The Year in L.A. Restaurants
Last week The Times published a very sobering story from Food reporter Stephanie Breijo on the state of the restaurant industry in Los Angeles. The gist: For many operators who thought it couldn’t get much more difficult than 2024, 2025 proved worse. Breijo outlines the topline causes: the January fires, the immigrant raids and downtown curfew, tariffs and inflation and an 8% decline in international summer tourism, according to California’s tourism board.

It’s a painful, important read, punctuated by chefs and owners across the city that Breijo interviewed. One that guts me is from Sang Yoon, who announced he was closing the Helms Bakery complex he revived a year ago, before he could open the planned full-service restaurant called Dinette.

“It feels like L.A. really lost a couple steps,” Yoon said to Breijo. “Late-night is gone. People are closing earlier. … It just doesn’t feel right. I grew up here, and it’s probably the weirdest it’s felt in my whole life. And I’ve been through a lot of weird.