An art heist at Taix

Good morning, it’s Monday, March 23 and you can expect to briefly flirt with morning fog before more searing sunshine.

In today’s edition we have Pablo Goldstein’s dispatch from the last days of Taix (where restaurant nostalgia and amateur crime-solving collided this weekend), a quick look at the week ahead, and an unpacking of L.A.’s most controversial traffic dilemma, followed by the rest of the news you need to start your day.

Taix Restaurant is not quite the Louvre, but it’s arguably the closest thing Los Angeles has to a venerable French institution — and it, too, was hit by a brazen art heist last week. But the owners of the century-old restaurant in Echo Park took unusual measures to recover the stolen loot.

And L.A. Material was on site to witness it.

The closure of Taix, first set in motion almost six years ago, is now set to happen this Sunday. Its stucco chalet building is planned for demolition, to be replaced by a mixed-use development with 166 units of housing, and restaurant space for a new incarnation of Taix on the ground floor.

The long au revoir produced plenty of passionate reactions. The L.A. Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving historic local architecture, made an unsuccessful push to retain some of the building. Others celebrated the new housing, pooh-poohing the potential architectural loss.

In the final days of the restaurant’s current form, diners have been mobbing the place. Most came for one last order of Steak Frites au Poivre and Frog Legs Provencal. But some patrons have been stealing things. Prints from the bathroom. Dishes. Other little trinkets. 

Karri Taix — wife of owner Mike Taix, whose great-grandfather Marius opened the restaurant in 1912 — told us she’s trying to preserve the restaurant’s decor so it can be used in the new space.

“I have replaced the candy bowls with plastic,” she said.

On Thursday, a man with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing shorts and what appeared on security video to be socks with sandals, strolled out of the restaurant carrying a signed 1984 print from Gary Eberle, “the Godfather of modern winemaking in Paso Robles.”

Karri Taix was fed up. She posted a blurry frame from the video to Instagram, along with a threat — and an offer. “Hello customer!” her IG story read. “We have your name and credit card info, a full face shot of you, witnesses who reported you and video footage.” 

“You have until tomorrow (Friday night) to return this no questions asked. Otherwise Taix will file felony charges. We need you to give this print to be returned to the valet between 5-10 pm tomorrow Friday March 20th.”

L.A. Material arrived at Taix at 4:45 PM, and waited to see if the perp would make the drop. 

A long line of mostly middle-aged-to-elderly diners stretched out from under the shade of the porte-cochère. The valets were busy parking their cars. They’d been told about the stolen print, they said, but not about their assigned roles in the handoff.

Inside, Karri was managing a tide of diners, including a couple of walk-ins who were incredulous that they couldn’t get a seat. She told us she’d be eager to discuss the theft, if we could wait by the side entrance until the line died down a bit.

Just after 5:10 pm, one of the valets, Dennis Lopez, walked into the restaurant, holding aloft the stolen print. 

The dining room burst into applause. 

A man in a Black Prius dropped it off, Lopez told us: “He said his friend took it. He’s crazy, he said.”

“All my freakiness paid off!” Karri exclaimed to a server, displaying the print, a piece of L.A. history preserved.

MONDAY: Three prominent mayoral candidates —Councilmember Nithya Raman, Rae Huang and Adam Miller — will take the stage for L.A.’s first mayoral debate on Monday evening, hosted by Housing Action Coalition and Streets for All. (Mayor Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt were invited but will not be attending, per event organizers.) 

TUESDAY: It’s a debate-heavy week in Los Angeles: Six gubernatorial candidates will be at USC on Tuesday evening. Meanwhile, four other candidates who weren’t invited are calling on their fellow gubernatorial aspirants to boycott altogether. They’ve raised concerns about the criteria used for inclusion, since every prominent candidate of color was shut out of the forum.

THURSDAY: Major League Baseball’s opening day is here at long last. The Dodgers — who are in hot pursuit of a third straight World Series title — will play the Arizona Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium.

SATURDAY: Another wave of widespread “No Kings” protests are expected across the nation, with a major event planned at L.A. City Hall, among other locations.  

We’ll be doing a week-ahead rundown every Monday morning. If there’s something that should be on our radar, please send it to [email protected].

Forget the Olympics, housing or the Lakers vs. Clippers discourse. The single most divisive issue in Los Angeles is this: Once a traffic light has turned yellow (or, realistically, red) how many cars should be able to make a left?

Is the standard two or three cars? If you’re the fourth car and you still make the turn, does that make you a criminal psychopath? And aren’t there laws to govern this?

L.A. Material contributor Lauren Bans is here to delightfully unpack the most contested rule of driving in Los Angeles. She even discovered that this left turn conundrum, and the deeper questions it raises about unwritten societal agreements, was one of the sparks that inspired Mike Schur to create “The Good Place.”

FOR SALE: COOKING RANGE, HEAVILY USED. For those looking to legally obtain Taix memorabilia, the restaurant is auctioning heirlooms galore, along with plenty of kitchen machinery. Bids continue until April 2.  

THE JUNE 2 PRIMARY IS ONLY 71 DAYS AWAY. But many Angelenos are still undecided in the mayoral race. A new poll put Mayor Karen Bass in the lead with backing from a quarter of respondents, but the poll also reiterated the fact that many voters see the mayor unfavorably. Nithya Raman was in 2nd place (17%), followed by Spencer Pratt (14%), Rae Huang (8%) and Adam Miller (6%).

IN OTHER MAYORAL NEWS: The local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America will not endorse a candidate for mayor. (The group voted Saturday on whether to reopen their endorsement process and consider backing either Raman or Huang, but opted against it. Raman has been breathlessly compared to NYC’s DSA-backed Mayor Zohran Mamdani in national media, but that narrative has less steam with a DSA endorsement firmly off the table.) 

“I’M NOT A CAT KILLER.” Remember the operatic rumors swirling around the ultra-buzzy restaurant Horses a few years back? The restaurant closed at the beginning of the year, and now chef Will Aghajanian has shared his side of the story for the first time in a lengthy piece for Air Mail. 

FORGET KALE: Cabbage is the new “it vegetable” in L.A. dining, from Sqirl’s dinner menu to the more casual stuffed cabbage at Little Fish to Anajak Thai’s hefty grilled wedges. 

THE GLORIA STEINEM CHAI LATTE: Women’s March Foundation — an L.A. nonprofit born from the original 2017 march — has opened a West L.A. hub, complete with a coffee shop serving a Dolores Huerta café de olla, an equal pay cortado, and the aforementioned Steinem latte.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “little prayer” by Danez Smith.

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