Earlier than the late 1950s, before the construction of the highway we
call Interstate
880, Main Street was known as the Oakland-San Jose Road and was the
main route between
those cities. The main route west was the Alviso Road (now Serra
Street). A few hundred
feet north was the intersection of a dusty gravel road called Calaveras
Road. Its
name came from the Calaveras Valley (meaning "place of skulls" for the
many animal bones found there by the Spanish explorers) on the other
side of the
hills to the east of Milpitas. The road ran near the boundary creek,
Los Coches,
between old Rancho Tularcitos and Rancho Milpitas and was the main
route into the
mountains and the many farms of the Calaveras Valley beyond. We call
that old eastward
route Calaveras Blvd. today. It was around these two important trade
route crossroads
that Milpitas grew up over the course of a century to provide travelers
with the
services they needed.
When this building was constructed is uncertain but a Sanborn Fire
Insurance map
of downtown Milpitas dating from 1893 shows a "Lodge Hall" on this site
and the timber construction under the stucco was typical of that of the
late nineteenth
century. The first owner we have a record of was Joseph Pashote
(pronounced Pah-shoat).
The Pashotes were an early Portugese immigrant family descended from
Joseph Pashote
(in the orginal Portugese it was spelled Peixotto). He came from the
Azores Islands
in the 1880s to settle in the Warm Springs/Irvington area to the north
of Milpitas
in the present city of Fremont.
In 1908, Pashote came to Milpitas. He bought a store and a barbershop
for his sons,
one of whom, Johnny Edward Pashote, enlisted in the US Army in WWI.
This young man
was one of four brave Milpitas boys who died in the Great War and
Pashote Street
is named after him.
His brother, Joaquim "Jack" Pashote, opened a meat market at this
location.
The name of the store, “Central Market”, can be read at the entrance to
the building
imbedded in the threshhold cement. In the late 1930s, Mamie Moretti
moved in for
a short time with the first beauty shop in Milpitas. After Mamie moved
her business
south on Main Street, Magdalina Pashote Carlo (sister of Jack Pashote)
and her daughter
Mary Carlo Valencia (pronounced Vuh-lench) ran a dressmaker's shop
there.
In the early 1940s, Alfred and Josephine Simas Carlo bought the market
from Al's
uncle Jack Pashote and changed the business into a restaurant to serve
the motorists
traveling from San Jose to Oakland along Main Street. Al did the
cooking and Josie
waited upon the customers.
In 1999, the historic restaurant was closed and sold by Jim Carlo, son
of Al and
Josie. The new owners demolished it in 2000 to make room for new
development but the antique neon sign that hung over the entrance for
half a century
now belongs to the Milpitas Historical Society. Today, the site is
still vacant pending develoment. For over fifty years, the Kozy
Kitchen
served meals in the old roadhouse tradition of good food and lots of
it.