When Philippe Mathieu of Aix-en-Provence arrived in Los Angeles in 1903, Angelenos were living in startling culinary isolation -- some would say desolation.
Mathieu would change all that. He launched a frontier version of French cuisine, inventing the French dip sandwich (with a little push from an angry customer) and founded Philippe the Original, a downtown landmark.
Within months of his arrival, he opened a French deli at 6th and Alameda streets, where customers could buy French rolls and sliced meat and rummage through deep barrels of pickled cucumbers, onions and olives to create their own sandwich.
In 1906, he and his new bride, French-born Josephine Chaix, worked together behind the counter making sandwiches for diners. Later, their two young daughters, Alice and Berthe, would pitch in, peeling and dicing 50-pound barrels of onions -- shedding tears all the way.
"My mother told me about how she always had to walk a few blocks away to the Cudahy Meatpacking Co. and carry back two buckets of animal blood for her father [Mathieu] to make his rich sauteed boudin noir [blood sausage], a house specialty," recalled Philippe Guilhem, Mathieu's grandson, who lives in Oklahoma.
Mathieu's daughter Alice, an entrepreneur herself, "ran a newspaper and ice cream stand in front of the restaurant," Guilhem said.
Faced with too much work and too many customers, Mathieu recruited his brother, Arbin, from France to join the business, which he did before venturing off to begin a restaurant of his own.
In 1908, with a blitz of advertising and promotion, Mathieu launched his first Philippe restaurant at 3rd and Alameda streets. He served up liver pate, blood sausage, roast beef, pork and potato salad. Sunday customers could feast on the special: roasted sheep's head.
Mathieu tried to remind folks of home by offering all they could eat, plus a pint of what he described as a "good claret wine," all for 25 cents. Although he cooked with passion and finesse, it was his homemade wine that helped draw the crowds.
Over the years, Mathieu's restaurant hopscotched along Alameda Street, where railroad tracks uneasily coexisted with trolleys and other vehicles. For a short time, he opened an upscale spot on Main Street called the Poodle Dog Cafe, where City Hall East now stands.
