French dip: what it is, how to order it, and what isn't one

Overview

A French dip is thinly sliced roast meat — beef unless you say otherwise — piled into a crusty roll and served with au jus, the meat’s own roasting juices, into which the roll is dipped so the outside goes soft and savoury while the crust holds. It is not a gravy sandwich. The jus is thin, beefy and salty, the fat skimmed from a real roasting pan, and the whole point of the thing is the contrast between the dunked, dripping side and the part your hand keeps dry.

It is also one of the very few dishes this city genuinely made itself rather than inherited, and it carries an origin argument that has never been settled — which is, by now, part of what the sandwich is. Two lunch counters in the old downtown, both dating to 1908 and both a few blocks apart, each claim to have invented it, and each has a plaque saying so.

The better-known story belongs to a French immigrant, Philippe Mathieu. In one telling he dropped a roll into the roasting pan by accident while making a sandwich for a policeman around 1918; the customer ate it dripping and came back for more. In another, a diner with sore gums asked for the bread softened in the juices on purpose. The rival counter tells its own version — a chef dipping the roll to help a customer who could not chew a dry crust. Both are lovely and both are folklore: the accident especially is the kind of tidy tale that survives because it is repeatable, not because anyone documented it. What is not in dispute is that the sandwich is this city’s, that the quarrel is a century old, and that nobody wins it.

Even the name is uncertain. “French” may point at the French roll, or at Mathieu himself; it does not mean the sandwich is French, and there is nothing quite like it in French cooking.

What to order

Start with beef, which is the default and the one the dish was built on. But the historic counters carve several roasts to order — pork, lamb, turkey and ham — and lamb in particular is a local favourite worth knowing about, milder and a little sweet against the sharp mustard. You name the meat to the person slicing it, not to a waiter, because there usually isn’t one.

The word that matters most is the dip. You are asked, or you say, how wet you want it:

• single-dipped — the cut face of the roll dipped once. This is the safe default: enough jus to flavour the bread without drowning it, and it survives being carried to a table.
• double-dipped — both halves dipped. Wetter, richer, and starting to soften; eat it sooner.
• wet — the whole assembled sandwich dunked. It is a legitimate order and it is delicious, but it arrives falling apart and wants a fork and immediate attention.

Cheese is optional and you have to ask; Swiss is the usual choice. The condiment that defines the experience at the old counters is a fierce, house-made hot mustard — a nose-clearing, sinus-opening yellow that is nothing like the smooth French kind and comes in a squeeze bottle or a pot on the table. A dab is plenty; a spread is a mistake you make once.

Around the sandwich sit the trimmings of a proper lunch counter: a pickled egg, potato and macaroni salad, coleslaw, and coffee that is famously, almost comically cheap. Ordering a sandwich, a side and a coffee is the full ritual, and it still costs less than a single plate at most sit-down places in the city.

What to avoid

Almost none of this is about a bad kitchen. It is about telling the real sandwich from the thing that borrows its name.

The tell is the jus. A true French dip is served with the drippings of a roast; the industrial version — deli counters, national fast-food chains, hotel room-service menus — pours a thin brown liquid made from a bouillon base or a powder, which tastes only of salt and has no fat sitting on top. If the jus is uniformly the colour of weak tea and the meat is machine-sliced into identical grey sheets, you are eating an impression of the dish, not the dish.

Be wary, too, of the sandwich that arrives already collapsing in a pool it was plated in rather than dipped into on request. A proper wet dip is dunked to order in front of you; one that has been sitting in its own puddle behind the counter is soggy, not wet, and the difference is the whole texture of the thing.

At the two famous originators, the queue needs reading. Both lean hard into the “we invented it” story — the plaques, the sawdust on the floor, the merchandise — and a good part of the line on a weekend is there for the history and the film-and-television fame as much as the food. That does not make the sandwich bad; it is genuinely good at both. It does mean a long queue there is a weaker signal than a long queue at an unremarkable counter, and that the sign on the wall settles nothing about who dipped the first roll.

Practicalities

The whole transaction happens at a cafeteria-style carving counter, not a table. You join a line that shuffles past the carvers, tell the person with the knife your meat and your dip, take the plate they hand you, pay at the end, and carry your own tray to a communal table. That format — order from the carver, bus your own tray — is more the Los Angeles French dip experience than any single recipe, and it is why the queues look long but move fast.

Budget roughly $9 to $15 for the sandwich itself, a little more once a side and the cheap coffee are on the tray. A French dip priced well under that at a place with table service and a printed menu usually signals deli meat and base-powder jus rather than a roast; priced well above it, you are paying for a dining room the counters do not have.

It is lunch-counter food and eaten at any hour — the originators open early enough for breakfast and run into the evening — but the meat is at its best during the busy midday churn, when the roasts are being carved down fast and the slices come off warm. Late in a slow afternoon the pan has been sitting, and it shows.

Cards are taken across the city, as the guide says, but the classic counters ran on cash for the better part of a century and only lately came round to plastic; the line still moves quicker with small bills in hand, and the near-free coffee is the kind of price that rounds awkwardly on a card. Bring a little cash, order the beef single-dipped the first time, and save the wet double-dip for when you know how fast you can eat.