Curtis Stone’s neo-steak house Gwen, Ricardo Zarate’s Peruvian spot Rosaline, Michael Mina’s global flavors concept Mother Tongue: These are just some of L.A.’s high-profile restaurant closures in recent months. Historic landmark Cole’s — the purported inventor of the French dip sandwich — which first opened in 1908 in downtown L.A., likewise announced its own end.
In this century’s first two decades, the city had become America’s most relevant and talked-about dining capital — fueled by affordable commercial rents, innovative talent and its access to choice ingredients from local purveyors. Post-pandemic, it’s suffering from an unending gastro-crisis.
Patronage has dropped. OpenTable shared internal data with THR showing a 5 percent fall at local dining rooms through the first eight months of 2025 over the preceding year across the L.A. metro area. This itself wipes out the margins for many full-service sit-down restaurants.
Yet the problems are broader. Social trends, external impacts and hidden economic pressures are playing their own roles. “It has been a difficult run for L.A. restaurants,” explains Pablo Rivero, CEO of competing reservation platforms Resy and Tock. “Even in the best of times, these businesses operate on tight margins — any disruption can shake the foundation, and L.A. has had a wave of them.”
Restaurateurs tell THR that myriad factors have contributed to the disaster. They range from the GLP-1 weight loss drug revolution, which has diminished appetites, to Gen Z’s disinterest in drinking, which has reduced check averages, to tourism from Europe to Asia (but especially among Canadians) tanking because of President Trump’s tariff wars and other isolationist policies.
“Restaurants are happy if we’re making a 5 to 10 percent profit,” explains Josh Loeb, whose Westside restaurants range from Rustic Canyon and Milo + Olive to Birdie G’s (which recently announced its Dec. 31 closure). “The issue is, that 5 to 10 percent evaporates really quickly when costs rise and sales dip, and the past half-decade has been a combination of both.”
Hollywood’s own ongoing woes have played a starring role. The 2023 writers and actors strikes were crippling. So, too, has been the industry-contracting aftermath — corporate layoffs and the incentives-driven production exodus have meant fewer dining patrons. “The people who’ve been driven out of work are the people who dine at our restaurants, and now they don’t have the means,” notes Tal Ronnen, chef-owner of vegan-focused Crossroads Kitchen in West Hollywood.
Meanwhile, the triumph of streaming has had its own knock-on effect. “In the past, you went out to dinner before or after the movie; now, with streaming, it’s another reason to order in,” explains Josiah Citrin, whose Westside restaurants include two-Michelin-starred Mélisse.
This decade has been a series of unfortunate events. First, the pandemic, followed by the strikes. Then, this year, the wildfires as well as Trump’s immigrant-deportation raids. “We’re all only one or two degrees away, at most, from what’s been happening around us,” says Sang Yoon, who owns Helms Bakery and the gastropub Father’s Office in Culver City. An outpost of the latter shuttered in downtown L.A.’s Arts District this summer following civil unrest in response to the raids.
Crime and the ongoing homelessness crisis present their own challenges. “You need to feel safe to dine out,” notes Dina Samson, who co-owns the Italian restaurant Rossoblu not far away in downtown and is a co-founder of the city’s Independent Hospitality Coalition. “We talk to friends operating in other cities and they aren’t having these problems.” Concurs Alejandro Marin, who operates Loreto in Frogtown and, until its own closure this summer, Cha Cha Cha in the Arts District: “Every time I’m traveling — to New York, Mexico City, Tokyo — I’m jealous. It’s not right, how we’re existing here. There’s something deeply wrong.”
More than anything, the bottom-line dilemma stems from rising costs on several fronts. Ingredient prices continue to soar, as do the rates for necessary repairs — the faulty range, the leaky roof. Then there are spiked insurance bills in response to ballooning workers’ compensation and Americans With Disabilities Act claims. “The cost of litigation is extreme now, and we all end up paying it,” says Matt Egan, who operates Mirate in Los Feliz and The Daisy in Sherman Oaks.
L.A.’s restaurateurs also have grappled with the rising minimum wage — $9 an hour a decade ago, now nearly twice that. “We’re told, ‘It’s really expensive to live here,’ ” says Cobi Levy, a partner at Alba in West Hollywood, where the minimum wage is $19.65 an hour. “But the level of the minimum wage now is hurting small businesses.” He adds, “I don’t build housing. I can’t fix that problem.”
Running restaurants requires a mix of idealism, determination and recklessness all too familiar to those who work in Hollywood. So, despite their predicament, these operators remain hopeful that circumstances will change soon enough, even if now the path is unclear. “It can always turn around,” says Citrin, who has been in business for more than a quarter of a century. Agrees Marin: “Right now, we’re in the bottom of a cycle. It will go back up. At some point.”
This story appeared in the Oct. 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.