Who was the inventor of the French dip sandwich? Formally, there are competing claims and no one can say with certainty.
Well, who was a potential inventor of the sandwich? Jack Garlinghouse, the chef at Cole’s P.E. Buffet in Los Angeles, now known as Cole’s French Dips, which is closing today — after 118 years.
I knew the name and the story but had never given the man much thought. Then came an email.
“I am the great-grandson of Jack Garlinghouse, the chef who invented the French dip sandwich,” writes Tim Peron.
Tim lives in Pomona. He suggested we meet to talk about his great-granddad. We did so on Thursday. He actually didn’t know much, but any scrap of detail is appreciated.
Besides, the meeting supported my long-held opinion that every story in the universe has a Pomona angle.
Cole’s French Dips is closing March 29 after 118 years in downtown Los Angeles. Its future is unknown. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Cole’s P.E. Buffet was opened in 1908 by Harry Cole in the brand new Pacific Electric Building (118 E. 6th St.), the terminus for the city’s Red Car trolleys. Cole’s was a restaurant and tavern a few steps below sidewalk level with a mahogany bar, oak tables, Tiffany lamps and dim lights.
At some point, a customer with dental issues was ordering a sandwich in the carving line when he made a request of Garlinghouse. The most specific version of this story comes from Jimmy Barela, who conveyed it to the L.A. Times’ Steve Harvey in 1993.
Barela told it like this.
“A fellow came in and asked, ‘Can you tip that bun into the juice?’ He said, ‘They (the rolls) are too hard. They hurt my gums.’
“ ‘Do you want the rest of it dipped too?’ Jack asked.
“He said, ‘Sure.’
“There was a long line of people behind him. Everyone was watching. Pretty soon someone else said, ‘Can you make me one of those?’”
That’s as close to an origin story as we have from Cole’s. Even that latter-day version, maybe 75 years or more after the fact, was only hearsay. Barela, who worked at Cole’s from 1925 to 1988, said the invention took place sometime prior to 1918. This means he didn’t witness it.
But he would have heard the story from Garlinghouse himself, and that’s something.
Tim Peron of Pomona holds a photo of Jack Garlinghouse, his great-grandfather, the man who may have invented the French dip sandwich. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Philippe’s, the better-known French dip maker in downtown L.A., and founded the same year as Cole’s, claims to have invented the sandwich in 1918.
As Charles Perry recounted in a 2008 L.A. Times story on Philippe’s centennial, there are three versions. Owner Philippe Mathieu either fulfilled a customer request, dropped a roll in gravy accidentally and served it anyway or dipped a roll in gravy on purpose to mask that it was stale.
“Probably no L.A. food subject has been so much debated as the origin of the French dip,” Perry wrote, “and the controversy is not about to die because there’s no evidence to settle the matter.”
Cole’s history is far less documented than that of Philippe’s, which has become an iconic L.A. experience. Virtually nothing is known about Garlinghouse aside from that single anecdote.
Peron, 70, says he never met his great-grandfather and only briefly knew his great-grandmother, Mary Inez Garlinghouse. He does have a photo of each of them at the restaurant in middle age.
Jack, bespectacled, looking stern, is standing in the kitchen in his chef’s white jacket and toque. Inez, also in glasses, stands in a dress in the dining room, the entry visible behind her.
Inez Garlinghouse is seen, probably in the early 1950s, near the entry of Cole’s P.E. Buffet, where she was hostess. She was also the wife of chef Jack Garlinghouse. (Courtesy Tim Peron)
“I like that you can see the address behind her,” Tim says of the backwards “118” on the window. “She worked at Cole’s as something like a hostess.”
He guesses the photos were taken in the early 1950s and says he found them among his parents’ possessions after they died.
After our conversation, I checked a couple of newspaper databases for mentions of either Garlinghouse. Very little came up, not even obituaries that might have sketched in their lives or told us more about Cole’s.
I found a few public records on Ancestry. John Ulmont “Jack” Garlinghouse was born Aug. 6, 1891 in Indiana. If he was at Cole’s in 1908, he would have been only 17. Probably the sandwich’s origin came a few years later.
A draft registration card in 1941 placed him at 1000 Holly Ave. in Arcadia and gave Harry Cole as his employer.
Jack died Jan. 23, 1962, at age 70. Burial was at Forest Lawn.
Cole’s has been operating from the same location in downtown Los Angeles since 1908 and still carries the feel of an earlier era. Its last day, at least for now, is March 29. It’s pictured here on March 19. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
As I say, an obituary would prove illuminating. We don’t know how long he worked at Cole’s, for one thing. But if he was there in 1908, or a few years after, and was still there in the early 1950s, when the photo was taken, that’s approaching a half-century.
Tim says Garlinghouse’s first wife was Elizabeth Coyle and that the couple had a daughter, Dorothy, before their divorce. Dorothy was Tim’s grandmother. Jack married Inez Hilliard in 1927.
Inez lived to age 90, dying May 28, 1980. Tim met her in the 1970s when she was living with his parents. He remembers her as small, bent over, with gnarled hands.
He has one firm memory of her that involves Cole’s and its rivalry with Philippe. Inez would say fervently: “Jack always said, ‘Philippe’s au jus tasted like dishwater!’”
He chuckles: “This little old lady standing up for her husband.”
Cole’s remained in business through depressions, Prohibition, wars and pandemics. But after 118 years, the end is here.
Owner Cedd Moses has said he’s talking to one or more buyers, but Cole’s faces at best an extended closure during a transition period. At worst it will come back as something else, or somewhere else, or won’t come back at all.
A pork loin dip at Cole’s French Dips, where the dipped sandwich may have been created in 1908. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
“It’s kind of a shame,” Tim Peron says. “I like a good French dip. I hope they get bought and keep the restaurant open.”
He says the personal connection to Cole’s is a point of pride. “Just the fact that I’m related to the guy who invented the French dip sandwich,” he says. When he shares that, people sometimes say: “Oh, you mean Philippe.”
“No, Cole’s,” he corrects them. When they reply “I’ve never heard of it,” he says: “Google it.”
brIEfly
The March 9 episode of ABC’s “The Rookie” involved a police investigation of an abandoned mental institution named Westview Hospital. The filming took place at Pomona’s former Lanterman Developmental Center, now owned by Cal Poly Pomona, and included several settings, including the carousel, that were familiar to my tipster, reader Monica Rodriguez, our former Pomona reporter. She’s still on the Pomona beat!
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday on the IE beat. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.