The Original Pantry Cafe officially closed on Sunday, after being a Downtown LA icon since 1924, with customer lines stretching down the block.
As a 30-year patron whose go-to order was the giant ham steak, Eater LA editor Matthew Kang calls the restaurant perfect. “It was historic. It was open for 101 years. … It's just like this time and a place that is nearly gone from not just Los Angeles, but the entire country. And I loved how the menu was … on these boards, there were these dividers, wood panels. The sound of the place, you'd hear the short order cook going at it on the open kitchen. … The whole thing felt like, when you watch Mildred Pierce, or you just see these old jokes of Downtown LA, that's what that restaurant felt like. … The people that worked there, they worked there for decades.”
The Original Pantry Cafe touted not having locks on their doors, Kang reports, and they still operated during the 1992 LA uprising. “It did not get affected by looters or rioters, it was that beloved.”
Former LA Mayor Richard Reardon was so enamored by the building that he bought it in the 1980s, along with the parking lot next door, Kang explains. At the time, Reardon purchased the air rights to the Original Pantry, so nothing could be developed beyond one story. He also paid workers well, understanding that the establishment was supporting many families.
“This is like 40 years ago, he was saying, ‘I want this restaurant to live forever, and I have every intention of keeping it that way.’ In the late 80s, it was designated as a historic cultural monument, so therefore the building has a lot of strings attached to it,” Kang says.
Then when Reardon died in 2023, his family trust took control of the building, and recently decided to sell it reportedly to maximize its value and fund their charitable foundation.
“There's now this battle, basically, between the family trust and a union of workers who say, ‘Hey, if you are going to sell this property, we would like to have some some stipulations, which include, if the new owner comes in, they need to operate a restaurant here, and that we want to keep our jobs.’” The trust’s response: “If you have these stipulations, then we're just going to close.”
One employee who called herself Mary G told ABC-7 about how she was let go: “They didn't even say, ‘Thank you.’ They just came and dropped our envelopes with the last paycheck.”
“It's really tragic because I think with a restaurant that's been open for a century, you really want to give people an opportunity, if it is going to close, to say their goodbyes,” Kang says. “And I feel like there wasn't really enough time. I would have loved if people in LA had three or six months to go back and just say their goodbyes. … A lot of [the workers] gave their much of their lives to this restaurant, and that was part of the amazing experience, and for them to be treated that way, it's really tragic.”
Kang hopes that whoever buys the property will reopen the restaurant, bring back as many employees as possible, and “give a cultural asset back to LA.”
He adds, “This place is special. It’s not always about, ‘Okay, how absolutely delicious is this thing that's on this plate?’ To me, a restaurant is so much more than that. It's the space, it's the history, it's the stuff that's on the walls, it's the people that are serving you. All that defines a restaurant experience.”