est.1921
Fred Cook was an opera singer and an apprentice to Caruso before his voice broke at age 28. "Around that time," say his great grandson, Wesley Idol III, "He noticed an Irish family had taken an old dining car and turned it into a restaurant." Fred moved out West with his wife Grace and as the story goes, he bought a dining car and enlisted his friend Shorty to start construction underneath a fig tree to help him build a newer, wider dining car for proper restaurant service. When it was finished, Fred & Grace rolled the newly renovated Pacific Dining Car up to 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles and 2 years later rolled it to down to 6th Street where The Pacific Dining Car stands today and serves some of the best steaks in Los Angeles.
"There was no freon in in the early days and LA was hot in the summer. My grandfather loved fishing and wondered what was the point of being open when no customers were willing to sit in front of the broiler in the dead of summer? Every summer he put a sign in the entrance that read, "Too damn hot. Gone fishing."