Protest curfews wallop downtown restaurants: ‘Just stay open, make money where we can.'
The Mermaid hasn't turned a profit since Saturday.
The aquatic-themed Little Tokyo bar is typically open daily and a hub for regulars, community events and off-duty workers of the hospitality industry, all bathed in soft blue lighting meant to replicate the ocean's waves. But these fixtures hadn't been found there for days, because the Mermaid — like many restaurants and bars spread through downtown's hot zones for anti-ICE protests and an 8 p.m. curfew — is closing, pivoting to other business models and trying new hours of operation to weather fallout from ongoing unrest spurred by widespread immigration raids.
'It's devastating,' said co-owner Arlene Roldan. 'It's ultimately going to impact us dramatically. With all the work that we've already put into this, it's like a whole new bar at this point, and a whole new marketing strategy that we're going to have to come up with.'
Little Tokyo, she said, is often the epicenter of community activism and marches. After seeing how many protesters were gathering downtown on Sunday, she and her business partner, Katie Kildow, decided not to open that evening.
They tried to reopen their bar on Monday but only made it an hour before the protests pushed almost to their door, which is located three blocks from the Metropolitan Detention Center. LAPD then closed nearby streets, and no one could access the cocktail bar. On Tuesday night Roldan heard a rumor that Mayor Karen Bass could issue a curfew, and told her staff to stay home until further notice. About an hour later, the order came. The Mermaid remained closed.
On Wednesday, the team tried something different: Reopen at noon, and close at 7 p.m. in accordance with the curfew. Now they're trying to reach an entirely new demographic of those able to stop by for a drink during the daytime, while also communicating to regulars that the bar will only be open through 7 p.m. until the curfew lifts.
Roldan said that as an owner-operator, she feels fortunate to be in a position to make business decisions that can help staff and keep the doors open, even if it means taking on bartending shifts herself. It's been consolation during a trying week.
'Little Tokyo was definitely hit very hard on Monday with opportunists that were looting,' Roldan said. 'Some of this graffiti is a little daunting, and here people today are now boarding up their businesses. So it's just becoming a little bit more and more bleak each day.'
Roldan is still standing with the protests, personally participating in marches during the day and offering drinks to customers who might need an escape from the disarray beyond the Mermaid's doors.
'It seems like we're always part of the path [of protests], so we're offering water and a place for people to recharge and to revive,' she said. 'We're also offering a welcome drink to anyone who just needs to calm their nerves as well, because it is a very intense environment out here.'
Sampa, a nearby restaurant in the Arts District, is also toying with new daytime hours to offset business losses from the evening curfew.
Since Friday, its owners saw reservations canceled first in a trickle, then by roughly 20%. On Sunday, the modern Filipino restaurant lost at least 50% of its business, with reservations canceled. Brunch walk-ins slowed to a halt.
'I think most of our diners travel to us and they get spooked,' said co-owner Jenny Valles. 'They get really scared like, 'Well, I don't know if I'm going to get caught up in the protests or the street closures, so we're just going to stay away.' While 99% of L.A. is doing fine and living their lives, people don't realize that 1% is greatly affected by this. We are one square mile where the curfew is, and it's really difficult.'
On Tuesday evening when Valles and her business partners — husband Peter Rosenberg and chef Josh Espinosa — learned of downtown's 8 p.m. curfew, they canceled most of the night's reservations and closed early to allow staff to return home safely. Now they're pivoting their business hours, hoping that running the weekend brunch menu on weekdays and starting dinner at 3 p.m. can help them sustain.
'We're a small business, we can't afford to close,' Valles said. 'Our strategy is just: stay open, make money where we can, make sure we keep our lights on, make sure we keep our staff on.'
Espinosa estimates that the restaurant makes 80% of its revenue between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m.; with a multi-day curfew in place, they're concerned that they cannot afford to close for even one hour between brunch and dinner service.
'We're dealt cards and it's on us to make the most of it and make the best of it,' Espinosa said.
Valles said that restaurateurs she knows also carry 'emotional stress' concerning the well-being of immigrant staff.
'It's really emotionally difficult,' she said. 'They are the ones that wash the dishes, they are the ones that cook, they are the ones that put food on our plates across L.A.'
Nearer to City Hall, Indian mainstay Badmaash closed due to street closures, the curfew and fallout from protests.
'We're taking it day by day,' co-owner Nakul Mahendro said in an email. 'Our main concern is the safety and well being of our staff.'
'No one wants to come downtown,' he added. 'We don't have any reservations…The business impact is tough, especially after all we've been through, but we're encouraging guests to visit our Fairfax location instead.'
Camélia, one of the L.A. Times' 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles, is closed tonight.
It barely began its dinner service on Tuesday before receiving word of the curfew, whose square-mile zone also included the French-Japanese bistro's corner of the Arts District.
'It was a huge scramble and very stressful for the staff to try to figure out what to do in the moment,' said co-owner Courney Kaplan. 'We decided today, let's just take a day, regroup and get a sense of what our next steps are going to be.'
Via a large group text between the restaurant's owners, chefs and managers, the team solidified their game plan. They will pivot to a new lunch service and happy hour while under curfew, operating from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. and offering a streamlined menu of some of their most popular items: a croque Madame, the dry-aged burger, salads and beyond, with nightly happy hour specials that could include oysters and sparkling drinks.
They toyed with the idea of selling bottled cocktails or flipping part of the space to a wine shop. To Kaplan and her business partner, chef-owner Charles Namba — who also own and operate Echo Park restaurants Tsubaki and Ototo — these pivots are all too familiar.
'I'm having kind of intense flashbacks to March 2020, where we just need to try it and be flexible,' Kaplan said, 'and if we need to then pivot to something else, making sure that we're able to do that as well.'
Kaplan and Namba began to see business drop off at Camélia as soon as the protests began, with guests canceling reservations and calling with questions about how to access the restaurant with road closures.
Over the weekend, Kaplan estimates that Camélia lost roughly 40% of its revenue. As the week began the figure jumped to as much as 60%.
After facing years of financial and operational setbacks marked by slow pandemic recovery, the city's economic fallout from entertainment-industry strikes, inflation and increases to minimum wage, the restaurant industry is seeing an onslaught of closures. In early 2025, the Altadena and Palisades fires wrought more fiscal trouble to restaurants throughout the city.
'The amount of stress that's brought on all of our coworkers and everybody on the team is almost unprecedented,' Kaplan said, adding, '[The industry] has just taken such a beating over the past few years that I really do hope people will come back and support small businesses,' she said. 'I'm just hoping for the best for our city and our community right now.'
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"I feel like my freedom of speech was directly attacked, intentionally." --- (Times staff writers Julia Wick, Connor Sheets and Richard Winton contributed to this report.) Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
