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The facade of Pacific Dining Car in August 2024 when it was damaged heavily by fire. It’s since caught fire again in March 2025 but the building remains standing. | Myung J.
Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images This is the second fire at Pacific Dining Car in the last year after it was badly damanaged in a blaze in August 2024 Multiple sources report that in the early hours of March 20, a fire broke out at the Westlake building that was once the site of historic Los Angeles steakhouse Pacific Dining Car. If the news sounds a bit like deja vu, that’s probably because this is the second fire at Pacific Dining Car in the last year; the building was heavily damaged by a fire in August 2024. The Los Angeles Times reports that for this latest incident, about 100 firefighters responded to the call and after 45 minutes of battling the fire, the building remains standing.
The building was empty at the time of the fire and there were no injuries reported. The Pacific Dining Car first opened over a century ago, in 1921, with a second location opening in Santa Monica in 1990. Over the decades, it became a beloved Los Angeles landmark with its vintage train car interior, suited servers, and baseball steak, which had its moment in the spotlight after a shoutout in the 2001 film Training Day starring Denzel Washington.
Dining at Pacific Dining Car felt like being whisked to another era, where trains were gathering places for the upper echelons of society and the in-car restaurants served more than microwaveable frozen pizzas. In 1994, the restaurant began 24-hour service, which was practically unheard of for a Los Angeles-area steakhouse. In June 2020, the Santa Monica Pacific Dining Car closed permanently and subsequently auctioned off the contents of the restaurant and memorabilia.
Later that same summer, the original Pacific Dining Car paused operations and hosted its own auction. In 2020, ownership told Eater LA that “Pacific Dining Car is not going away,” and that they were “rethinking the whole business model.” The restaurant never reopened for service.
In 2023, the City of Los Angeles designated the Pacific Dining Car as a historic-cultural monument.According to SF Gate, restoration efforts were underway at Pacific Dining Car after the 2024 fire, and president Wesley Idol III didn’t rule out a future reopening for the restaurant..
