Last night, in the evocative, old Spanish-style library of Barlow Hospital the Echo Park Historical Society members and friends gathered to hear the story of the restaurant/landmark/nightspot Taix. Michael Taix (pronounced Tex), who is the grandson of the founder, told a colorful tale not just of L.A.'s oldest French restaurant but of his family. Complete with dozens of cool old pix. As Michael Taix tells it, the family came to L.A. from the upper French alps in the 1880s. (Hard to breathe and make a living in the high altitudes.) They pronounced the X before they even crossed the pond. Michael grew up in Los Feliz and Silver Lake and lives in La Crescenta now.

Greatgrandpa lived in what then was L.A.'s French quarter, bought lots of real estate, sent his son back to France for an education in pharmacology. According to Michael this is the way Taix became a restaurant: one of his grandpa's tenants, who ran a French restaurant, was serving liquor openly during prohibition.