Rossoblu and Employees Only Are Los Angeles’s Latest Brutal Restaurant Closures
Rossoblu, Downtown Los Angeles | Wonho Frank Lee Over Labor Day weekend, a locally loved Downtown Los Angeles Italian restaurant and West Hollywood bar, the latter originally a transplant from New York, separately announced they would cease operations in 2026. The nearly 10-year-old Rossoblu, chef Steve Samson and wife–business partner Dina Samson’s Northern Italian restaurant, will close on Sunday, November 1, 2026; the Samsons tell Eater they recently sold the business. West Hollywood’s Employees Only, which debuted in 2018 on Santa Monica Boulevard slightly west of Fairfax Avenue, will serve its final cocktail on Sunday, September 27. Both business owners echoed similar challenges surrounding the general dining slowdown in Los Angeles, plus cost increases with labor, rent, ingredients, and more. Employees Only managing partner Tom Sopit says that the current business and consumer climate made it difficult to stay open. “It wasn’t really one thing that killed us,” says Sopit. “It was
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The Best French Restaurants in Los Angeles
Camélia. | Wonho Frank Lee For those seeking French fare across the city, look no further than these charming, California-coded bistros and brasseries. Each place fits the bill for romantic date nights or casual lunches with friends over classics like steak frites, croque monsieurs, and escargot, all washed down with a bottle of Bordeaux, of course. The cuisine has proliferated in Los Angeles over the last two years, making it even more exciting to go out and say “oui” to that third glass of wine as the parade of French favorites marches out. Here are the best French bistros and brasseries in Los Angeles. New this update: Electric Bleu joins the list, while the now-closed Amour leaves. Rebecca Roland is a devoted fan of steak frites (always cooked to medium rare), and will always be chasing that perfect baguette and butter. Matthew Kang considers Paris one of the world’s greatest cities and loves the bistro fare at Josephine Chez Dumonet, a restaurant that probably cannot be replicated
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Best Los Angeles Restaurants for Takeout and Delivery, According to Eater Editors
Top Restaurant's fried chicken. | Wonho Frank Lee Over the past few years, almost every restaurant has had to figure out a way to offer some version of takeout and delivery food, but that does not mean that everyone has mastered the craft. There are definitely certain kinds of food that can work well after a few minutes of sitting in to-go containers, like Filipino rice dishes or Thai curries, and sometimes restaurants do an exemplary job of preparing foods so they can be thoughtfully reheated without changing the integrity of the flavors — or eaten on the spot inside a car. It’s no easy task to sort through the middling takeout options, though, so best to leave it to the professionals. Here are the best restaurants that have perfected takeout and delivery in Los Angeles. New this update: This update adds a handful of picks to the list, including Valley vegan restaurant El Cocinero, Caribbean restaurant Bridgetown Roti, and Persian restaurants Kuku Cafe and Taste of Tehran. Leaving the
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The Best Caribbean Restaurants in Los Angeles, According to Eater Editors
Bridgetown Roti. | Wonho Frank Lee Los Angeles’s small-but-mighty Caribbean diasporic restaurant scene includes compelling community destinations specializing in Jamaican, Cuban, Trinidadian, Puerto Rican, Belizean, Dominican, Haitian, and Garifuna cuisines. Influenced by Indigenous traditions, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and other colonizing forces, immigrants from India, and local tropical ingredients, the Caribbean’s flavors are as vast as the region itself, which includes two dozen island nations. The results are unique and flavorful dishes like Jamaican jerk chicken, Dominican pernil, and Belizean panades. Without further ado, here are the best Caribbean restaurants to try right now in Los Angeles. In this update, Eater adds Jamaican-Chinese restaurant ABL Hollywood and Silver Lake’s Afro-Caribbean spot, Amiguita. Trinistyle Cuisine was removed this round.
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All the New Restaurant Openings to Know in Los Angeles
General Tso’s chicken. | Stan Lee 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 Hottest New Restaurants in Los Angeles
Mapo tofu. | Stan Lee The Eater Los Angeles Heatmap has existed for nearly two decades to answer the age-old question: “What’s hot and new in LA?” Eater editors do thorough reporting on the most exciting restaurant openings to hit Los Angeles, as well as smaller openings and hidden gems worth having on the radar. Though the local dining scene has endured tremendous challenges in recent years, the city’s spirit of breaking ground and exploring new cuisines and forms continues every month. In this map, we narrow the field to those places that are drawing the most excitement, crowds, and early positive chatter, focusing largely on restaurants that have only been open for six months or less. Here are the hottest new restaurants to check out in Los Angeles. New this update: Mokja, Tiger Tiger, Mistral, and Chain join the list, while Bar di Bello, Bar Betsy, Bengara, and Sushi Samba leave. For even more of an insider’s perspective on how to eat well in Los Angeles, pick up our guidebook: The
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Your Los Angeles Restaurant Guide: Labor Day Weekend Edition
La Jollita. | La Jollita 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 a surprisingly excellent marisquería in the heart of a tony beach town: La Jollita in La Jolla, California It would be easy to cock an eyebrow at La Jollita, the raucous marisquería on the main strip of touristy La Jolla, and move on. It is, after all, a sort of expensive mariscos joint in a fancy beach town, occupying prime real estate a block from the ocean — you can occasionally hear the local sea lions barking, even over the restaurant’s energetic soundtrack. But everything is so much better than the location would suggest, starting with Mazatlán-style shrimp cocktail, something of a level-setter at marisquerías, which arrives in a little glass bowl full
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After Years of Loss, Barman Matthew Biancaniello Returns With a New Orleans Oyster Pop-Up in Chinatown
Matthew Biancaniello’s Shochu oyster for the Evangeline Swamp Room pop-up. | Bradley Tuck Los Angeles’s celebrated barman Matthew Biancaniello is back. This month, he’ll get together with the Evangeline Swamp Room on September 17, 2026, to host an oyster and cocktail pop-up that nods to the rich foodways of New Orleans. The collaboration between one of Los Angeles’s most innovative bartenders and Chinatown’s popular New Orleans–themed bar represents a comeback of sorts for Biancaniello. As one of Los Angeles’s longtime cocktail mavericks, Biancaniello was instrumental in transforming the bars at Library Bar from 2008 to 2012, and at the Hollywood Roosevelt, where he evolved the hotel bar into an ingredient-driven cocktail destination. He published Eat Your Drink in 2016 and ran crowd-pleasing pop-ups throughout the region where he experimented with unconventional preparation techniques, ingredients from his own garden, tinctures, and drew a following that regularly sold out his events.
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Where to Get Rosh Hashanah Dinner in Los Angeles, 2026
Rosh Hashanah spread at Mish. | Mish Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, begins in the evening on Friday, September 11, and is celebrated through Sunday, September 13. The holiday kicks off what is known as the 10 days of awe, a period of reflection and, for some, repentance in the Jewish religion. Rosh Hashanah is the lighter side of the high holidays, with observers encouraged to eat challah or apples dipped in golden honey to usher in a sweet new year. In Los Angeles, members of the Jewish diasporic community have the opportunity to order complete takeout meals (or complementary sides to home-cooked dishes) to assemble and eat at home, and this year, there are some dine-in options to explore as well. Read on for where to order Rosh Hashanah dinner in Los Angeles in 2026. Mish Eric Greenspan’s new modern Jewish deli has a full slate of Rosh Hashanah specials to fete the holiday. For $275, the Mish holiday meal, which feeds four to six people, includes sweet and sour slow-cooked brisk
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Lincoln Heights’ 100-Year-Old Bar Grows Up
I feel like every Angeleno has a story about the Airliner — mostly involving getting drunk or dropping acid at parties thrown at the historic Lincoln Heights bar. But that reputation has shifted since partners chef Vinh Nguyen and Gary Wang resurrected the bar in 2023. The interior space got a facelift with a newly varnished bar counter, reupholstered booth seating, and swanky wallpaper reminiscent of accordion fans. The menu, too, has been reimagined — changing the Airliner from a casual dive often used for pregaming concerts to a serious dining destination with an inviting happy hour menu, intentional cocktails, and natural wine. Although I’m nostalgic for the former glory days of the Airliner, this new, grown-up iteration feels even better. What to order For the table, an order of whipped ricotta drizzled with chile crisp combines the creaminess of fluffy cheese, ample amounts of garlic, and roasted chiles to make something delightful to heap onto nutty tostada discs. Mentaiko spag
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