French Dip Sandwich

The French dip is a Los Angeles sandwich of thinly sliced roast beef in a long crusty French roll, served with a cup of the beef's own jus for dipping, or with the roll itself dunked in the jus before it is handed over. Two downtown restaurants claim to have invented it in the first decades of the twentieth century and have argued about it for a hundred years: Philippe the Original, which dates its version to 1918 and dips the roll in the jus at the counter, and Cole's, which opened in 1908 and serves the jus on the side. The "French" is the roll, not the country; the sandwich is unknown in France. It has spread across the United States as a diner and steakhouse standard, often with a slice of Swiss or provolone melted over the beef, and it sits in the family of regional American roast beef sandwiches with the Chicago Italian beef, which is its closest relation, and the beef on weck of Buffalo.