Inflation, retirement, and a bevy of other factors have hit restaurants hard this year, with rising food, labor, and rent costs butting up against a customer base that’s tightening its belt. Some decades-old staples are now in danger of closing if things don’t turn around or if new owners don’t step up to the plate.
Los Angeles
This Los Angeles deli has been slinging pastrami since 1947. It’s especially famous for its No. 19, featuring hot pastrami, slaw, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing on rye. However, owner Norm Langer suggested in August that he might close the MacArthur Park restaurant due to issues with unhoused residents, crime, and sanitation concerns in the neighborhood that he claims have left many customers feeling unsafe.
LA Mayor Karen Bass met with Langer to discuss solutions and the restaurant remains open for breakfast and lunch … for now.
Vancouver, Washington
Beaches, Vancouver’s waterfront restaurant, will close after 29 years on Dec. 31 with the retirement of husband-and-wife owners Mark Matthias and Ali Novinger. The restaurant gained local recognition for its open kitchen, then a rarity in the area, and its place in the community as a champion of nonprofits.
It will be replaced in 2025 by Oswego Grill, a chain from Oregon.
Woodland, California
The oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the U.S. is located 20 miles outside of Sacramento, but owners Paul Fong, 76, and Nancy Fong, 67, are preparing for retirement. The couple emigrated from Hong Kong to the US in 1973, but the restaurant had been in Paul Fong’s family for much longer — though he isn’t sure how his family got into the restaurant business nor why they named it after another city in another state.
Though the restaurant is more popular now than it’s ever been, it’s unclear what will happen to it when the Fongs call it quits, as their children have taken different career paths.
New York
It’s unclear when this 40-year-old restaurant will reopen, but it’s shut down twice in the last few years. It first closed in 2020, amid the pandemic, offering one final night’s hurrah as lockdowns swept the nation. Yet despite declaring that closure permanent, it reopened in 2021, with a new owner and chef. But in June 2024, it shuttered again.
Owners Cassandra and Brett Csencsitz said they were already barely hanging on amid a slow summer when the restaurant lost $45,000 to a cyber scam in which they were conned by an email made to look like it came from their payroll company. Despite plans to reopen in August, it remains closed.
San Francisco
Sam Wo Restaurant, a 116-year-old Chinese Restaurant in the Bay Area, will close if a buyer isn’t secured before co-owner and chef David Jitong Ho retires from the family business after 42 years, and the restaurant’s lease expires. Sam Wo became known for its late-night Cantonese cuisine and waiter Edsel Ford Fung, known as “the world’s rudest, worst, most insulting waiter.”
Ho has offered to teach new buyers how to make signature dishes, or, if a buyer wants to start from scratch, Sam Wo will auction off its furniture, artwork, and the many photographs it's collected of famous diners.
San Diego
San Diego’s oldest Mexican restaurant isn’t closing any time soon, despite pervasive rumors. Sofia Estudillo told San Diego Magazine that her sister, Margarita Hernandez, who owns the restaurant, will likely sell the property, but not the business, in the next couple years. At that point, there will be no one left in the family who wishes to run it. For the time being, customers are welcome to enjoy its famous homemade tortillas.
San Francisco
Hobson’s Choice, known for bowls of rum punch, opened in 1988 on San Francisco’s famous Haight Street. Owner Chris Dickerson said that unlike nearby establishments that have closed over rent disputes, his rent actually dropped — but so has foot traffic. Many of the service industry workers who’d stop by after their shifts are gone. While the bar remains open for now, it’s unclear for how long, should business fail to rebound.
Copenhagen, Denmark
Rene Redzepi’s Noma, considered one of the best restaurants in the world, will close in 2025. After that, it will become a pop-up in various cities; currently, such a version is operating in Kyoto through Dec. 18, and Copenhagen will follow.
The restaurant itself will turn into a lab to develop new flavors for said pop-ups, while Noma Projects will continue to sell sauces and other unique, small-batch products. Redzepi told TheJapan Times he’d long wanted to run a restaurant with “pop-up energy,” where “you open for a moment and then it goes away, almost like performance art.”