Before there was the Brown Derby, Chasen’s...

Before there was the Brown Derby, Chasen’s and even the Far East Cafe there was Taix (pronounced Tex) French Restaurant in the shadow of the Civic Center at 321 Commercial St.

Marius Taix, a baker, ventured from the Hautes Alpes of France to Los Angeles in 1882, buying a small lot on Commercial Street for $10,000. The Taix French Bread Bakery, and his home above it, were built and operating within a few months.

Taix’s business was in the heart of the city’s French enclave, west of Alameda Street and south of Aliso, where more than 4,000 French immigrants lived around the turn of the century. The bakery was kept busy supplying their bread needs, charging 5 cents to deliver a loaf, or three loaves for a dime.

The building survived until 1913, when it was torn down. Taix built the Champ d’Or Hotel on the site, and leased a restaurant on the first floor.

In 1927--at the height of Prohibition--federal agents and Taix’s pharmacist son, also named Marius, confronted the restaurant’s operator for selling alcohol on the property. The angry restaurateur tossed the younger Marius the keys and told him to “do it yourself.”

The Taix French Restaurant was born.

In celebrating its opening, the same federal agents toasted the son’s new profession with wine that he had purchased for “medicinal purposes.”

The restaurant thrived--it served 28,000 meals a month--offering family-style eating at tables laden with tureens of Taix’s famed soup and salad, and platters of fruit and cheese.

The restaurant served its last specialite de la maison at this location in 1964, when the city paid $412,000 for the property to build a 2,800-space parking lot for the Federal Building next door. Ten adjacent buildings also were demolished, two of which dated to the 1880s.

Aliso and Temple streets were cut through to form the north and south boundaries of the federal compound. San Pedro Street, north of Temple, and Commercial Street, west of Alameda Street, were closed off.

The parking structure was razed a couple of decades later, when the Metropolitan Detention Center was built on the site.

Since 1964, Taix French Restaurant has carried on the culinary dynasty at 1911 Sunset Blvd.