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Los Angeles Times
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Keep that downtown Los Angeles dining reservation. It's safe to go to dinner
It sounded like the alarm for a severe weather warning. At 8:19 p.m. on Monday evening, my phone blared with a public safety alert that a curfew was in place from 10 p.m. to 6 am. in downtown Los Angeles. It came just as I crested the hill on the south 110 Freeway that offers a sweeping view of the city below. I was on my way to meet a friend for dinner at Kinjiro, a snug izakaya in the heart of Little Tokyo. The area is one of the downtown neighborhoods most gravely affected by the aftermath of the recent demonstrations protesting President Trump's immigration policies and the ensuing raids. Mayor Karen Bass' curfew, enacted a week prior in an effort to quell any chaos associated with the demonstrations, meant the streets were empty. It was the latest hurdle in an ever-expanding list of challenges for Los Angeles restaurants, which in the last five years have faced drastic drops in business from a pandemic, Hollywood writers' strikes and fires. All along 2nd Street, the windows and doors were hidden behind plywood. Graffiti featuring choice words for the police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement covered nearly every surface. The frequently bustling Japanese Village Plaza, where shoppers dine at a revolving sushi bar and stop for cheese-filled corn dogs, was desolate. When I made it to the izakaya, it was clear that they were closed. The windows had been boarded up and a security gate was pulled across the entrance. We drove over to Bavel in the Arts District, curious to see if one of the city's most consistently booked restaurants was feeling the effects of the curfew, which covered the area of downtown between the 5 and 10 freeways and from the 10 to where the 110 and 5 freeways merge. You can probably measure the state of dining in Los Angeles by the fullness of the dining room at Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis' Levant-leaning restaurant. A last-minute prime table at 8 p.m. on any other night? No chance. When we arrived as walk-ins, we found a patio that was mostly empty, sparse patrons at the bar and a dining room that felt devoid of the usual Bavel energy. A quick scroll through the week's upcoming reservations on OpenTable showed multiple openings each night. I drove home past curfew, expecting to see a checkpoint of sorts or maybe even an increased police presence. There wasn't a single police car or protester. All the streets were open. The 8 p.m. curfew, first issued on June 10, was changed to a 10 p.m. curfew on Monday. On Tuesday, the curfew was lifted altogether, but many downtown restaurants are still struggling to fill their dining rooms. Just last week, Kato restaurant lost 80% of its reservations. Jon Yao, Ryan Bailey and Nikki Reginaldo's Arts District tasting menu restaurant celebrates Yao's upbringing in the San Gabriel Valley. It was named the No. 1 restaurant on the L.A. Times 101 List three times. Earlier this week, Yao won the James Beard Award for best chef in California. If there's a destination restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, this is it. On Tuesday, in light of the lifted curfew, the restaurant was still looking at a 70% drop in reservations for the upcoming week. 'The direct impact of the media's portrayal of DTLA being unsafe, which it is not, has impacted Kato immediately, and we were forced to close two nights,' Bailey says. On Friday, around 20 of the reservations canceled were for dinners booked weeks and months in the future. 'I had two specific instances where the guest called to say they were canceling their upcoming trip to L.A. based on not feeling safe in L.A. anymore,' Bailey says. 'The optimist in me hopes that the curfew, especially given the lifting now, does not cause long-term damage to downtown,' says Cassy Horton, co-founder of the DTLA Residents Assn. The organization works to create a thriving urban community in downtown that supports new and existing residents in the area. 'This is why we have been advocating so strongly to make sure our small businesses can open up,' says Horton. 'We need our neighbors across the region to really rally behind downtown right now because we need their support.' Hours after the curfew was lifted Tuesday, downtown started to show signs of coming to life again. Just before 7 p.m., a line began to form at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo. The small ramen shop is known as much for the perpetual wait as it is for its steaming bowls of tonkotsu ramen. It was a hopeful sight during a week of uncertainty, in an area that was the epicenter of the demonstrations. 'We checked with our friends who live right here and we were really mindful about coming tonight,' says Kevin Uyeda. He stood in line for ramen with fellow Echo Park resident Julie M. Leonard, both eager to make the short trip to Little Tokyo for dinner. 'I think there has been a lot of misinformation about the protests and the levels of everything,' says Leonard. 'I don't think the curfew was necessary. Most of the protests were peaceful.' A few doors down, at Korean restaurant Jincook, the staff removed the boards covering the windows that afternoon. 'It's safe to come here,' says Jincook server Hendrik Su. 'We want people to know that we are open.' At the Japanese Village Plaza, strollers rolled through the winding walkway with patrons sipping boba. Arts District residents Renee Sogueco and Chris Ciszek carried bags of leftovers from recent stops at Daikokuya and Fugetsu-Do, the more than a 100-year-old mochi and mango confectionery on 1st Street. 'Once we heard the curfew was lifted we wanted to come out,' says Sogueco. 'We've been feeling really bad about it with all the immigrant-owned businesses being affected. Daikokuya was fairly busy, but not as busy as we've seen it.' Ciszek's parents decided to make the trip out from Virginia to visit, despite friends back home questioning the decision. 'People are seeing a lot of very curated images online,' says Ciszek. 'They don't reflect what's been happening downtown. From what we've seen, the protesters have been happy, dancing, playing music, not violently disruptive.' I took a short drive west to the South Broadway block that houses Grand Central Market and found people eating tacos on the tables that line the sidewalk. A few locals sipped glasses of wine at nearby Kippered, the wine and tinned fish bar from Lydia Clarke and Reed Herrick. 'With everything boarded up, it doesn't feel inviting for tourists or people to come,' says Clarke. 'We still need people from outside the neighborhood, so people don't forget how great downtown is, how easy it is to come and pop around to a couple of places.' With the curfew being lifted, many restaurants that closed, temporarily opened for lunch or moved to entirely new locations outside of downtown Los Angeles, started to announce that they would return to regular business operations. Lasita, the Filipino rotisserie and wine bar in Chinatown, reopened for dinner. Steve and Dina Samson's Italian restaurant Rossoblu, which operated as a pop-up in Playa Vista over the weekend, returned to dinner service at its Fashion District location recently. 'I know we deal with so much in downtown, but when things get harder, our hearts get bigger,' says Clarke. 'I'm feeling really hopeful again.'
Los Angeles Times
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Pasadena's proudly ‘weird' Bar Chelou restaurant to close this month
Bar Chelou garnered local and national praise from a small corner of the century-old Pasadena Playhouse building when it opened in early 2023, but this month it will take a bow. Faced with renewing the restaurant's lease and after seeing its business hurt by January's Eaton fire, which decimated a large part of nearby Altadena, chef-owner Douglas Rankin said he and his team decided to close the restaurant. Its final day of service will be Feb. 16. 'All the signs were pointing towards: We have no clear path forward,' Rankin said. 'When an entire neighborhood burns down that accounts for a certain percentage of your business, it's like, what do you do? What are you supposed to do? We just don't know how fast things will come back.' Rankin said he is considering opening Bar Chelou in another part of the country, possibly in Denver, after his family relocates to Colorado. 'Chelou' translates to 'weird,' 'unexpected,' 'shady' or 'hard to believe' in French, and Bar Chelou wanted to live up to all of them in its short tenure. The modern Euro bistro debuted in early 2023 with Rankin at the helm. The Trois Mec and Bar Restaurant vet let loose, serving intriguing takes on the familiar: rainbow trout in an almost tie-dye-like swirl of garlic chive pil pil, fresh crunchy bread beneath a heap of clams and leeks, a large pork chop hidden under an artful display of cabbage and fennel pollen furikake. It caught on instantly. Bar Chelou landed on the L.A. Times 101 List multiple times, with Food critic Bill Addison recently noting that 'the man [Rankin] excels at flavor combinations.' Earlier this year, the New York Times named it one of the 25 best restaurants in the city. Bon Appétit heralded it as one of the most exciting new openings, and Eater LA called it the city's best new restaurant of 2023. In his 2023 review, Addison said the restaurant was delivering 'a jolt of eccentricity' to the neighborhood and serving a 'nouvelle cuisine fever dream.' Rankin closed his previous concept, Bar Restaurant in Silver Lake, in 2022 and wasn't sure what the future held. When approached about taking over the cozy restaurant space attached to the historic Pasadena Playhouse, he envisioned it as more of a pop-up to employ his Bar Restaurant team. Partnering with Whole Cluster Hospitality — which also operates Dunsmoor in Glassell Park — they created Bar Chelou, as a more permanent fixture. Everything changed on Jan. 7. Though the restaurant's immediate vicinity didn't catch fire, the smoke was thick in the air and Bar Chelou shut down for days. When it reopened, Rankin said he noticed a decline in sales of 20% to 30%, and that it gradually got worse. It began to pick back up last week, but Rankin still felt daunted by the uncertainty and the unpredictability. 'No one can know what's going to happen after the fires,' he said. 'No one knows how long it's going to take for this to get built back. And that level of uncertainty was a little too much for us to keep going.' His mom and stepfather live in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood simultaneously ravaged by wildfire. Though the Palisades fire narrowly missed their home, they haven't been back in a month and a half and are currently living with Rankin, his wife and children — further driving the point home for the chef that these natural disasters can take everything in an instant. The cost of living in Los Angeles, especially with two young children, was also a determining factor in his family's decision to relocate, he said. 'To have a restaurant that is award winning and nationally acclaimed should be enough, in my opinion, to be able to live the way you want,' Rankin said, 'and it's just not here.' But the chef said he will always champion the city. While he is still searching for Bar Chelou's future home in Colorado, Rankin might pop up around Los Angeles. 'I mean, it's scary — I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared, but I'm very confident in what I do,' Rankin said. 'If we didn't get faced with these challenges, I would have never left here. I love Los Angeles. I love all of the people here, especially in our industry, and how much work I've put into the restaurant scene over the years, and every restaurant that I've been involved in. It's really defined who I am as a person.'
Los Angeles Times
06-02-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. chefs, restaurateurs petition lawmakers in wake of fires: ‘We need support'
On Tuesday morning one of the city's most influential chefs stood on the steps of City Hall: Wes Avila, along with his business partner and a fellow small business owner, were there to appeal to local politicians and lawmakers. L.A.'s restaurants and other independent businesses say they are hurting and need the city's help in the wake of last month's fires. Some restaurants have seen as much as a 90% decrease in business. Some are already closing because of it. 'Usually I try to stay out of local politics,' said Avila, founder of Guerrilla Tacos and chef of restaurants MXO and Ka'teen. 'But this is something that's super important.' The fires destroyed and damaged some of the city's most storied restaurants and bars, but many that survived now face an uncertain future. On Wednesday, lauded Pasadena restaurant Bar Chelou — an L.A. Times 101 List awardee — announced its permanent closure, citing the nearby Eaton fire's decimation of business as a factor. On Jan. 11, Silver Lake lesbian wine bar and restaurant the Ruby Fruit announced its closure 'due to financial impact from the current natural disaster.' Its owners hope to reopen someday. 'It's reached this critical level with restaurants in L.A. that there's not really a light at the end of the tunnel,' said Ruby Fruit co-owner Mara Herbkersman. 'This is not just us speaking, this is talking to other owners [too], and some sort of intervention feels really necessary at this point in order to avoid a mass industry shutdown.' At MXO and Ka'teen, Avila said he saw a drop in sales of 60% to 70% since the fires. On Tuesday he joined his business partner Giancarlo Pagani — author of a new petition for support — calling on L.A. and California politicians to encourage dining out as the city recovers and rebuilds. Pagani is a partner in Mother Wolf Group as well as Avila's MXO, a Mexican steakhouse in Beverly Grove. As of Thursday more than 2,000 signatories endorsed Pagani's message to lawmakers, including Funke and Mother Wolf's Evan Funke, A.O.C.'s Suzanne Goin, Tao Group's Gregory Bach and Ben Shenassafar of the Benjamin and the Hundreds. The petition, addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, calls on them 'to amplify public messaging that encourages Angelenos to support their local businesses during this critical time,' possibly with a coordinated campaign. As the fires devastated the city, some of the first aid administered to Los Angeles was provided by chefs and restaurants. Many immediately began preparing and delivering free meals for first responders and those displaced. Some partnered with organizations such as World Central Kitchen, which reimburses restaurants for their product and efforts. Others say they provided aid out of their own pockets. On Tuesday Avila, Pagani and Trent Lockett, co-owner of events company Nya Studios, met with District 4 City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a proponent of pandemic-era dining programs such as L.A. Al Fresco and moratoriums on ticketing unpermitted street vendors. The trio said that while politicians are sharing news of fundraisers and programs to help those affected by fires, they have not heard messaging about supporting small business — and they hope Councilmember Raman and others can start. 'When a single event cancels, it's not just us,' Lockett said in the meeting. He added that all January events canceled due to the fires. 'There's hundreds of people that are involved. I think we're here on behalf of the people we support.' Raman said she had already been in touch with local restaurateurs, including the owners of Silver Lake restaurants Kismet and Bé Ù, about the state of their businesses and possible solutions. 'Strangely out of this came a sense of real reconnection to Los Angeles,' she said during the meeting. 'People want to lift up Los Angeles.' 'I'm investing significantly in Los Angeles restaurants this year and it's not easy,' Pagani told Raman, adding that there is a preconception among restaurateurs that it's uniquely difficult to do business in California. 'Now it's amplified by the fires. I keep thinking: Why am I trying to open more restaurants? ... I love the team-building of it, I love the shared opportunity. For us to continue doing that in L.A. we need support in sharing the messaging, because people are scared. Investors are really scared.' The restaurateur likens the economic fallout from the fires to 'a micro recession' and 'a micro pandemic.' Pagani's Mother Wolf and adjacent cocktail bar, Mars, saw a decrease in business of roughly 80%, while private events falloff in his restaurants and at his Hollywood events space was 100%. His restaurants are slowly beginning to recover but are running at 65% to 75% of their business compared to the week before the fires began. 'We had guests at Mother Wolf that literally were asking for their checks because they had just found out they were in an evacuation area,' Pagani said. Pagani's restaurants shuttered the first few days of the fires but reopened that weekend in order to give roughly 400 staff members hours. On Jan. 11, after 'an instantaneous decline of like 90%' of business the week of the fires, Herbkersman and Emily Bielagus decided to close the Ruby Fruit, one of the city's few queer-owned-and-focused hospitality spaces. The announcement made waves in the region's queer communities, with thousands of responses — many begging for the closure to be temporary. Both of the Ruby Fruit's owners signed Pagani's petition. 'We are delighted to stand with our fellow small business owners in Los Angeles,' Bielagus told The Times, 'and the idea of pressing the government and finding resources to help small businesses is really a critical and crucial cause.' On Wednesday, they announced a fundraising event to help save their wine bar and restaurant. Ticket proceeds from the event, which will be held Feb. 22, will help to reopen the Ruby Fruit and compensate for business losses caused by the city's fires. Though patrons can't currently visit the Ruby Fruit, its owners said they hope Angelenos will take the message of the petition to heart and support other small businesses around the city. 'Even if people aren't necessarily coming to our restaurant because we are temporarily closed,' Bielagus said, 'anyone in Los Angeles spending their money anywhere is going to help ignite and reignite and invigorate the economy of Los Angeles.'
