Bastille Day can be Celebrated all month long during Dine LA' Summer Roadtrip at Taix French Restaurant

The most comfortable restaurant in the Echo Park/Silverlake area is French. A French restaurant doesn’t have to be frou-frou to be good. Actually, the majority of food establishments in France are cozy and warm. People come back to these types of places.

Take Taix (pronounced like Tex or Tais depending on who you talk to), a 90-year-old, man-made landmark on the Eastside. Valet parks the car for $3.50 and doors open to a place where everyone knows your name.

French flags encompass the long lineage of patrons and heirs of the Taix legacy. The bar, large and spacious, is filled with the romantic couples, sports game enthusiasts, and kind folk who want to release some steam to the bartender with a nice Côtes du Rhône. The drinks featured are cocktails that haven’t had the same resurrection like the Old Fashioned and Sazarac. Those two are on the menu as well as a Harvey Wallbanger, Rusty Nail, and five different types of Negronis, all with top shelf booze. It’s hard to maneuver to the main dining room because the bar is so God damn fun.

If the bar is the place to relax, the dining room is the place to let the pants down a little and recline. Taix keeps the French customs of truly enjoying a meal. The sense of rush is nonexistent. Waiters and bussers know the menu and restaurant inside out. It’s as if the whole staff has equity in the place. Because of the celebration of Bastille Day, Taix put their bouillabaisse on the menu.

Everything else sounded equally scrumptious from their duck l’orange to their paella, but there’s something about eating a poor man’s fish stew on French National Day. It’s like eating a steak or hot dog on the 4th of July.

People of Marseilles are pleased with Taix’s bouillabaisse. It’s laced with the necessary ingredients that make it special: saffron, tomato, garlic, Monkfish, and Mussels. The fresh crusty bread-basket is the only suitable side. Onions in the French Onion Soup are dark and acidic. The reduction of the onion is an art in and of itself. One lets them sweat too little they don’t have any color and if they sweat too long, they become too sweet. Taix finds the perfect balance. The Gruyère cheese shell is melted and molting hot without being burnt. If any soup was the epitome of romance, it is this soup.

Crème brûlée and Chocolate Mousse are not clichés here. The mousse, robust in chocolate flavor, is softer than a pudding but packs more depth than whipped cream. The crystalized casing of the brûlée easily breaks with the slightest touch of the spoon. These dishes alone make Julia Child smile in her grave.

It’s becoming harder each and every day to find a simple dish on a menu done well. That’s why dining and drinking at Taix, makes it that more special. They don’t reinvent the wheel with the classics. They don’t need to.