In today’s L.A., it’s harder than ever to run a restaurant successfully. With rising rents and runaway inflation, it’s a bonafide miracle to make it even ten years nowadays. So, for a restaurant to make it to 100 years old is very impressive and shows that they’re masters at what they do. They must be doing something right if they’ve been around for a century or more.
But it’s not just that; these old restaurants are the physical spaces where communities unite. These are places where the staff knows regular customers by name, where fry cooks become urban legends, and where you can most tangibly see the city breathing and moving as a living thing.
So, in celebration of their immeasurable contributions to the mythology and the romance of Los Angeles, here are 13 centenarians from around L.A. County, from San Pedro to Santa Clarita and everywhere in between.