It always takes a minute for my eyes to adjust when I transition from stark Echo Park sunshine into the welcoming darkness of Taix. The windowless refuge, with its wood veneers and shabby genteel burgundy booths, compensates for the lack of shade on what is an aggressively bright stretch of Sunset Boulevard. Scent memory usually leads the way down the bedrock stairs. If it’s early enough for happy hour, the butter and garlic from the first escargot orders eclipse the ammonia from the morning’s scrubdown, assuring us that this nearly century-old establishment — 64 years in this particular spot — still keeps itself fresh for its most regular guests like me.
In 1927, Marius Taix, Jr. and his business partner Paul Louis Larquier took over the restaurant in the family’s hotel, the Champ d’Or, which was located at 321 N. Commercial Street near the current site of the Metropolitan Detention Center by Union Station. According to lore on Los Angeles historical blogs like Frenchtown Confidential and Avoiding Regret, the restaurant was handed over to the Taix family because of the challenges posed by the Prohibition Era. Who wanted to dine out and linger over French food without the French wine?
LAPL Security Pacific National Bank Collection
The clever Marius, who was also a licensed pharmacist, established a very California, wellness-oriented workaround for the legal landscape by sourcing a supply of “medicinal wines” from an Oregon vintner. When prohibition laws were lifted six years later, Taix customers could openly enjoy their wine without the medicinal ruse, as they supped on the restaurant’s signature 50-cent poulet roti dinners and voluminous tureens of onion soup.
The Taix at 1911 Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park that most contemporary Angelenos know, in the chateau-style building whose imminent passing many of us are pre-grieving, didn’t come to be until 1962. That year Marius Taix’s sons, Raymond and Pierre, opened Les Fréres Taix and the 321 Lounge (the “321” as an homage to the address of the restaurant’s original location in Downtown Los Angeles). Eventually, Taix dropped “Les Fréres,” which means “the brothers,” from its name so customers would not be confused about the relationship between the original and the one on Sunset.
I can’t recall who brought me to Taix for the first time. All I can remember after two decades of indulging in its gin cocktails and brie burgers is that I started going regularly to the lounge after I moved back to Los Angeles over 20 years ago to start my job at the University of Southern California. I lived a mile and a half away in Silver Lake at the time, and my friends and I often chose the classic spot — that had valet parking — because it was easier to score tables on weekends and we could show up impromptu with a big group without sweating for space.
Menu at Taix in the 1980s. Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
Taix felt familiar and intimate when other aughts spots like Stinkers (which eventually became the Thirsty Crow on Sunset and Parkman) teemed with guys sporting G-Star raw denim and snapback caps, accompanied by their “Girls Gone Wild” post-feminist paramours. At Taix, you could sit in a cushy, rolling club chair as you sipped bone-dry (or filthy, if you prefer) gin martinis while snacking on cornichons, country pâté, and french fries. You could always hear each other talk, which made it a safe haven for intergenerational hangs with parents, in-laws, colleagues, and even toddlers at the right time of day.
When I moved within a couple of blocks of Taix, just as the intersection was rechristened “Taix Square” by the Los Angeles City Council in 2012, the lounge became an extension of my living room. When cord-cutting became the norm and no one had cable anymore, I and countless other Angelenos relied on the bar more and more as a venue to watch the world’s live televised events unfold. Before we met, my wife Sarah witnessed former president Obama’s historic 2008 election in the lounge.
During World Cup cycles, Taix opened early to accommodate live broadcasts from places in dramatically different time zones. A coterie of lesbian friends and I ritually appeared at 6 a.m. during the 2010 South Africa World Cup to watch group games while noshing on their improvised breakfast offering of scrambled eggs and sausage or ham, with crusty nubbins of (presumably) last night’s table bread and a roasted tomato garnish as an apology. We sometimes stayed for lunch to have real food like a sensible Niçoise salad, or, if we were lucky, an off-menu treat of spaghetti Bolognese (I always ask if they have it). They eventually added the spaghetti to the regular menu for a stint before nixing it again. We lingered even later for happy hour if we needed to drown our sorrows in spirits, steak frites, and French onion soup after the days’ results. The agony and ecstasy of Dodger victories and defeats, especially through the stolen 2017 World Series, have become forever associated with the taste of Taix’s pork chops, the dish I deemed “lucky” for that season’s campaign. Port wine reduction with caramelized pearl onions still triggers my “Trashtros” PTSD.
Taix’s menu in the 1980s. Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
We toasted my friend and colleague Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction at the lounge in 2016. We also booked the Rhône Room more than once for celebrations like our friends Ava and Megan’s nuptials, and my better half’s 45th birthday over a supersized wheel of baked brie adorned with puff pastry hearts and fleur-de-lis.
Before the pandemic, when Los Angeles’s film and television industry still had some swagger left, the lounge, filled with below-the-line insiders, quieted from its usual din into a hushed reverie when Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper performed “Shallow” on the 2019 Oscars broadcast. I had never seen a crowd so earnest and reverent in the restaurant and remember being misty-eyed in the aftermath. Taix was the last place my friends and I went to celebrate great, life-changing news on March 11, 2020, just days before the world shut down for more than a year. Its parking lot was the first place I ventured for outdoor dining in the post-vax era in 2021, though I did drive through its covered valet port to pick up martinis and moules frites for my first pandemic birthday in 2020.
Karen Tongson holding up a fake World Cup in 2014. Sarita See
Taix in 2016. Karen Tongson
As Tejal Rao wrote in a recent New York Times piece about the grief we experience at restaurant closures: “Every restaurant is a portal — a way to remember who you were and how things felt when you were, say, 19, or 27, or 35, but also to remember the particulars of a city, a neighborhood, a block.” Taix, for its proximity, consistency, and reliability, has been the portal to nearly half of my life thus far.
I try not to think about all of it too much as I visit Taix in its waning days, feeling abashed whenever I try to squeeze twice the number of people around a table meant for four. Amanda Barker, the server who stewards the entire lounge, and who’s been a continuous presence through some of the most transformative scenes in my life, usually indulges the liberties I take in my second living room (most, at least). I have nothing but respect for her annoyance when I stretch them too far: I’ve been known to try and rearrange the entire lounge for a better angle at the television screen, or to merge multiple separate parties into one giant hub of little round tables. In my worst Virgo moments, I order everything “on the side” like Sally from When Harry Met Sally. Amanda insinuates her displeasure at these antics in the way she occasionally speaks my name with a parental edge.
Taix in 2016 with Viet Thanh Nguyen and friends from the USC English department.
Party spread at Taix in 2025. Karen Tongson
Megan Auster-Rosen and Sarah Rebecca Kessler in the powder room at Taix. Moira Morel
Taix is scheduled to return in a new form as part of a six-story residential development, potentially as early as 2030. In the Instagram post announcing its March 29 closure, the restaurant sanguinely said “this is not goodbye but à bientôt.”
Arches at Taix. Karen Tongson
By then, I’ll be in my late 50s. Even though the new Taix is supposed to resurrect certain remnants of its old self, specifically the bartop and its landmark sign above Sunset Boulevard, the many worlds it nurtured within its walls will have moved into other orbits or disappeared altogether. When I was younger, I used to describe Taix to the people I was inviting there for the first time as a cross between an old-school supper club and a dining hall in an upscale retirement home. I meant no shade by it. In fact, part of me dreamed that I too would retire and mature into one of the many octogenarians I’ve since seen ordering their last rounds of bottomless clam chowder in the days leading up to the restaurant’s final service.
Within the low-lit confines of Taix’s Norman Revival stucco, the air redolent with chicken jus, I blossomed into my queer-of-color middle age. Offset by its beveled stained glass and high, acoustic arches, I’ve broken up with partners, seduced new loves, deepened bonds with friends, relished in gossip, discoursed on pop culture, and cried with strangers over sports. After Taix closes on the 29th, I’ll be the person sharing its lore — my lore — with others who never went. In that way, it can live on.
Taix during the daytime. Rebecca Roland
Taix French Restaurant has been a Los Angeles Downtown area landmark since 1927, and has long been known for its generous portions at moderate prices.