City Life

I was not hungry when I arrived at Taix on Thursday night, Los Angeles’s venerable, soon-to-close French restaurant and de facto museum of a long-gone era of fine dining. I’m rarely hungry when I go to Taix. Not because I don’t thoroughly enjoy their french onion soup, the mussels, or the decadent hamburger. I’m not hungry because it’s never my first stop of the night. Taix isn’t a destination. It’s a nexus point for LA.

No one in Los Angeles ever thought it would be gone, until it was. Sunday will be the last service for a restaurant that has anchored the neighborhood of Echo Park for the past 64 years, before it is torn down to make way for a large-scale luxury apartment development. The impending closure has sparked an end-of-an-era frenzy, with lines down the street, packed tables and loyal fans pinching menus and other memorabilia for their personal collection.

As the city’s cost-of-living crisis continues to grow, and as other historical meeting places like Cole’s French Dip close after decades, the loss of Taix (prounounced “Tex”) stands out as a symbol of the city’s grief. From civic leaders to artists and writers, people from all corners of LA have sat at Taix’s bar or luxuriated in its massive dining rooms. Losing it is significant for so many Angelenos, but especially the residents of Echo Park, which has been roiled by gentrification for a number of years.

Taix, though, is a symbol of the old Echo Park: a place for communion with the spirits of the past, a chance to chat with good friends or new friends. It can be a launching pad for a rollicking night out or a soft landing spot at the end of one. It has long been an ornate, crumbling, cavernous playground of possibilities. It’s a contradiction in terms: a safe space for the gay arts community of the city, but also a symbol of the city’s traditions. The restaurant will reopen on the ground floor of the new apartment complex, but can it possibly be the same?