Word on the street is that Cole's French Dip is closing next month... here's why Angelenos can't let it happen
Gentle reader,
When we made a page on our website linking to the historic preservation campaigns we’ve launched or helped amplify, we choose to give that page a longer name.
To us, preservation isn’t about trapping a vintage structure in amber so it always looks and feels and smells the same, but about keeping historic places alive and accessible, so that Angelenos and visitors can enjoy them, can help them evolve to reflect modern needs and demographics, and can pass these community treasures on to future generations to keep reflecting the city as it changes.
That’s where cultural stewardship comes in, and it ain’t always an easy sell.
Any legacy business is also a small business, and we can say from experience that folks who operate small businesses are a special breed. They’re driven, confident, a little nuts. They follow their own North Star, don’t like it when outsiders tell them what to do, and sometimes they decide to just sweep the metaphorical cards off the table, turn off the lights and say the party’s over.
Which is fine when you’re talking about a party, but a problem when it’s a legacy business that was founded before the current operator was born.
On the Main Street side of the Barclay Hotel, the oldest continuously operating hotel in the city, a cobbler made this decision one dark day in 1994. He’d been sick, and business was slow in the aftermath of the ‘92 uprising and the ‘94 Northridge quake, so he locked the door on the La Fe Shoe Repair shop and never came back.
You can explore the time capsule interior in Craig Sauer’s interactive 3-D scan here, or let Kim do it for you in the video embedded above.
When La Fe closed down, it went unnoticed save by tenants in the surrounding single room occupancy residency hotels. There were other shoe repair shops in the neighborhood, and no sad songs were sung for its loss.
But Cole’s P.E. Buffet—more recently branded Cole’s French Dip—on the other hand… Cole’s is an iconic Los Angeles landmark established in 1908, when Edward was King of England and the population of this dusty frontier town not yet 300,000.
The workingman’s bar and lunch counter opened on the north side basement of Henry Huntington’s Pacific Electric Building (Thornton Fitzhugh, 1905) when Sixth and Main was the bustling heart of Los Angeles. To the east, the produce yards, railroads and the unpredictable, unchannelized Los Angeles River. To the west, new high rise offices and elegant hotels, department stores, cafeterias, vaudeville theaters and nickelodeons screening short films. Up a long set of stairs or a leisurely ride on the Angels Flight funicular, the Bunker Hill neighborhood offered ocean breezes and magical views.
To get to Cole’s from anywhere in town, you could catch a streetcar, horse drawn carriage or new fangled automobile. And when you did, Harry Cole and his crew would take good care of you. (He’d cash your paycheck, too.)
Ted Mandekic (aka Mandecik) and his son Mike became the stewards of Cole's P.E. Buffet in 1957, four years before the streetcars stopped running; Edward Pagliano also held an interest. (Ted and Ed would later establish the Red Lion Tavern, originally an English pub, in Silver Lake.)
They didn’t change anything, except to bring in some specialty draft beers and coin the slogan “A Place Worth While.” Patrons loved the Tiffany style stained glass lamps, the scratched mahogany bar, tables made from the sides of decommissioned P.E. streetcars, the Mount Lowe Railway and Red Car ephemera, the easily mopped penny tile floor and the easy to lean against bar and buffet line, the reasonably priced French dipped sandwiches and the hand carved cutlet plate, the generous six-day a week hours including dinner service.
It would have been easy for this old fashioned place to fall out of favor and quietly shutter. But the bankers and businessmen on Spring Street turned this workingman’s bar into their not quite private club, generously tipping longtime barkeep Jimmy Barela while pumping him for stories about weird and celebrated patrons and the frenzy to get sloshed when Prohibition ended. At Cole’s, just steps away from the office, they could find a respite in a sleepier and more gracious Los Angeles.
In 1972, Cole’s became an Historic Cultural landmark
By 1990, it was Mahdi “Martin” Behesti’s (aka Beheshti’s) joint, and Martin kept the beer flowing into the ‘oughts, and nearly to the bar’s centennial. The food was pretty bad, and a rat once skittered over Kim’s shoe while she eyed the fare, but Cole’s had soul—and nice management that let local artists take over the back rooms for occasional happenings.
When nightlife entrepreneur Cedd Moses bought the bar in 2007 and closed it for a refresh, fans were worried. Yes, it needed some love, but too much love and it wouldn’t be Cole’s anymore.
And honestly, by the time it reopened some month’s after the centennial, it wasn’t Cole’s anymore. The name had changed, the streetcar tables were gone (rumor has it moved to Moses’ 213 Nightlife / Hospitality office nearby), and tasteless plaques about famous patrons peeing there went up in the gents’.
And those funky back rooms became a hip, speakeasy style bar, The Varnish. For every glum old timer, a thousand new fans flocked to the new Cole’s, as its popularity helped draw folks Downtown to live, work and play, and get excited about the rich cultural and architectural history all around this somewhat manufactured, yet still wonderful time capsule joint.
In 2019, 213 rebranded as Pouring With Heart, dropping the OG Los Angeles area code as a precursor to a national expansion into San Diego, Texas and Colorado. PWH currently operates 20-some bars and restaurants across the country.
Covid shut Cole’s down, but PPP grants kept the business afloat. When it reopened, it was with a 21+ policy, effectively sending families with kids to Chinatown, where eternal “originator of the French Dip sandwich” competitor Philippe The Original welcomed everyone. Somebody fleeing the cops jumped out a window and broke the neon sign, which felt like a bad omen.
Then, a year ago this week, The Varnish closed. Despite being in a neighborhood that gets heavy after dark, Cole’s was no longer open for lunch. Patrons complained of erratic hours, cranky service and lousy food. The old joint seemed to be running on fumes.
Which brings us to July 6, 2025. Earlier today on Instagram, dtlainsider / lifehacksLA broke a story they got from dtlaweekly, who got it straight from Cole’s employees, who got it via email from Pouring with Heart corporate: Cole's French Dip is set to close on August 2, after 117 years of nearly continuous service.
There was nothing on Cole’s official social media channels, but sometimes it’s a pesky fan or local tour guide who breaks these stories that no operator of a beloved legacy business wants to tell.
Here’s the thing, though: Cole’s P.E. Buffet / French Dip doesn’t belong to Cedd Moses and Pouring With Heart. It never did. Cedd is just the latest steward in a 117 year old golden thread of Angeleno entrepreneurs, and if he’s done with Cole’s, he ought to know it’s time to hand the place off to someone who loves it, too.
Los Angeles has endured a devastating series of legacy restaurant closures: La Golondrina, The Original Pantry, Pacific Dining Car, Papa Cristo’s, Guido’s, Rod’s Grill, 94th Aero Squadron and more. We can’t let Cole’s join that painful list!
The ghosts of Harry Cole and the Mandekics and Martin Behesti and Jimmy Barela and Jonathan Gold and Mickey Cohen and countless bankers and barflies and b-girls and train lovers and dreamers and L.A. noir seekers are all a-buzz with the spectral worry that Cole’s might end up like the King Eddy: closed up tight with no spirits flowing, a circumstance which gives any self-respecting tavern ghost a crushing hangover.
We hope that Cole’s isn’t simply closing, but that the bar and its intellectual property are for sale, and that the price is a fair one that reflects the changed Downtown L.A. business environment and the challenges facing any new operator. We’ll peel an eye for a sale announcement, and share should we see one.
Also, if Cole’s is sold, it needs to include those MIA P.E. Red Car tables!
Maybe the answer for Cole’s and for other treasured, vulnerable legacy businesses in Los Angeles is for a new nonprofit ownership model and pushing the City to ease the path forward with forgiven utilities, low interest financing, free street closure for special events on days when traffic wouldn't be heavily impacted à la the Sunday farmers market on 5th Street and otherwise putting a thumb on the scale for cultural heritage, as politicians have been doing for development for far too long.
If you love Cole’s and want to help keep it alive, please share this newsletter, then head down and give them some business, and talk to the people you find there, on both sides of the bar. The solution to this and so many other problems is going to depend on Angelenos who give a damn brainstorming and collaborating, so get to work!
Cole’s P.E. Buffet (1908-2025-???)… the end of the story is up to you!
Update July 7, 2025: We spoke with Gab Chabrán of LAist about the potential closure of Cole’s, and the challenges of navigating a very different Downtown environment than when Cedd Moses reinvented the place nearly 20 years ago.
Update July 9, 2025: There is now a pop-up on the Cole’s website asking interested buyers to get in touch with Derrick Moore (213) 613-3334 derrick.moore@cbre.com. Here’s hoping the message gets to the right folks!
And speaking of real life noir in the heart of the city, next Saturday’s tour is a cinematic and true crime extravaganza, featuring iconic Film Noir locations and the real life horrors that inspired screenwriters to craft their moody tales. And after the tour is over, you can stroll on down to Cole’s to make your own noirish memories. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Same ownership has also shut Broadway Bar next to the Orpheum.
My actual heart is breaking. I live downtown, have for the last 8 years and what drew me here were places like Cole’s. To think that 117 years means nothing and they can shut the doors just like that…but, should I be surprised when The Original Pantry is the same? Something must be done to save these businesses.