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Los Angeles Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Dine with history at L.A.'s landmark restaurants, founded in 1935 or earlier
Is a restaurant worth a visit simply because it's been around longer than that bottle of yellow mustard in your refrigerator? Longer than your oldest living relative? Maybe. Proper respect should be paid to an institution. Los Angeles is home to restaurants celebrating a century in business. About 36,500 days in operation. The feat alone is something to marvel at. What is Hollywood without the martini culture built around Musso & Frank Grill? The Long Beach bar scene without the Schooners of cold beer and pickled eggs at Joe Jost's? A South Pasadena stretch of Route 66 without milkshakes and phospate sodas at Fair Oaks Pharmacy? Over decades in business, these restaurants have become landmarks synonymous with the cities themselves. Some of L.A.'s most popular attractions are our food halls, with Grand Central Market in downtown and the Original Farmers Market in Fairfax drawing millions of visitors each year. Grand Central Market opened in 1917 with nearly 100 food merchants. Its oldest running restaurant is the China Cafe, with a 22-seat counter that's been around since 1959. In 1934, about a dozen farmers and other vendors started selling produce at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue, where the Original Farmers Market still operates today. Magee's Kitchen, its oldest restaurant, began when Blanche Magee started serving lunch to the farmers in the '30s. Many of the restaurants on this list were built by immigrants from every corner of the world, their American dreams realized in a mochi shop in Little Tokyo, a French restaurant in downtown L.A. and a taste of Jalisco, Mexico, in Pasadena. If you're looking for the oldest restaurant in Los Angeles County, you'll find it in Santa Clarita, a city about 30 miles northwest of downtown. Originally called the Saugus Eating House when it opened as part of a railway station in 1886, the Saugus Cafe boasts a history rich with Hollywood film stars, U.S. presidents and a train network that helped establish towns across the state. In 1916, the cafe moved across the street to where it sits now, one long, narrow building that includes a dining room and a bar. It has closed, reopened and changed hands numerous times over the last 139 years. Longtime employee Alfredo Mercado now owns the restaurant. It's a place that exists in a cocoon of nostalgia. The history embedded in the walls, the decor and the friendly staff are the main draw. If you're searching for the best breakfast in town, you may want to keep looking. The following are decades-old restaurants that have stood the test of time, shrinking wallets and fickle diners. In operation for 90 years or longer, these 17 destinations (listed from oldest to newest) are worth the trip for both the history, and whatever you decide to order.
Los Angeles Times
15-04-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Du-par's restaurant taught me to love food. It also left a red vinyl ghost
Good morning. Here's what you need to know to start your day. Growing up in 1980s L.A., I probably slid into the smooth red booths of Du-par's restaurant at the Original Farmers Market a hundred times for weekend lunches with my grandmother. It's where I tried my first pie, sipped my first cup of coffee, and discovered Raspberry pancake syrup, date-nut bread and patty melts. My grandmother loved eating, and she passed her passion on to me at this wood-paneled L.A. landmark whose charms drew generations of celebrities, plumbers, retirees, families, writers and hung-over party kids for eight decades. ('Some of the regulars look as if they've been sitting at the same table since Governor Reagan's first term,' restaurant critic and Du-par's devotee Jonathan Gold once quipped). Until last Friday, I had not stepped into Du-par's in 31 years. During that time, friends occasionally suggested we meet there for a stack of hotcakes dripping with melted butter, and I'd always figure out a way to get our destination moved. Now I was finally here again, drawn by news that Du-par's was financially struggling and the pull of unfinished business. The man at the register asked me whether I wanted to sit inside or on the patio. This would be the most consequential decision of my visit. The red vinyl ghost This was the moment of truth. The last time I was here, I tried wedging my way into the booth, but my body was just too big. Trapped and in pain, I ate uncomfortably while fretting about how I would get out. When the bill arrived, I urged my grandmother to pay. I would meet her in the car in a minute. As she exited, I quietly asked the waitress if there was someone who could help me out and she returned with a burly guy from the kitchen. He managed to free me, but the commotion sent my water glass crashing to the ground, prompting half of Du-par's to witness my extraction. Now, here I was again, facing down a red vinyl ghost from my past. I got in without much effort, tight but not constricting. This was not a total surprise. After seeing my weight top off at 510 pounds, I underwent weight-loss surgery a few years ago and had a pretty good idea I was not going to have a problem this time. In some ways, it was just the latest stop on my post-surgery victory tour of childhood haunts and the rituals that had, for so long, seemed off-limits to the heavier me. Shopping at the Beverly Center. Walking around Griffith Park. Gliding into a seat at the Sunset 5 movie theater without fear. This new life was all about not putting food first, a marked contrast to the culture of all those Du-par's lunches. For my grandmother, Du-par's was not about sustenance or ritual, or a convenient place to catch up with her family. It was about pleasure and joy. I memorized her orders — date-nut bread with cold butter, cup of chicken soup, steak and kidney pie, or Swedish meatballs or meatloaf or the Thanksgiving open-faced sandwich. Coffee followed by a slice of pie. Mincemeat. Boysenberry. Peach. And always with instructions that cracked us up: 'Easy on the ice, heavy on the gravy.' 'Chew your food, it adds more flavor.' 'Coffee from the urn, not the pot.' Everyone thought it was cute the way this little kid couldn't stop talking about eating at Du-par's with his grandmother. But over time, the chuckles gave way to alarm as my weight exploded. My family tried to steer me toward the Du-par's diet plate (a burger, cottage cheese and some sliced fruit), but I wasn't having it. When I was old enough to drive, I'd cruise in to get pastries and doughnuts to go and eat them in my car alone. I'd put Du-par's out of my mind until news broke this month that the 86-year-old eatery was struggling. A lot of iconic L.A. restaurants have closed in recent years, battered by the pandemic, changing tastes, rising costs and food delivery craze. If you have lived in a place long enough, the loss is less about the food and more about the life moments tied to the place. I think of the Original Pantry and immediately remember a friend who talked about how he wooed his future wife with early-morning breakfasts there before driving her to LAX. As a teenager, I borrowed my mom's Datsun and cruised the Sunset Strip at night. The line outside the music venues didn't impress me. But the elegant people eating — and smoking — on the sidewalk patio of Le Petit Four left me longing for that far-away life. My Dupar's lunch date arrived and we ordered the hotcakes. Delicious, just as I remembered them. But I ate only about half the plate, a byproduct of having a good part of my stomach removed. When we were done, I told him to go on ahead, a little insurance policy in case getting out of the booth proved difficult. I slid out without effort and took it all in. So many memories, both good and bad. But I was grateful to have created a new one and that I conquered one more place that for so long felt off-limits. I texted a longtime friend: 'We should go to Du-Pars next time.' U.S. measles cases surpass 700 with outbreaks in six states. Here's what to know Salvadoran president says he won't return man wrongly deported from U.S. What else is going on Get unlimited access to the Los Angeles Times. Subscribe here. How major demographic changes of Asian and Latino immigrants are transforming California. For nearly two decades, more Asians have immigrated to California than Latin Americans. The changing migration patterns are hitting regions in different ways: In Silicon Valley, 42% of Santa Clara County residents are now immigrants, with most coming from China and India. By contrast, Los Angeles County is about one-third immigrant with most still coming from Latin America. The big question now is how President Trump's border policies will affect these trends. How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Going out Staying in Stephen Reid writes: 'On a warm summer night in 1986, I went to the Greek Theater in Hollywood to hear B.B. King open for the incomparable Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hundreds of shows and many years later, this remains the single greatest show I've ever seen.' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they're important to you. Today's great photo is from Times photographer Allen J. Schaben from the first weekend of the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Have a great day, from the Essential California team Ryan Fonseca, reporterAndrew Campa, Sunday reporterKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorHunter Clauss, multiplatform editorChristian Orozco, assistant editorKarim Doumar, head of newsletters Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Los Angeles Times
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles is a pickle city. Where to find pickle bagels, fried pickles and pickle nachos
Did social media videos of ranch pickles, chamoy pickles and glickles (pickles with edible glitter) make pickle lovers out of all of us during the pandemic? Or did TikTok just give the existing pickle heads a new outlet for our pickle flags to fly high and wide? Today's collective pickle obsession was probably brought on by a little bit of both. If the Big Dill World's Largest Pickle Party were a thing when I was younger, it would have been better than Disneyland. For the uninitiated, it's an annual pickle appreciation festival that started in Baltimore in 2019. This year, there are events planned for Dallas and Baltimore. Imagine pickles on and in offerings that include pizza and egg rolls, a world pickle eating championship, brine chug challenge and unlimited pickle sampling. 'I think social media just exposed all the pickle lovers,' says Scott Kaylin, owner of Kaylin + Kaylin pickle shop and Topped pickle restaurant at the Original Farmers Market. 'Obviously it's creating some new ones but I think overall, there have always been pickle lovers, and social media is just exposing pickle lovers to different things.' Kaylin + Kaylin has nearly 2 million likes on TikTok and thousands of followers. It's also one of the most frequented vendors in the Original Farmers Market, with customers who line up for the $3 pickle flight at the tasting bar. You choose five flavors, then spear your sample spears with a tiny wooden pick. I tend to resample the spicy garlic dill, horseradish and spicy honey mustard with each visit. The flight was actually a pandemic-specific business model that turned into a genius marketing ploy for Kaylin, who opened his pickle business about a month before the COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020. 'I went to the health department and told them I was an essential business,' he says. 'They told me I could stay open, but I couldn't sample.' Offering shoppers free pickle samples is how Kaylin attracted most of his new customers. 'I thought, how do I function?' he says. 'If I create a plate, it's not a sample. I took the opposite of the Costco model and was probably the first person to ever charge people for samples.' Last year, he sold 43,000 pickle flights. I was personally responsible for 30 of them. In August, he opened Topped out of a 200-square-foot space near the north end of the market. The business was directly inspired by the pickle creations he sees on social media, offering pickle sandwiches, pickle chips dressed like nachos and flights of stuffed pickle mini boats. Unsurprisingly, the flight of mini pickle boats is Kaylin's bestselling item. And the pickle topping people gravitate to the most is Flamin' Hot Cheetos. On a recent visit, I order a flight with a cream cheese, lox and everything bagel seasoning pickle boat; a tuna salad pickle boat and a peanut butter and Nutella boat with crushed pretzels. The latter is exactly as advertised, with smooth peanut butter and chocolate hazelnut spread becoming one in the center of a scooped out pickle with salty pretzels crumbled over the top. It shouldn't work, but it does. Full disclosure: When I was 5 years old I told my parents I wanted to live in pickle land, a place I dreamed up where inhabitants ate all sorts of pickles for breakfast, lunch, dinner and all snacks. My never-ending quest to fall deeper into the pickle rabbit hole that is Los Angeles led me to the bar at Belle's Delicatessen, Nick Schreiber and J.D. Rocchio's bagel pop-up turned full Jewish deli in Highland Park. Here, you can order a pickle martini (a full sour in martini form) and sip it alongside a plate of fried pickles. 'Fried pickles in and of themselves are a kind of drinking snack,' Schreiber says. 'In a Jewish deli you eat pickles, but fried pickles are something we had seldom seen in the deli sphere.' Belle's fried pickles do not shrink into dry, shriveled raisins in the fryer. There isn't too much batter and it doesn't separate from the pickle. Schreiber uses a mixture of cornmeal and tapioca flour to create a light, crisp golden shell that fuses to each pickle chip. And he's using a pickle with high nostalgia marks for any Angeleno. After sampling dozens of pickles for the dish, he and Rocchio settled on a pickle from Chicago Pickle Co., which is actually a division of Vienna Beef. 'Theirs was the best we tried by a long shot,' says Schreiber. 'One of my reps told me that the garlic dill pickles at Jerry's Famous Deli were these pickles and I was like, 'say less.' ' The fried pickles are finished with a sprinkling of ground caraway seeds, giving each briny, acidic chip some deep sweet and spicy notes that will bring to mind your favorite toasted rye bread. On the side, there's ranch packed with as many derivative onion flavors as Schreiber could manage, including green onion and onion powder. And the slice of lemon on the plate isn't just a pretty garnish. 'We actually do encourage people to squeeze the lemon over the pickles for what we call the kosher calamari effect,' says Schreiber. 'Between the cornmeal, the lemon and the briny acidity, it's giving calamari.' At the Fat & Flour location in Culver City, there is evidence of owner Nicole Rucker's love of pickles all over the bakery and market. Pickle ornaments dangle from a display during the holidays, there are jars of pickles in the fridge to purchase and pickle hats. A bumper sticker reads: 'I'd rather be leaning over the sink eating a jar of pickles.' 'Last year, pickles started to crest in popularity on the internet,' says Rucker. 'Everything became like pickle girl content. I'm not really sure who started that but it just became like pickles were in the zeitgeist again in a different way.' In January, she created the pickle bagel. 'We started offering this bagel menu and top of mind, was my love of pickles,' she says. 'I just really like pickles and thought what would be better than regular cream cheese? If we put pickles in the cream cheese. And it was very good.' The pickle bagel is built on a Jyan Isaac Bread bagel of your choice, toasted until both the bottom and top are crusty. It's smeared with a whipped cream cheese that's been mixed with dill, a little bit of fresh garlic, chopped pickles and a splash of pickle juice. A ribbon of sliced cucumber is splayed over each half with more dill, some flaky sea salt and red pepper flakes. You get the briny bite of a good pickle with the freshness of raw cucumber over one of the city's best, airy, crunchy bagels. The first iteration of the pickle bagel was made using a brand called Hot Girl Pickles. 'We switched over to using Grillo's pickles in the cream cheese because the Hot Girl Pickles are not available to use right now,' says Rucker. 'If I wasn't using Grillo's, I'd use the Bubbies ones, which are also very good. I'm entertaining new pickles.' My pickle-centric interview with Rucker ended with us both browsing pickle merch on a website she turned me onto called Faire. I've got my eye on a pickle bookmark and stickers that read: 'just a girl who loves pickles.' 'Life is hell,' she says. 'But there is still fun stuff going on. ' I couldn't agree more. And for those who might appreciate such statistics, the words 'pickle' and 'pickles' appear a total of 75 times in this column.
