Cole’s Pacific Electric Buffet

The Details:

118 East 6th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
Phone: (213) 622-4090
Mon-Wed 11:30am-10pm
Thu 11:30am-11pm
Fri-Sat 11:30AM-1:30AM
Sun 10am-10pm
Sunday Brunch 10am-3pm
Specials Daily 3pm-7pm and Tue 11:30am-10pm

The Los Angeles Foodie Rating:

Three out of five

The Summary:

UPDATE: The new Cole’s is now open

Eddie Valiant said, “Who needs a car in L.A.? We have the best public transportation system in the world.” Sadly, that was once true… maybe not the best in the world, but it was certainly great. Of course, I’m talking about the Pacific Electric Red Cars that once lined Los Angeles’ thoroughfares. The Red Car is obviously gone, but Cole’s Pacific Electric Buffet, located in the basement of what was once the central, downtown Red Car station (now a building of lofts), is a reminder of the city’s former self. In addition to being the city’s oldest public house, Cole’s claims rights to the invention of the French Dip sandwich, a claim hotly contested by Phillipe the Original.

Recently, Cole’s closed its doors, and many of us feared that it would never reopen. But 213, the development team behind Broadway Bar, The Golden Gopher and several others, has taken Cole’s as its latest project. The new Cole’s will open its doors the week of December 5th, 2008 for a grand re-opening fund raising event to commemorate Cole’s 100th anniversary and to also benefit the Los Angeles Conservancy (and yes, that’s an orginal Los Angeles Foodie photograph on the Conservancy’s site). I’m looking forward to seeing how the new place looks, but for the purpose of this review, I will be writing about Cole’s as it existed before it closed for renovation. I intent to publish an update to this review once I’ve had the chance to see Cole’s face lift.

The Place:

Gorgeous hand-painted signage and glowing neon invite you to step down into a dark space that sits a few feet below street-level. The walls are lined with black and white photographs, and the tables are repurposed Red Car doors. On the left is the cafeteria-style buffet. In the middle is the long bar lit by huge Tiffany lamps, and the remaining space to the right is filled with dining tables. Everything is dark, and you can feel the age of the place as you absorb the ambiance.

The Food:

Cole’s specialty is the beef French Dip sandwich. I’ve had the sandwich several times, and it was pretty hit-and-miss. But when it hits, it hits out of the park. The meat is tender and flaky, and the hard roll is softened by the savory jus sauce that it soaks-up when the bread is, as the French say, “dipped.” I didn’t find anything remarkable about the side offerings.

The Service:

Since it’s basically self-service, there isn’t much of a service staff, but the people I talked to were very friendly and more than happy to talk about the history of the restaurant itself, the building, and the neighborhood whose proximity to Skid Row probably hasn’t done much to help business.