They’re stealing the photos, the posters and even the light fixtures: Taix fans are waiting in lines that sometimes stretch to Sunset Boulevard for a final taste of the restaurant’s French classics, and even taking mementos off the walls.
The last days of Taix — pronounced “tex” — are frenetic.
Servers ferry platters of frog legs swimming in cream sauce, mountainous portions of duck à l’orange, crocks of French onion soup and the iconic chicken pot pie that spells “TAIX” in pastry through a sprawling maze of dining rooms, banquet halls and roomy circular booths under dark wood beams.
On March 29, to make way for a controversial six-story housing complex, the Taix family will close the 99-year-old restaurant’s distinctive chalet-style building, which it’s occupied since moving from downtown L.A. in 1962. It’s not the end of Taix — the plan is for the restaurant to return in a smaller format at the development’s base with some of the original design elements. But it’s the end of Taix as L.A. has known it for the last 64 years.
“All of those memories and experiences in the feel and the soul of the place are attached to that place in a container… When that’s gone, the authentic Taix — at least this version of it — is not something you can just re-create,” said L.A. Conservancy President and CEO Adrian Scott Fine, who promoted efforts to protect the original building. “The layers of time and dirt and memories and everything else that comes with it create this very authentic feel of a place.”
For now, fans are savoring every moment. In the fray of its last weeks, owner Michael Taix monitors the line, helps seat guests and even jumps behind the bar to mix cocktails. He wanted to keep his family restaurant running in this original location, he said, but the cost became too great.
“We spend so much on repairing this place,” Taix said. “I have air conditioners I can’t afford to replace because I need a crane to [remove] them. There’s so many things like that: constant plumbing issues, mechanical issues, all the walk-in coolers — everything is aging.”
Taix considered selling the entirety of the business to another restaurant operator, who could take over and maintain it. Ultimately, he found the restaurant was not profitable enough to offset the cost of repairs and maintenance. In 2019 he sold it to Holland Partner Group, a luxury apartment developer, for $12 million.
“The clearer path,” he said, “was to look for a new build.”
Some of his staff who’d previously retired returned to help the restaurant through its final days. The team is also planning occasional pop-ups and catering services until Taix can reopen, as well as a Taix cookbook.
Thomas Roche, a server and bartender of 15 years, said business has at least doubled since the closure announcement.
“I think we have the best customers in L.A.,” said Roche. “They’ve been great, so supportive — and so patient, because things are taking more time than they might.”
Some have been so enthusiastic that they’ve begun lifting items as keepsakes.
“We’ve taken down a lot of the memorabilia because they’re just stealing it,” Taix said. “It’s unbelievable. We have to use paper menus because they’re taking the menu covers… Everything’s growing legs. It’s incomprehensible.”
Someone even had the wherewithal to steal the lantern attached to a wall near the restaurant’s entrance. The locally famous art of ladies in the women’s restroom? Also stolen.
“One day we came in and they were gone,” Taix said. The nail indents in the walls, however, are still there.
Last week, after a signed wine poster disappeared from a wall, a call-out on Instagram saw it immediately returned.
Taix and his team have now stored much of the restaurant’s art, along with furniture and restaurant equipment, which can be purchased in an online auction. “The auctioneer told me, ‘Some people are going to try to buy your carpet,’” Taix laughed.
Some of the art — as well as doors and chandeliers, the lounge’s long 1960s cherrywood bar, and possibly the multicolored stained glass and the tin ceiling — will be utilized in Taix’s next iteration, which is slated to open in 2029.
Michael Taix began working at his family’s restaurant in his mid-teens but left to pursue a career in geology. He never imagined he’d take over the restaurant, but then one uncle retired. Another died. Still another retired. Soon the team was down to his father and an uncle, who received a terminal diagnosis. After he rejoined the restaurant in the 1980s, Taix immediately made changes to a menu that had become more continental over the years.
“I came in and said, ‘This really didn’t seem French enough,’” Taix said. “We had to find a moniker that suited us: ‘French Country cuisine since 1927.’ That was something that we had to try to model ourselves back to.”
They hired French chefs to head the kitchen, including consulting chef Laurent Quenioux of Bistro LQ. He’s planning the Taix cookbook alongside executive chef Juan Hernandez, who has worked at the restaurant for more than 40 years.
The restaurant’s first iteration in downtown Los Angeles was opened by Marius Taix Jr. in 1927 at the Champ d’Or Hotel, which his father, Marius Sr., built in 1912 on the site of the Taix French Bread Bakery, which began operating in 1882. When Taix’s family purchased the Echo Park building that became its home in 1962, they added a west wing, which included the lounge and bar, the lobby, bathrooms, a since-closed wine shop, and more large, private banquet rooms, which provided a lucrative business stream until the 2000s, when banquet dining began to fall out of fashion.
Taix needs a large staff, some 55 employees, to cover its roughly 15,000 square feet, even when its banquet rooms aren’t in use. Wage increases, climbing food, insurance and maintenance costs and “the crowning blow” of the pandemic, Taix said, hurt the business. The spacious banquet rooms, which accounted for more than 50% of the dining space, sat empty most nights of the year.
Taix said it was impossible for the restaurant to continue in its current form, but couldn’t get family members to agree on a plan.
“I started acquiring some of the parcels of land that were divided among family members: some friendly, some not so very friendly,” he said. “I started seeing that my way out of this was to acquire the large parcel and do something with it.”
With a seven-figure loan he purchased his family’s plots and saw property taxes multiply into six-figure territory. So he quickly sold to Holland. The developer sought permission from the city to demolish and build, while historic preservationists rallied to slow if not entirely impede the project, or at least save some of the building’s structure.
In 2022, the City Council voted unanimously to reject an appeal to protect the building, helping to clear the way for demolition.
The new mixed-use development is slated to house 170 apartments, 24 of which will be zoned as “affordable,” according to architecture firm AC Martin. Taix said the restaurant’s new iteration will occupy roughly 4,000 square feet — 2,000 fewer than initially reported. Most of the new Taix, he said, will be lounge space. The plans include an attached dining room and outdoor seating.
Taix — as well as multiple servers and some customers — say they look forward to the next phase of the restaurant. Even those who fought for the building’s preservation say they hope it succeeds, but that the city must keep fighting to maintain these legacy businesses and their storied spaces.
“L.A. is always evolving and changing so quickly, and that’s a beautiful part of this place. But we need to find a way to hold onto what makes L.A. and still allow it to grow,” said Fine. “That is the fundamental challenge: Whether it’s housing or infrastructure … we should be able to [build] and still hold onto our past and our story.”
For a lot of people, Fine added, Taix “is more than a restaurant … It’s part of their history and their connection to Los Angeles.”
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