LA's Oldest French Restaurant Taix Closes After 99 Years of Service

Taix French Restaurant served its last Duck à l'orange on Saturday, closing a 99-year run that began in downtown Los Angeles in 1927 and spent its final 64 years on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. The sprawling dining room, which could seat more than 400 guests, went out packed: owner Mike Taix told The Eastsider that customer traffic more than tripled as March 29 approached, with longtime regulars lining up at the door for a final meal alongside fans of the escargots de Bourgogne, rich mousses, and classic French onion soup the kitchen had been turning out for nearly a century.

The seeds of the closure were planted in 2019, when Mike Taix sold the family's Echo Park land to Washington-based developer Holland Group for $12 million. He remained as a tenant and kept the kitchen running until the end. "My profits year by year have been going down," he told the Los Angeles Times soon after the sale, also citing infrastructure issues and other financial pressures. Holland Group, which has built similar mid-rise complexes up and down the West Coast, plans to demolish the building and replace it with a six-story, 166-unit mixed-use structure.

Space has been reserved on the ground floor for a smaller version of Taix. The restaurant posted in March that "this is not goodbye, but à bientôt," with hopes of welcoming guests back in 2030. The Eastsider estimates the gap at least three and a half years.

Before the doors closed, R.L. Spear, a Westlake Village auction house, put 268 lots up for bidding through April 2, covering plates, silverware, kitchen equipment, and décor. Some pieces are being held back. "They are keeping some items for eventual inclusion in the new facility," said David Spear, the firm's president, listing most of the good art, the chalkboard at the entrance, some chandeliers and sconces, the stained glass, and the salvaged bar. The landmarked plastic signage will also carry over to the new building. Not everything made it to auction intact: the Los Angeles Times reported that fans were stealing art and even light fixtures off the walls during the final days.

The closure landed hardest among the writers and artists who had made Taix a near-weekly ritual. Novelist Rachel Kushner, who ate there roughly once a week for 23 years, described stopping her visits simply to begin grieving: "It hurts so much that it is closing." She wrote about wanting to preserve her memory of a waiter named Bernard, "a cheerful Basque from Biarritz who worked there 60 years, got progressively trashed over the course of his shift, went to Bakersfield on Sundays to party with his sheep-herding countrymen, came back Wednesdays sunburned and happy."

Helen McDonagh, who dined there at least twice a week for decades alongside her husband Andrew Garsten and used the restaurant for everything from holiday platter orders to her aunt's memorial and a retirement party for a local LAPD officer, offered the plainest accounting of what the place meant: "We referred to Taix as our second kitchen." Longtime bartender Joel Peña was still behind the bar as regulars gathered for their final rounds.

The restaurant's last social media post ended with a heart emoji and a line that captured the uncertainty surrounding any future return: "Thank you for being part of our story.