Nice little homey place. Too bad the beef isn't more tasty, but it do remind you of home (wherever that may be).
Comments (0) Best French Dip (Thick-Gravy Division) (1947) - 2010
Jolly Jug
Everybody knows who makes the best French dip in town. It's Cole's, which serves a chopped-and-channeled version of the venerable sandwich in L.A.'s oldest restaurant. Or it's Philippe's, the sawdust-floored diner that also claims to have invented the sandwich. But if you like gravy with a little heft to it, gravy that will stick to the ceiling if you want it to or double as Bondo in a body-shop emergency, Jolly Jug is the place you want to go, home to El Monte's Most Honored Sandwich: a light, crisp roll; strata of carved beef; and the gravy, a fearsome substance that could probably be a primordial incubator of life given a few million years and a nurturing yellow sun. If our soldiers were to crave a French dip — a freedom dip — as an MRE, this would be the one they'd take to Afghanistan. 4264 N. Peck Road, El Monte. (626) 444-8425. —Jonathan Gold
3 comments
Jeeze, another place that serves dry meat! No one who's had a decent prime-rib sandwich or an Italian beef sandwich or Vienna Sausage on white bread could prefer the Jolly Jug's dry and characterless beef. And no amount of that, er, gravy helps the cause. Did you pull the wrong review out of the archive?
I eat here the other night. The place was dead, thought that was strange. So the GF and I ordered the French Dip and a Pastrami sandwich. She'd been their before so when the French Dip showed up with gravy instead of au jou I thought that was weird but it was pretty good, but the best I don't know.
