Cole's French Dip Closed After 118 Years, and the Business Is for Sale

It said goodbye five times. The sixth one stuck.

Cole's served its last French dip on Saturday, March 29, 2026, closing the book on a restaurant that opened in 1908 at 118 East 6th Street and had operated in the same spot ever since. It was widely regarded as the oldest restaurant in Los Angeles to run continuously at its original location.

It is worth being precise about that claim, because it is often overstated. Cole's was the oldest in the city at a single address. Regionally, the Saugus Cafe in Santa Clarita is older.

The goodbye that kept not happening

The story of how Cole's closed is almost as good as how it opened. Owner Cedd Moses and his group Pouring With Heart announced on July 7, 2025, that the restaurant would close on August 3. The crowds that followed were large enough to change the math, and the date moved to September, then November 1, then December 31, then January 31, 2026, before finally landing on March 29.

As Smith Allen Group put it in an analysis of the closure, the farewell bump is real but it is not a business model. It is a surge of nostalgic spending that cannot be sustained, and Cole's demonstrated that across five separate cycles. Moses said he wanted to close with grace, and perhaps a little dose of debauchery.

The last weekend brought long lines and a series of collaborations with other Los Angeles institutions, including Father's Office and Guelaguetza, each serving remixed versions of Cole's dishes.

Why it closed

The owners pointed to a stack of pressures: inflation, staffing, the January 2025 fires and immigration enforcement. The downtown location weighed on it too. Los Angeles Downtown News, citing the LA Times, reported that staff had to clean human waste from the property every other day.

The history

Henry Cole opened the restaurant in 1908 inside the Pacific Electric Building, the main terminal of the Pacific Electric Railway, a hub serving more than 100,000 streetcar passengers a day. The bar was called the Red Car Bar, and the original tabletops were said to be built from the wooden doors of Red Cars.

• The French dip. House lore credits chef Jack Garlinghouse with dipping bread in jus to soften it for customers with bad gums. Philippe the Original near Chinatown, also founded in 1908, makes the same claim, and the two have kept up a friendly century-long rivalry the LA Conservancy has written about.

• Prohibition's end. On the first day California lifted its ban on beer, Cole's poured a record fifty-eight 32-gallon kegs, roughly 19,000 gallons.

• Mickey Cohen. The city's most famous gangster came in so often that he has a plaque above one of the two original urinals.

• A monument. Cole's was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1989. It closed for renovation in 2007, missed its 100th anniversary, and reopened in December 2008.

• The Varnish. The speakeasy hidden inside helped kick off downtown's cocktail revival.

What might come next

The business was listed at roughly $500,000, and Bay Cities Italian Deli, the Santa Monica institution, has been publicly floated as a potential buyer. Nothing has been confirmed. A new operator inside the Pacific Electric Building would carry an unusual inheritance, and FJM will update this post if a sale closes.

Cole's was at 118 East 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014, in the Historic Core.

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