Original Pantry Cafe - PlaceBee :

Address: 877 S. Figueroa St.
Zipcode: 90017
Phone Number: 213-972-9279
Website: http://www.pantrycafe.com

Former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan thought so much of the Original Pantry Café that he actually bought it. The downtown institution has been cramming in customers, thousands by the day, since 1924. This is the stuff of Raymond Chandler novels, with a chalkboard menu, cashier in a chain-link cage and politicians making deals over breakfast slabs of ham so big they spill off the sides of the plates. The Original Pantry is open round the clock, and morning meats give way to navy bean soup, sirloin tips, short ribs and sloppy T-bones. Vegetarians are pretty much out of luck. But everyone gets a big hunk of fresh sourdough bread and a dish of cole slaw, and if you ask the grizzled waiter just right, he might give you the plate of crisp carrot sticks, celery and radishes that used to grace every table before health inspectors thought the better of it. Don’t expect décor; old photos hang on greasy walls, and the tightly squeezed-together tables don’t invite you to linger over your custard pudding. The line to get in snakes around the corner and, natch, the place is cash only. But there is simply no greater or more quintessential L.A. pleasure than hitting the Original Pantry Café in the middle of the night after a Dodger game, club or concert.