Latest news with #GenghisCohen
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Another Legendary LA Restaurant, Genghis Cohen, Set to Close
Landlords for the Genghis Cohen, a landmark Chinese eatery on Fairfax featured in "The Chinese Restaurant" episode of Seinfeld will shut the doors of its red-hued eatery at 740 N. Fairfax on May 31. "After over a three year long lease negotiation, the original location of the close," according to a statement released by the restaurant's owners Marc Rose and Med Abrous. They added that they were "unable to secure a long term lease solution at a reasonable rate as the property is being redeveloped by the landlords."The landlords N. Fairfax Holdings LLC filed an eviction order against Genghis Cohen in November, according to property records. It's unclear what the classic Chinese restaurant will be replaced with. Genghis Cohen, long considered a New York Style Chinatown eatery for Angelenos, will be moved to a temporary space a few blocks south on Fairfax once occupied by Sweet Chick this June until they are able to find a more permanent home. But the last service will be held on May 31. The closing marks the loss of yet another iconic L.A. eatery. Original Pantry, a DTLA staple for a century, closed last month. A slew of Sunset Boulevard restaurants are also preparing to serve last suppers in the coming months, among them Hudson House and the Den. "With so many iconic restaurants closing (from the past year alone Original Pantry Cafe, Le Petit Four, Patrick's Roadhouse, The list goes on) Marc and Med were hellbent on protecting this piece of LA restaurant history that they have stewarded over the last decade and tirelessly worked on finding a temporary location for the restaurant," the owners said in the statement. Genghis Cohen opened in 1983 by New York City native, music producer Allan Rinde who was working for Cherokee Studios at the time. He bought a pizza joint across the street and created Genghis Cohen, which served as a bit of home and a practice space for the bands he worked with. In 1997, Allan sold Genghis Cohen to long-time maitre d, Raymond Kiu, whose family ran the restaurant until they sold it a couple of regulars, the current owners. Never Miss a Beat! Subscribe to Los Angeles Magazine's The Daily Brief for daily updates delivered straight to your inbox. Join below or by clicking here.
Los Angeles Times
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A moment of culinary escape in Spain before the tariffs struck
What a tripe meatball reveals. Plus, a restaurant for those bored with crudo on every menu, West Hollywood restaurant closures, Genghis Cohen's last days on Fairfax, James Beard finalists, a Coachella food preview and variations on the Dodger dog. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. Chef Daniel Ochoa (no relation) approached my table with a wooden tray balancing a pair of kitchen scissors and an arrangement of clay bowls, including one with a neatly tied ball that I was about to discover contained the best meatball I have ever eaten. This was the chef's very personal vision of callos, a reworking of the traditional Spanish tripe dish, often made with morcilla or blood sausage, chorizo and pig's feet, which help make the sauce especially rich. Where Mexican menudo uses hominy, or nixtamalized corn, callos sometimes includes chickpeas and is more of a stew than a soup. 'It's the most important dish of the restaurant,' Ochoa told me when I was deciding whether to get the full or abbreviated tasting menu at his Michelin-starred restaurant Montia in San Lorenzo de El Escorial on the hilly outskirts of Madrid. Once I knew callos — served in two courses — was on the full menu, I went all in. At the table, Ochoa took the scissors and snipped the clean, beige natural casing, which was taut like a balloon. Immediately a beautiful brick-orange sauce seasoned with paprika, rosemary and bay leaves oozed out. He held up the bundle with twine between the blades of his scissors to let all of the sauce drip into the bowl and then with one quick motion, like a magician's slight-of-hand trick, flipped the tripe-and-morcilla meatball into the bowl. Next he plated the meatball and sauce in a fresh bowl and crowned the dish with a lightly fried, chickpea-flour-dusted circle of lacy book or Bible tripe, the most delicate of the three basic tripe types. The dish, both funky and sophisticated, was full of rich, rustic flavors that also had an air of elegance. Next came part two of the procession — a more traditional version of callos with delicious stewed squares of tripe and sausage, slightly closer to what you might find in a Madrid bar. It was fascinating to find these distant cousins of the menudo I grew up eating during the holidays in a Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant. The callos seemed to bring together my Spanish, Mexican and Peruvian heritage in a single dish. Making these connections is one of the reasons we travel. My meal at Montia, during a long-planned trip to Spain, came the week before the world exploded with bewilderment over the extent of the Trump administration's tariffs. It was an escape that seems especially sweet in retrospect now that stock markets are plunging and airlines are pessimistic about the demand for travel as consumer confidence is rattled. Always a luxury, travel is one of the first things people forgo when the economy feels uncertain. Yet with each trip I take I acquire new insights not only into the world at large, but also into my own smaller world at home. In addition to the callos connection, eating at Montia, about a 45-minute Uber ride from central Madrid — think Pasadena to Santa Monica with less traffic — gave me a fresh look at what it means to eat locally. Certainly, California chefs cook with seasonal local produce, but at Ochoa's restaurant, with a working garden behind the restaurant and the dining room built around two trees that reach through the ceiling, you feel the forest's influence. The Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range rises above the restaurant's town, and it's a good bet that the morel mushrooms surrounded by an escargot broth were harvested nearby. One of his welcome snacks is a wild rabbit croquette. I was also intrigued by the chef's treatment of sweetbreads. Instead of serving the nodes whole, where they sometimes look like chicken nuggets, Ochoa slices the sweetbreads horizontally and grills them, almost making them appear like a rare piece of steak. The restaurant's service was warm and inviting, even for a solo diner, which I was that night. The chefs, their aprons fastened with only a single shoulder strap giving the brigade a pirate spirit, brought out each of the dishes and explained how they were prepared with charm and passion. And it was hard not to fall under the spell of Marco Massolini, the restaurant's wine guru whose enthusiasm for natural wines is infectious. When the bill came, it was shockingly reasonable compared with Los Angeles tasting menus that can cost more than $300 per person without wine. Montia charged about $250 — 130 euros for some 20 dishes plus 78 euros for an extensive wine pairing. If the tariff situation eases and we feel secure enough to travel again, Montia is a place I'd love to eat again. Columnist Jenn Harris' newest restaurant review takes a look at chef Zach Scherer's Santa Ana restaurant Darkroom: 'Imagine your cool friend from college, the one with really good taste in music, throwing a dinner party where the vibes are consistently immaculate. ... The menu is as unpredictable as the music, zigzagging among Asian, Mediterranean and Latin influences before skidding to a stop at dessert. And it likely will change with each visit. ... If you're experiencing menu fatigue, weary of the parkerhouse rolls, gem lettuce salads and crudo at just about every 'small plates' restaurant in town, consider Darkroom the antidote.' Harris also has a separate rundown of nine affordable L.A. lunch spots where a meal costs $15 or less. It seemed like Genghis Cohen, with its 1980s-inflected signage and 'Kanton Knish' would always be a Fairfax Avenue fixture. But as Stephanie Breijo reports, the New York-style Chinese American restaurant and music venue is under threat now that it's being forced to move from its strip mall location on May 31 after failing to negotiate an acceptable new lease with the ownership company that is redeveloping the building. Construction has already begun around the restaurant. Current owners Marc Rose and Med Abrous, who took over the business in 2015, 'are planning a temporary relocation of the restaurant as they search for a more permanent home,' Breijo writes. They 'see the survival of Genghis Cohen as stewarding a bit of the city's restaurant history.' 'We have been working our tails off to find a solution, and I believe that we found the best possible solution to a real crappy situation that we were put in,' Rose said. 'We love this place, we love what we do, and none of that is going away.' Fingers crossed. Meanwhile, senior food editor Danielle Dorsey writes that 'after a swell of community support that ultimately couldn't save Le Petit Four, the sunny French-Californian bistro in West Hollywood closed [March 31] after 44 years of business.' 'Sunset used to be the place to hang out. It was packed, packed, packed,' owner Alexandre Morgenthaler told Dorsey. 'But since COVID everything went up in price. Minimum wage went up 30% in West Hollywood. We lost traffic.' Two other West Hollywood restaurants, Dorsey reports, have also closed: the Den on Sunset, open for 16 years, and the West Hollywood location of Irish pub chain Rock & Reilly's. 'In an effort to bring traffic back to the area,' Dorsey adds, 'West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the city of West Hollywood launched an April initiative that provides free parking across all meters, city lots and city structures every Wednesday from 4 p.m. to midnight. And dozens of restaurants and bars are offering discounts and happy hour deals to encourage patronage, including $10 cocktails and bites at Formosa Cafe and $8 cocktails at Connie & Ted's.' One sign of hope: Karen Garcia reports that Norm Langer, who seven months ago told columnist Steve Lopez that he was thinking about closing the 72-year-old Langer's Deli in part because of city neglect, has seen enough progress in the neighborhood from the Karen Bass administration to stick around — at least for now. Not that everything is perfect, but he sees the effort and hopes to stick around for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Super Bowl LXl in 2027 and the 2028 Summer Olympics. Stephanie Breijo devoted last weekend's cooking newsletter to variations on the Dodger dog, starting with a conversation with Tommy Brockert of the Dodger-themed La Sorted's where he offers a Dodger-dog-inspired pizza and will have a rotation of regional hot dogs throughout this year's baseball season. She also includes recipes for former L.A. Times Test Kitchen director Noelle Carter's make-your-own hot dog cart, Marcy Goldman's homemade hot dog buns and chef Curtis Stone's tomato sauce, a.k.a. ketchup. And sneak peak for next week: Jenn Harris went to Dodger Stadium to rank the best new foods, including the most baroque variation on a Dodger dog yet: the $40 Slugger, a hot dog with a 16-inch jalapeño cheddar sausage so long it needs its own handled cardboard carrying case. Look for her story and video on Monday morning.
Los Angeles Times
04-04-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Legendary N.Y.-style Chinese restaurant and music venue to close in May, live on elsewhere
For decades, a raucous restaurant-cum-music venue along Fairfax Avenue has been a top destination for Angelenos seeking a taste of Chinese American cuisine. This spring, that restaurant is set to close, possibly to be demolished along with the rest of its strip mall — but its owners are planning to save Genghis Cohen and its long-lasting legacy. For now, the red paper lanterns still hang over a dining room filled with all walks of L.A. life. They've come to nosh on egg rolls, the 'Kanton Knish,' orange-peel beef and other specialties of the venerated New York-style Chinese restaurant. Live music bleeds through the walls from the adjacent performance space. But on May 31, Genghis Cohen will shutter at 740 N. Fairfax Ave. due to a failure to renegotiate the building's lease and plans to redevelop Fairfax Plaza. 'The future of Genghis as a whole is going to remain bright, because we're going to make sure it does,' said co-owner Marc Rose. 'Our sleeves are getting rolled up.' Rose and his business partner, Med Abrous, are planning a temporary relocation of the restaurant as they search for a more permanent home; the restaurateurs — also behind the revitalization of Beverly Hills' La Dolce Vita and the Hollywood Roosevelt's the Spare Room — see the survival of Genghis Cohen as stewarding a bit of the city's restaurant history, and they're optimistic about keeping it alive. That's not to say they haven't lost sleep over the move. A company called N Fairfax Holdings LLC purchased the strip mall roughly five years ago. Rose said contract negotiations for Genghis Cohen have lasted roughly three years, sometimes including months of silence from their landlord. In November, the ownership company filed a commercial eviction against the parent LLC of Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The case is in the process of being settled, according to court documents. The strip mall, once called Fairfax Plaza, previously included a RadioShack, a ballroom dance studio and a newsstand in addition to Genghis Cohen; all businesses beyond the restaurant have been demolished, with new construction underway. Representatives for N Fairfax Holdings LLC could not be reached for comment. The property manager, Jude Kim of Charles Dunn Real Estate Services, declined to comment on the future of the building. 'Genghis Cohen, in that timeline, was not in the plans for redevelopment of the property, it's become clear to us now,' Abrous said. 'As the negotiations went on, it became clear that not only were we not going to be able to negotiate a rent number that would work within our business model but the actual physical amenities of the building were going to be reduced.' The parking lot for their restaurant, they said, would have no longer been available for guests under the new lease terms. In a tumultuous landscape that's seen hundreds of Los Angeles restaurants close in the last two years, the owners said they could not knowingly enter an arrangement that could put Genghis Cohen in a position to fail; a sizable rent increase, along with removing conveniences such as the parking lot, spurred them to look elsewhere. 'We have been working our tails off to find a solution, and I believe that we found the best possible solution to a real crappy situation that that we were put in,' Rose said, adding, 'I think people are becoming numb to it because it's happening so often, where people aren't able to survive or they're closing. We are dead set, hellbent, on not doing that. We love this place, we love what we do, and none of that is going away.' Abrous and Rose purchased the restaurant in 2015, the third ownership change in its history. Music publicist Allan Rinde founded Genghis Cohen in 1983 as a means to serve the New York-style Chinese cuisine rarely found on the West Coast at the time. He later added the music room, which became integral to its identity, and hosted celebrated acts such as Jackson Browne, Beck, Dave Grohl, Bonnie Raitt and Tom Morello, among others. In 1997, Rinde sold the business to longtime server Raymond Kiu. Nearly 20 years later, Rose and Abrous were approached by a realtor to take over the space but not to continue Genghis Cohen. 'I don't think they realized they were coming to two guys who loved this style of food, who loved the idea of Genghis Cohen and who love L.A. history,' Rose said. 'We had to almost convince the [Kiu] family that we were going to carry the torch and how much Genghis Cohen meant to us and what we thought it could be. We really saw so much more than just a restaurant on Fairfax.' In their tenure, they've watched the dining tables fill with families, young skateboarders and sneakerheads making their way north from the streetwear shops along Fairfax, young Hollywood types, musicians of all ages and older generations of the restaurant's original fans. Through the years, they've updated the dining room, reconfiguring seats and adding a blue-glowing fish tank near the entrance. They've renovated the bathrooms, revamped the cocktail program, overhauled the ingredient sourcing for the food menu and approached the live programming with renewed zeal. 'I think it's bittersweet,' Abrous said. 'On one hand, I think we never really imagined it moving. But I think evolution is inevitable, and what once was unimaginable is turning into something that can be very positive. We see this as an opportunity to do it better.' May 31 will be the last day of service in the original location, and Rose and Abrous want the transition to be as seamless as possible. They'll be moving south along Fairfax and temporarily taking over the former Sweet Chick space, which is surrounded by Jon & Vinny's, Canter's, Badmaash, Prime Pizza and Cofax Coffee. Delivery will begin from the new, temporary outpost June 1, with dine-in service to follow in the ensuing weeks; it echoes their purchase of Genghis Cohen in 2015, when they never missed a day of service taking over the business. When Genghis Cohen reopens in its temporary location, guests might find different touches and new colorways, a tandem space to the original — by no means a re-creation of the iconic dining room of 740 N. Fairfax Ave. The iconic large, three-piece neon signs might wait in storage. While dining room seating is comparable, the bar is much larger, doubling the stools — which Rose and Abrous see as an opportunity to expand the cocktails. The food, they said, will remain the same and possibly include a few new items. 'There's such an energy and a vibe in that [original] room,' Rose said. 'We don't plan on doing an exact mirrored image because that wouldn't feel right. How could we possibly do that?' What will be notably missing in the temporary space is a stage: something the restaurant's owners feel is a necessary component in Genghis Cohen's future permanent location. In the meantime, while they search for that home, they hope to promote shows 'under the Genghis Cohen moniker' elsewhere. That's not to say the shows will trickle to a halt in anticipation of the move. Both owners say that they hope to fill the stage with even more performances, and new programming and specials both in the dining room and the music room. 'We're not just going to leave quietly,' Rose said. 'We're going to have so much fun in there the next couple months, because we don't want this to be a funeral. We're going to celebrate everything that 740 N. Fairfax has brought for us these years, with the intention of welcoming everything new that's going to come.'
