The Death and Life of The Original Pantry Cafe

Los Angeles Letter

The Original Pantry Cafe of Downtown Los Angeles died on Sunday. It began in 1924 but moved to its iconic 9th Street and Figueroa location in 1950. It never closed until last Sunday, when it closed for the last time. The cause of death was the same as all deaths, time. The details, of course, are much more nuanced and involve labor, real estate, and how we see our legacy, but in the end it didn’t matter because Springsteen told us everything dies, that’s a fact.

The cafe had a near-death experience in the 1980s, but the investor and eventual LA Mayor Richard Riordan rescued it. He bought the place and the real estate around it for a bargain price of $3.5 million and eventually opened Riordan’s Tavern next door. The restaurant remained a busy, bustling place throughout his tenure. It survived the pandemic and stood as a bit of nostalgic ephemera amongst all the crypto newness that South Park has become. Despite its success, monetarily, the dirt below was worth more than the restaurant. The Original Pantry's displaced employees, some of whom have worked in the same place their entire adult lives, are sure that the closure and sale of the business is an affront to Riordan’s memory. I would guess this to be true. Riordan only died recently, in 2023. If he had seen the restaurant as an asset, he certainly had ample time to cash out. But Riordan’s plan left the Pantry’s fate to others. So it goes.

Like most places I love, my love for The Original Pantry wasn’t just about food, it was more about everything else. But the food was good—good enough, particularly at 1 AM. It was solid and heavy and good for mopping up the adult libations from a night that refused to end. The Pantry never closed—24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The LA Weekly had written perhaps the best description of the food there:

“Order a stack of wheat cakes or buckwheat cakes — serious pancakes, as big as Kojak’s head. The home fries here are not the pallid, shoddy examples you find elsewhere: They are proper home fries, with small bits of crunchy crust. Breakfast (you may also order eggs, as you like them) is offered with your choice of ham slices that fill half a plate, or equally generous portions of sausage or bacon. At dinner, a waiter immediately deposits a large hunk of sourdough bread and small bowls of fresh coleslaw, a sort of everyman amuse-bouche.”

As a coleslaw aficionado, I can attest that the Pantry did indeed serve solid slaw, which, when paired with fresh baked sourdough, made a meal by itself.

But the thing about the Pantry was the line to get in. I am not a line person. You should leave behind lines of all kinds in your 20s. But the line that formed to get into the Pantry, saw hungry diners leaning against its 9th Street mural was a ritual that I’d like to wait in again. In a town divided by its freeways, the line at the Pantry was a chance for communion. We talked with each other, the regulars and those of us that came less often, the sports fan and the businessman, the tourists and the tramps, we were all there, coming together in a moment and then we would be gone again. The line generally moved quickly, as diners were ushered along by seasoned waiters that wouldn’t let anyone dawdle. Mayor Riordan used to tell the story of getting kicked out of the Pantry for reading a book after lunch before he bought the place. The waiter told him the library was down the street if he wanted to read. That library is now named the Richard J. Riordan Central Library.

For the Pantry’s 90th anniversary in 2014, patrons submitted stories about waiting-in-line. The winner, chosen by the restaurant wrote a story called “A Pancake Tradition” that was immortalized on a sign near the entrance until last Sunday. The author tells the sweet story of waiting in line with his grandmother and two attempted line cutters. His grandmother pokes one of the burly men in the back. The author fears for their safety. Surprisingly, the man responds - "My grandma used to take me here when I was young," he says. "Come on" he says to his friend. "The line starts back there."

I will miss the servers and the cooks in their stiff white shirts and black bow ties. I will miss the coleslaw and sourdough bread. I will miss waiting in line before Laker games with my dad or our family after a USC football game. I want to thank my mother for introducing us to the place and all of Downtown LA before Instagram. I will miss the dependability of a place that never closed and has been there forever. I assumed it would always be. I will miss ham steak, milkshakes at 2 AM, and steaks after night classes at grad school. I will miss eavesdropping on the following table and discerning the lies they told each other.

Pete Scully, an English artist who lives in California, draws and writes a brilliant blog where he describes his time eating pancakes last year and leaves the cafe with his “stomach (and soul) well satisfied.” I think that’s right. We can keep eating pancakes anywhere. But our souls will need soothing. It is disconcerting to love a city that often tears down the things that make it great. But I think it’s ok to lament loss while accepting it. Places and things never really belong to us, not really. But our memories of them do. So the Pantry will go on in our hearts and our minds. One hundred years was a great run. Thanks for the memories.

xAP