No dip in its popularity

By the time Mary Jo Hafner arrived at Philippe the Original on Monday afternoon, the line of people waiting to celebrate the restaurant's 100th anniversary had snaked around the restaurant and was stretching up Ord Street. The sun was in full tilt, and while some had packed lunches, umbrellas and bottles of water to fortify themselves against the wait, Hafner had none of those.

But the 59-year-old from Hawthorne stood with a grin on her face and a quick laugh in her throat. She'd befriended the people around her, she said: "You become family quickly when you come to Philippe's."

Lured by the promise of 10-cent French dip sandwiches, nickel cups of coffee and the chance to mingle with other fans of the downtown institution, thousands of people flocked to the restaurant Monday.

They represented a broad swath of Los Angeles and beyond, and included a couple from Riverside who had the restaurant cater their wedding; three generations of a family from Covina, the youngest a 3-month-old tucked in her car seat; and two friends from San Luis Obispo who usually take the train down for Dodger games, French dips and coconut cream pie.

In a city in which culinary trends are fleeting and restaurants open and close at a dizzying pace, a restaurant that can endure for 100 years is a rarity.

Richard Gonzalez, 29, of South Pasadena was there, he said, to pay homage to a place that was "an L.A. institution in every sense." Gonzalez said he'd discovered the restaurant about five years ago after stepping off a Red Line train at Union Station, and had quickly fallen in love with the old-time feel of the place, from the waitresses' 1950s-style uniforms to the old-fashioned telephone booths adorning one wall.

Customers who had discovered the restaurant in the last decade were among the minority of those in line Monday, though. Others waiting remembered childhoods spent on the restaurant's sawdust floor, playing in the back room lined with model trains, and carving names in the restaurant's wooden walls before that practice was forbidden long ago.

Some even had visited Philippe's at its last location on Aliso Street -- the restaurant moved in 1951 to make way for the Santa Ana Freeway.

Jimmie Bria, 87, was one of the old-timers. His father, he said, knew the original Philippe -- that would be Philippe Mathieu, who sold the business in 1927. Bria remembered his parents sending him to the restaurant with a bag when the sandwiches were 35 cents, telling him to fill it up with French dips.