chaka’s most effective advertisement. Here, it always smells like the fourth of July. Just a hint of the scent and I’m in the mood for an icy beer and a warm night of fireworks. I imagine ZZ Top on the radio, F-14s flying by, elders in fraying lawn chairs, and a gaggle of preteens tearing through green grass, all chasing the kid with the pigskin. All trucks are prey as anybody headed for the hardware store catches a whiff through the rolled-down window and begins to change plans. The first nose to sneak over is often a cold, wet one at the tip of a furry muzzle, but the driver and the kids will rubber-neck as well to realize it’s close enough to meal time to eat right now.

Chaka’s is the perfect answer to the ethnocentric dilemma for drop-in dining overseas. America is littered with Mom & Pop joints with which we gamble daily. We are blessed with the Mongolian barbecue, the spicy taquería, the curry-infused cuisine . . . we face a pleasant decision without wasting a glimmer of thought to those conveyer-belt burgers. In response, we’ve only sent them McDonalds. A lot of Americans are (or should be) embarrassed about that. I don’t know if it could ever happen, but it would be nice to imagine a cheery day and a handful of friends strolling through London, or Tokyo, or Cairo, or Melbourne, and suddenly decide, “I’m in the mood for some Yankee food. Let’s go to Chaka’s.”