The Great French Dip Mystery

(Flickr pic by mseratt99.)

As Philippe The Original -- better known, simply, as Philippe's -- turns 100, the debate over how the French dip was invented rages on. According to the L.A. Times magazine, three theories are in the running:

here are three stories connected with how Philippe's French dipped sandwich was born. In 1951, Mathieu Philippe told a Times reporter, "One day a customer saw some gravy in the bottom of a large pan of roast meat. He asked me if I would mind dipping one side of the French roll in that gravy. I did, and right away five or six others wanted the same." He quickly ran out of gravy. "But," he said, "it put me wise." The next day he had a gallon of gravy ready, but so many people wanted dip sandwiches that he still ran out.

Grandson Philippe tells a slightly different version. "It was frugality on his part," he says. "A fireman came over, maybe it was on a Monday, when there were leftover rolls. [Mathieu] would use them up although they were stale. The fireman complained that the roll was dry, so Philippe dipped it, basically to get rid of the guy." This might be more likely--in 1951, Mathieu may have preferred to credit a customer rather than a stale roll. Needless to say, Philippe's never had much of a problem with stale rolls after L.A. fell in love with French dips.

The most familiar story is that Mathieu accidentally dropped a roll in pan drippings, and the customer who had ordered the sandwich agreed to eat it anyway. This is highly unlikely, because an accident is the lazy explanation people usually come up with when they have no idea how a dish was invented.

The sandwich wasn't originally called the "French dip," but just a dip sandwich. But as reporter Charles Perry writes, Philippe's back then was also informally referred to as "Frenchy's" -- and the name stuck.

Of course, the debate over which came first -- Cole's or Philippe's dip sandwiches -- also remains unresolved.