Famend for its elegant izakaya-style dishes and tasting menu served counterside, Shibumi earned its first Michelin star in 2019. Now, 9 years because the restaurant’s opening, it should shut on July 19, chef-owner David Schlosser wrote in an Instagram publish final week.
“We embarked on a journey fueled by an outpouring of love, passion and curiosity from an extraordinary community,” Schlosser wrote. “We dared to be different, reviving ancient recipes and time-honored techniques that carried the weight of centuries.”
When Shibumi opened in 2015, Schlosser aimed to deliver each Japanese classics and upscale tasting menus, generally with centuries-old recipes, to downtown L.A. Now, as enterprise dwindles for a lot of eating places and different institutions and citywide crises resembling homelessness pervade, even award-winning eating places like Shibumi are struggling to maintain doorways open.
“In the end of 2023 to 2024, things really flattened out — the staff is the same, the recipes were the same. The only thing that wasn’t the same was people just weren’t coming in,” Schlosser stated. “Any business owner invests in a community. And when you see that same destruction and graffiti 10 years later, it’s sad.”
Shibumi joins a rising crowd of current restaurant closures in L.A., together with the 117-year-old Cole’s French Dip downtown, soul meals bistro My 2 Cents on West Pico Boulevard and pure wine bar Melody in Virgil Village.
“Shibumi, a modest, season-dependent izakaya on a lonely block downtown, feels like a Tokyo restaurant in important ways, which is probably kind of the point,” Jonathan Gold wrote in 2016. “Schlosser’s smack of pure obsession may be precisely what downtown needs.”
Shibumi is open Wednesday by Sunday from 6 to 9 p.m.
815 S. Hill St., Los Angeles, (323) 484-8915, shibumidtla.com
Cabra
Cabra’s rooftop bar and eating area on the Hoxton lodge downtown.
(Cabra)
Cabra, opened in 2022 by Woman & the Goat chef and “Top Chef” winner Stephanie Izard, will shut on July 31. The Peruvian restaurant and bar is positioned on the rooftop of the Hoxton lodge in downtown L.A., which is discovering new management for its two eating places — Cabra and Moonlark’s Dinette, the latter of which is able to stay open in the course of the transition.
“We’re incredibly proud of what we built together at the Hoxton, Downtown L.A.,” stated Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz, co-founders of Boka Restaurant Group, which operates Cabra, in a press release to The Occasions. “It’s been a privilege to be part of this community, and we’re excited to keep doing what we love at Girl & the Goat, just around the corner.”
The Peruvian-inspired restaurant, identified for its array of ceviches, skewers and tropical cocktails, is open Sunday by Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. and for Sunday brunch from 10:30 a.m. to three p.m.
1060 S Broadway, Los Angeles, (213) 725-5858, cabralosangeles.com
Mom Tongue 
The outside bar of Mom Tongue, the restaurant inside Heimat.
(Heimat / Purple PR)
Chef Michael Mina’s health-minded and globally-influenced Mom Tongue, positioned on the rooftop of a members-only health membership in Hollywood, closed in late June. The rooftop restaurant opened in 2022 with the purpose of highlighting non-processed, complete substances on its menu, which provided a wide range of Mediterranean-inspired dips, appetizers and mains, together with veggie-forward pastas and sides.
“It’s really about how you take the best dishes and prioritize a health and wellness component from start to finish, from the products to the techniques,” Mina, chef and proprietor of Orla in Santa Monica and Bourbon Steak in Glendale, advised The Occasions earlier than Mom Tongue opened.
Verve Espresso (Spring Avenue) 
Verve Espresso Roasters’ downtown L.A. location closed on June 1.
(Verve Espresso Roasters)
When Verve Espresso Roasters first arrived in L.A. in 2015, the third-wave espresso store grew to become identified for its roasted beans and a juice bar inside its fashionable industrial cafe on Spring Avenue. Over the subsequent ten years — throughout which the Santa Cruz-based chain opened 4 extra cafes in L.A., one in every of which comprises a roastery, together with a number of outlets in Japan, and extra not too long ago launched its personal line of matcha — Verve earned a repute as one of many metropolis’s most dependable espresso spots, adapting to prospects’ altering preferences with extra distinctive teas and coffees on the menu.
On June 1, Verve closed its Spring Avenue espresso store, its first in Southern California, citing downtown L.A.’s “evolving landscape” as the rationale for closure in an Instagram publish.
Verve Espresso Roasters will proceed to function at its different L.A. places in Manhattan Seashore, West Hollywood and the Arts District.
