The Saddest Restaurant Closures to Know in Los Angeles This Month
Connie & Ted’s. | Robiee Ziegler Los Angeles’s restaurants continue to face difficult headwinds, starting in 2020 with the onset of the global pandemic and exacerbated by the Hollywood labor strikes in 2023, which led to an industry-wide slowdown that continued into 2026. From the lingering effects of the Hollywood strikes to rising costs (labor, rent, ingredients, etc.), many factors continue to strain restaurant owners operating on razor-thin margins. Los Angeles restaurants also continue to struggle with the impact of the 2025 fires, including slow business and devastating property loss, as well as the ongoing effects of ICE enforcement. Here are notable restaurant closures from April 2026. For more closure news, read our past closure coverage. The following are closings from May through July. Merois— Wolfgang Puck’s rooftop restaurant Merois closed on May 1, 2026. This news arrives one year after West Hollywood’s Pendry Hotel rebranded into the Sun Rose Hotel. Merois followed the s
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Holbox Is the Michelin-Starred Seafood Stand Worth the Wait in Line
Tostada with uni at Holbox. | Wonho Frank Lee When Holbox first opened in 2017, one of eight restaurants in the historic Mercado La Paloma, no one knew how far-reaching the Mexican seafood stall’s influence would be felt throughout Los Angeles. Holbox was the first market stand in Los Angeles to receive a Michelin star, in effect changing the way food halls and marketplaces now get perceived nationally. It landed a spot on North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list and James Beard nods for chef Gilbert Cetina, whose family has been part of Mercado La Paloma’s history since opening Yucatecan Chichen Itza in 2001. It has been included in Eater Los Angeles’s own 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles list multiple times. And yet much has remained from Holbox’s early days: its emphasis on local ingredients, the quality of the seafood, and the warm feeling of both the service and the location. (The lines are newer — but they move quickly.) Regardless, it’s one of the lines in Los Angeles actually
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Sky’s Gourmet Tacos Will Close Its Mid-City Restaurant After 34 Years
The spread from Sky’s. | Wonho Frank Lee After more than three decades, Mid-City staple Sky’s Gourmet Tacos announced it will close its full-service restaurant on August 15, 2026, and transition to a catering and ghost-kitchen business. Earlier in 2026, Barbara “Sky” Burrell celebrated 34 years on Pico Boulevard near Cochran Avenue. Burrell tells Eater that operational challenges have forced her to take immediate action. “Times have changed,” Burrell says. “City policy and regulations have changed. Standards in business have changed. And we have to change, too.” Angelenos will still be able to order Sky’s all-day breakfast tacos, lobster tacos, wraps, and crawfish burritos, but from the future ghost-kitchen site; Burrell is currently in negotiations to lease a new space to accommodate catering and a prep kitchen. In Los Angeles’s competitive regional taquería scene, Burrell stood out as one of the Los Angeles chefs who celebrates the blend of Black and brown cultures as a soul food–Mex
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New York’s Acclaimed Double Chicken Please Comes to Los Angeles for Two Nights Only
Ardor. | Ardor Double Chicken Please, an acclaimed New York cocktail bar that holds a place on the World’s 50 Best Bars, heads to the West Coast this summer with a two-day pop-up at Ardor in West Hollywood. The bar will take over the menu from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, August 13, and Friday, August 14, to serve a menu of six special cocktails. The drinks will be available at the bar on a first-come, first-served basis, or at tables with dinner. Double Chicken Please’s pop-up menu will include the Tomajito, a twist on a mojito, with tomato vine, tomatillo, mint, and Makrut lime leaf, alongside the Papaya Salad with tequila, fish sauce tamarind, kumquat cherry tomato, and coconut. The vesper-esque DMV blends olive, fennel, and makrut lime leaf with gin and vodka, while the Dorayaki re-interprets the Japanese confection with bourbon, amontillado sherry, red bean, corn, barley tea, and lychee. Double Chicken Please co-founder Faye Chen will be on-site at the pop-up mixing drinks. A co
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All the New Restaurant Openings to Know in Los Angeles
El Ruso. | Matthew Kang Los Angeles is no stranger to restaurant openings, whether debuts in iconic buildings helmed by big-name chefs, humble neighborhood haunts, or pop-ups leaping into permanent spaces. The city’s dining scene continues to grow even as operators face stunning challenges related to ongoing impacts from the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes, the 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires, and systemic slowdowns affecting the entire global food supply. This roundup features a running list of all the latest openings you should know about across the Southland. For Eater editors’ curation of the best new restaurants in Los Angeles, check out the heatmap, and for a guide to the best restaurants in the city, look to the Eater 38.
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The Best Dishes Eater Editors Ate This Week: July 27
Chive cakes from Holy Basil. | Mona Holmes The editors at Eater Los Angeles dine out several times a week, if not per day, which means we’re always encountering standout dishes that deserve time in the limelight. Here’s the very best of everything the team has eaten this week. Blue crab onigiri from Onigiri Time in Pasadena I stumbled upon this cute onigiri cart in Pasadena on the way to pick up special-occasion croissants from Artisanal Goods by Car. The onigiri range from $9.99 to $13.99 — which admittedly feels steep for a simple rice ball. Still, I picked up a spicy tuna version, smoked scallop onigiri, and one filled with blue crab. When I unwrapped my onigiri later on the beach, the nori had remained crispy while its rice was soft and well-seasoned. The center had been packed with Kewpie mayonnaise–dressed blue crab, a portion so generous that by the end of my rice ball, I felt genuinely full. What makes Onigiri Time more unique is the wasabi sauce that accompanies each order, in
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This LA Cafe Wants You to Break Up With Erewhon
Inside Verve. | Matthew Kang You would think a chef who used to run a three-Michelin-starred restaurant and one of Los Angeles’s most celebrated modern Korean hot spots would draw more attention after taking over the menu of a chain of West Coast coffee shops. That’s what Katianna Hong, previously at Napa Valley’s Restaurant at Meadowood, has been up to since temporarily closing her Los Angeles Arts District restaurant, Yangban. Earlier this year, Hong completely revamped the food at Verve Coffee Roasters, a chain based in Santa Cruz with outposts in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Tokyo. Sign up for the Kang Town newsletter This post originally appeared in my Kang Town newsletter, where I cover all things dining in the West. Sign up here to get my latest stories. A few months ago, Hong cooked through the entire menu for me, showing layers of thoughtful flavors, fine dining–level ingredients, and Michelin precision in salads, toasts, and other coffee-friendly fare that might otherwise
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West Hollywood’s Water Main Woes Are Draining Sunset Strip Restaurants
Dialog cafe appears in the distance of a major water main break. | Anadolu via Getty Images On a muggy Saturday afternoon, I sat on Saltie Girl’s patio, downing a silky clam chowder, fried lobster and waffles, oysters, stone fruit salad, and one of the most colorful tuna tostadas I’ve ever seen, deep in the Sunset Strip. The iconic street has recently been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, as a century-old water main ruptured on July 16, spilling 17 million gallons of water and creating a sinkhole that closed the Sunset Strip at Holloway Drive. As crews from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) worked to fix it, a second water main break occurred one mile away at Santa Monica Boulevard and Laurel Avenue on Thursday, July 23. The Saturday I visited, I was curious to see how quickly I could hop over to Henry’s Secret Ice Cream for a pint of peach cobbler, a trek that should take a few minutes by driving only .7 miles west. Instead, the direction app took me 12 minu
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Your Los Angeles Restaurant Weekend Guide: July 24
Every Friday, our editors compile a trusty list of recommendations to answer the most pressing of questions: “Where should I eat?“ Here are four places to check out this weekend in Los Angeles. And if you need some ideas on where to drink, here’s our list of the hottest places to get cocktails in town. For hot dogs and The Odyssey on 70mm: The Vista Theatre in Los Feliz It’s been an odyssey of its own trying to secure tickets to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, especially if you’re trying to see it on 70mm (or even tougher, IMAX 70mm). Luckily, the Vista is not entirely sold out, and the theater has one of my favorite concession counters in Los Angeles. Prime yourself for the near three-hour movie with Hebrew National hot dogs tucked between warm, plush buns, then kissed with smears of ketchup and mustard. The scent of fresh, hot popcorn with real butter drifts through the lobby, singing a salty siren song of its own. Plus, the Vista has some of the most affordable concessions in town
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Summer’s Hottest Accessory? The Fruit Tarts at This New Alhambra Bakery.
Spread of mini tarts. | Joseph Duarte Joyce Hsieh, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate and Milo and Olive alum, is behind the new Pinecone Bakeshop and Cafe, a fruit tart–focused bakery in Alhambra. At Pinecone, Hsieh serves fruit tarts crowned with peak season produce sourced from local farms, including Harry’s Berries and Wong Farms, all nestled onto a crust that uses Tehachapi Sonora wheat. Hsieh moved to the U.S. from Taiwan in 2014 with plans to attend culinary school and then open a cafe. “I found my passion for baking when I was in college, working at a cafe and just bugging and stalking my pastry chef there until she took me in as an apprentice,” she says. After graduating from Pasadena’s Le Cordon Bleu, Hsieh took a job as a pastry cook at Milo and Olive, eventually working her way up to becoming the restaurant’s bakery sous chef. As part of her role, she oversaw the bakery operations at Milo and Olive, which also acts as a supplier for the rest of the Rustic Canyon family of restaurant
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