El Cholo Mexican Restaurants

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Natives of Los Angeles...
...known as "Angelenos," of which I am one, are sensitive about the young age of their oft-maligned city. That may explain why they're disproportionately proud of their so-called "institutions," a word that seemingly refers to anything that has been around for more than 25 years. Surprisingly, a disproportionate number of those institutions are restaurants, and many have been around longer than one quarter of a century. Here are just a few of the best known, and these date from before 1930: Philippe's Original Sandwich Shop, serving the prototypical French dip sandwich and ten-cent cup of coffee to downtown denizens since 1908; Vickman's, making omlets and baking pies for produce business workers since 1919; Musso and Frank Grill, shaking Martinis and flipping flannel cakes for the famous and infamous since 1919; The Original Pantry Cafe, slinging he-man portions of bacon and eggs to truck drivers 24 hours a day since 1924; and El Cholo, dishing up, to just about everybody since 1927, the Cal-Mex cuisine they invented.