If you read Crime Scene enough, you know how much I love Philippe’s.

Bob Rector, a former Star-News city editor paid homage to the downtown French Dip insitiution in a column that appeared in Friday’s Star-News. Here’s a sample:

… it is a somewhat less than elegant eatery that is a shrine to the French dip, a place hard by Union Station that has been in operation since 1908, making it one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles.

Come to think of it, in a city which has historically bulldozed almost everything several times over, Philippe’s may be the oldest institution of any kind in Los Angeles.

Customers stand sometimes 10-deep behind a long counter staffed by women wearing starched waitress attire the likes of which you haven’t seen in 50 years.

When they deliver your order (on paper plates), you sit at long tables atop sawdust-covered floors where your dining partners could be anyone from a judge to a transient. Or, befitting the atmosphere of the place, a barrister or a bum.

Photo from LA Eater.