Philippe The Original

The Counter Experience

Walk through the doors and you step back a hundred years. Sawdust crunches underfoot—original to the restaurant’s earliest days when it helped absorb spills on bare concrete. Ten “Carvers” work behind the long counter, each handling orders from start to finish. Pick your meat (beef is traditional, but the pork and lamb have devoted fans), decide on single-dipped, double-dipped, or “wet” (fully submerged), add cheese if you want it, and watch as your sandwich gets assembled and dunked right in front of you.

The rolls come fresh-baked daily, lightly textured and sturdy enough to hold up to the dip. The natural meat juices—slow-cooked over 30 hours from traditional stock, roasted meat drippings, and vegetables—give the sandwich its signature depth. Grab a jar of their house mustard from the table. Made fresh weekly since the 1920s, it will clear your sinuses on first bite.

What to Order

The beef dip is the original, and it’s what most first-timers get. Thinly sliced roast beef, still warm, piled onto that dipped roll. Simple, satisfying, worth the hype. The pork has a slightly sweeter flavor, and the lamb brings something different if you want to mix it up. Pastrami with blue cheese gets mentioned a lot—an unusual combination that works.

Sides matter here. The potato salad is creamy and tangy, the coleslaw brings crunch, and the macaroni salad has a slight sweetness. Those purple pickled eggs sitting in beet juice on every table are a Philippe’s signature—an acquired taste, but locals swear by them. The beef stew is hearty and the chili has substance. Daily soups rotate through classics like split pea, French onion, and Manhattan clam chowder.

The Scene

Long communal tables force strangers to share space, pass mustard jars, and sometimes strike up conversations. At peak lunch hours, lines stretch ten deep at each counter station, but the Carvers move fast. You might wait, but not long. The crowd is genuinely mixed: downtown office workers, families with kids, construction crews, tourists who read about this place, regulars who’ve been coming for decades.

Wall displays document circus history and Los Angeles railroad heritage, with vintage newspapers capturing major events from the restaurant’s opening through the 1980s. The two-story building holds more seating upstairs. Downtown’s skyscrapers stay hidden from street level, giving Philippe’s an insulated feeling despite sitting just blocks from the city center.

Practical Notes

Coffee costs 75 cents. Sandwiches run under ten dollars. This place refuses to play the upscale game—same recipes, same reasonable prices, same paper plates they’ve used since the beginning. They reluctantly started accepting credit cards after customer pressure. Some regulars weren’t happy about it.

Breakfast runs from opening at 6am until 10:30am. The restaurant stays open 16 hours daily, closing at 10pm. Free parking in their small lot, but only while you’re eating—they will tow. Being two blocks from Union Station makes this easily accessible by Metro. Walk north on Alameda after exiting the station, past the Chevron station, and you’re there.

The building dates to 1951, when Philippe’s moved from its previous Aliso Street location to make way for freeway construction. The Martin and Binder families have owned and operated the restaurant since the 1920s, when founder Philippe Mathieu sold to them and retired at age 50. Current manager Andrew Binder represents the fourth generation.

Worth Knowing

Cole’s Pacific Electric Buffet also claims to have invented the French dip in 1908, creating a friendly rivalry between the two downtown spots. Philippe’s maintains the “original” designation and touts its continuous operation record—Cole’s closed for renovations in 2007-2008.

The accidental creation story has three versions. Mathieu told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 1951 that a customer saw gravy in the bottom of a roasting pan and asked him to dip the roll. Another version says a fireman complained about a stale roll, so Mathieu dipped it to mask the dryness. The most popular tale involves Mathieu accidentally dropping a roll into pan drippings, with a police officer agreeing to eat it anyway. All three stories end the same way: people kept requesting more.

You can buy bottles of the spicy mustard, t-shirts, and various merchandise from their small shop. The restaurant ships French dip kits nationwide through Goldbelly if you want to recreate the experience at home, though most agree it tastes better eaten here with sawdust underfoot and strangers at your table.