{"id":242228,"date":"2026-03-29T15:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/242228\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T15:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:33:12","slug":"mans-great-grandfather-may-be-creator-of-the-french-dip-sandwich-whittier-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/242228\/","title":{"rendered":"Man\u2019s great-grandfather may be creator of the French dip sandwich \u2013 Whittier Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who was the inventor of the French dip sandwich? Formally, there are competing claims and no one can say with certainty.<\/p>\n

Well, who was a potential inventor of the sandwich? Jack Garlinghouse, the chef at Cole\u2019s P.E. Buffet in Los Angeles, now known as Cole\u2019s French Dips, which is closing today \u2014 after 118 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I knew the name and the story but had never given the man much thought. Then came an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the great-grandson of Jack Garlinghouse, the chef who invented the French dip sandwich,\u201d writes Tim Peron.<\/p>\n

Tim lives in Pomona. He suggested we meet to talk about his great-granddad. We did so on Thursday. He actually didn\u2019t know much, but any scrap of detail is appreciated.<\/p>\n

Besides, the meeting supported my long-held opinion that every story in the universe has a Pomona angle.<\/p>\n

\"Cole'sCole\u2019s 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)<\/p>\n

Cole\u2019s 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\u2019s Red Car trolleys. Cole\u2019s was a restaurant and tavern a few steps below sidewalk level<\/a> with a mahogany bar, oak tables, Tiffany lamps and dim lights.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 Steve Harvey in 1993<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Barela told it like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cA fellow came in and asked, \u2018Can you tip that bun into the juice?\u2019 He said, \u2018They (the rolls) are too hard. They hurt my gums.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Do you want the rest of it dipped too?\u2019 Jack asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Sure.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a long line of people behind him. Everyone was watching. Pretty soon someone else said, \u2018Can you make me one of those?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s as close to an origin story as we have from Cole\u2019s. Even that latter-day version, maybe 75 years or more after the fact, was only hearsay. Barela, who worked at Cole\u2019s from 1925 to 1988, said the invention took place sometime prior to 1918. This means he didn\u2019t witness it.<\/p>\n

But he would have heard the story from Garlinghouse himself, and that\u2019s something.<\/p>\n

\"TimTim 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)<\/p>\n

Philippe\u2019s, the better-known French dip maker in downtown L.A., and founded the same year as Cole\u2019s, claims to have invented the sandwich in 1918.<\/p>\n

As Charles Perry recounted in a 2008 L.A. Times story on Philippe\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably no L.A. food subject has been so much debated as the origin of the French dip,\u201d Perry wrote, \u201cand the controversy is not about to die because there\u2019s no evidence to settle the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole\u2019s history is far less documented than that of Philippe\u2019s, which has become an iconic L.A. experience<\/a>. Virtually nothing is known about Garlinghouse aside from that single anecdote.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Jack, bespectacled, looking stern, is standing in the kitchen in his chef\u2019s white jacket and toque. Inez, also in glasses, stands in a dress in the dining room, the entry visible behind her.<\/p>\n

\"InezInez Garlinghouse is seen, probably in the early 1950s, near the entry of Cole\u2019s P.E. Buffet, where she was hostess. She was also the wife of chef Jack Garlinghouse. (Courtesy Tim Peron)<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that you can see the address behind her,\u201d Tim says of the backwards \u201c118\u201d on the window. \u201cShe worked at Cole\u2019s as something like a hostess.\u201d<\/p>\n

He guesses the photos were taken in the early 1950s and says he found them among his parents\u2019 possessions after they died.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I found a few public records on Ancestry. John Ulmont \u201cJack\u201d Garlinghouse was born Aug. 6, 1891 in Indiana. If he was at Cole\u2019s in 1908, he would have been only 17. Probably the sandwich\u2019s origin came a few years later.<\/p>\n

A draft registration card in 1941 placed him at 1000 Holly Ave. in Arcadia and gave Harry Cole as his employer.<\/p>\n

Jack died Jan. 23, 1962, at age 70. Burial was at Forest Lawn.<\/p>\n

\"Cole'sCole\u2019s 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\u2019s pictured here on March 19. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin\/SCNG)<\/p>\n

As I say, an obituary would prove illuminating. We don\u2019t know how long he worked at Cole\u2019s, 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\u2019s approaching a half-century.<\/p>\n

Tim says Garlinghouse\u2019s first wife was Elizabeth Coyle and that the couple had a daughter, Dorothy, before their divorce. Dorothy was Tim\u2019s grandmother. Jack married Inez Hilliard in 1927.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He has one firm memory of her that involves Cole\u2019s and its rivalry with Philippe. Inez would say fervently: \u201cJack always said, \u2018Philippe\u2019s au jus tasted like dishwater!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He chuckles: \u201cThis little old lady standing up for her husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole\u2019s remained in business through depressions, Prohibition, wars and pandemics. But after 118 years, the end is here.<\/p>\n

Owner Cedd Moses has said he\u2019s talking to one or more buyers, but Cole\u2019s faces at best an extended closure during a transition period. At worst it will come back as something else, or somewhere else, or won\u2019t come back at all.<\/p>\n

\"AA pork loin dip at Cole\u2019s French Dips, where the dipped sandwich may have been created in 1908. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin\/SCNG)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a shame,\u201d Tim Peron says. \u201cI like a good French dip. I hope they get bought and keep the restaurant open.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says the personal connection to Cole\u2019s is a point of pride. \u201cJust the fact that I\u2019m related to the guy who invented the French dip sandwich,\u201d he says. When he shares that, people sometimes say: \u201cOh, you mean Philippe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, Cole\u2019s,\u201d he corrects them. When they reply\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of it,\u201d he says: \u201cGoogle it.\u201d<\/p>\n

brIEfly<\/p>\n

The March 9 episode of ABC\u2019s \u201cThe Rookie\u201d involved a police investigation of an abandoned mental institution named Westview Hospital. The filming took place at Pomona\u2019s 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\u2019s still on the Pomona beat!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who was the inventor of the French dip sandwich? Formally, there are competing claims and no one can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,24853,413,610,48,52,51,4064,23,47,137,50,49,100,17436],"class_list":{"0":"post-242228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-david-allen-column","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-inland-empire","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-local-history","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-county","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-pomona"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}