Posted on 04/05/2008 12:06:24 PM PDT by kellynla
The restaurant spreads before you, six steps below ground: sawdust floors, lines of people, painted menus and neon beer signs on the walls. The lines--at peak hours there are 10 of them, each up to 20 people long--weave between the tables where scores of others are eating, oblivious to the crush. Pick a line and wait your turn.
When you reach the counter, you don't need to consult the menu on the wall, of course. You've been here before. You make it short and snappy--"Beef, double dip. Coleslaw, blueberry pie, coffee."
This is Philippe the Original, an L.A. institution that will be 100 years old in October. It has been serving French dip sandwiches--single-, double- and even triple-dipped--for 90 of those years.
Philippe's (as everybody calls it) is in the heart of old Los Angeles. Union Station is a block away; Olvera Street skitters off to the south. Chinatown is in its backyard. And our town would be a different place without it--not just because Philippe's still manages to be one of our favorite restaurants, serving 2,200 to 3,000 customers a day on weekdays and as many as 4,000 on weekends. ("Last Saturday," says Juanita Gonzalez, who's been making sandwiches here for 20 years, "there were so many people trying to get in, they got stuck at the doors.") No, Philippe's special contribution to this town of feverish change is that it is a rock--decade after decade it seems to be the same restaurant your father or grandfather introduced you to when you were a kid.
As always, a woman in a light tan uniform sets to work putting together your order: scooping slaw, dipping both halves of a French roll in jus with a pair of tongs and assembling your sandwich on a thick, gray pulp-paper plate.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
ping
Their hot mustard is very good.
This post makes me hungry!
Sounds delish! I was hoping for a photo so I could drool on my keyboard...
Man oh man....Next time I’m out there I gotta have a few of these. Sounds delicious.
Thanx. I’ve been going to LA since 1959 and never knew about this place. We’ll check it out. We’re also fans of the Original Pantry.
I went there last weekend for breakfast!
But the lamb sammie is the best.
Don’t forget the mustard, the beet pickled eggs and the cheesecake.
“French Dip Sandwich”... how metro-sexual.
Give me a large baked potato with all the fixings and a chicken fried steak that laps off each end of the platter. Don’t bake the potato in tin foil, just pop it into the oven, make the skin crunchy.
Thats good eating
....Bob
The .09 cent coffee!!!
That sounds like a chicken fried steak and baked potato order my husband and I got at a Diboll, TX truck stop back in the mid-sixties. Our eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets, but it tasted great, and we got doggie bags for the leftovers. LOL.
Yep, Flying J truck stops all over the country serve a chicken fried steak just like that.
You always need a doggy bag , makes 2 meals.
....Bob
Sorry. That last post was meant for Lokibob.
I did not write the post you are ranting about. I’ve just been saying how I love Phillippe’s.
Please look at who you are posting to.
YUM! I haven’t been there in a couple years—perhaps I need to make a special trip in honor of their birthday.
My dad used to frequent the place in the 1930s... he told me once “it’s not as good as it used to be.” LOL.
Ah, Philippe’s. One of my few pleasant memories of La-La Land.
The sandwiches are everything the article says they are — toe-curlingly delicious. But don’t ask for ketchup. They don’t have it. It has no place on a French Dip.
Ah, The old “French Dip”. Sounds like an X Rated sandwich.
Still remember going to Philippe’s in ‘62, it was outstanding.
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