The Impossible Restaurant
An ode to an anonymous restaurant that no longer exists.
I can’t tell you the name of the impossible restaurant, or where it used to be. I can only recount to you its quiet exceptionalism amidst the jostling crowds of the indisputable food city of America, regale you of the ways it defied business logic and hospitality credulity, and lament its tired and sudden exit, unnoticed by all but a lucky, untethered few.
He texted me as I pulled into the parking space:
“So they definitely look closed.”
Panic. They couldn’t be closed already. I had it on good authority—hm, decent authority—that this was the last full week of business. But it wouldn’t be the first curveball the restaurant had thrown.
I met him just down the sidewalk. “They look closed?”
“Yeah. Chairs are up, lights are off, door locked, change-of-tenant sign in the window…”
“Let me see.”
“Sure.”
We walked up. The lights were on, the chairs were down, the tables set, the door open; though a change-of-tenant sign was in the window, true enough. “Oh thank god.”
He stopped. “It wasn’t like this a second ago…”
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” I replied. “She was probably hiding from you.”
We entered and the host suddenly emerged, exchanged friendly greetings and introductions, and sat us down. Then, from the moment we unhooked the menus from the little suction mount on the window, my friend, bewildered that already the strange things I had told him of this place were proving true, fell rightly enthralled.
The restaurant was small and insignificant. It sat on a busy stretch of road in a populous sub-city of Greater Los Angeles, one more tenant of another small business plaza, and in that plaza, on that stretch of road, it was practically invisible. The name of the restaurant was displayed in typical box letters mounted on the street-facing facade, then weathered and faded by what was to be its final year, a name that was the solitary hint to its Japanese offerings. The restaurant did not post a menu or hours, and aside from the mandatory Health rating (A), it issued no further clues as to what its nondescript exteriors contained. Unlike every other restaurant on the street, every other restaurant in that populous sub-city, every other restaurant in Greater Los Angeles, there was not one single element attracting customers to enter the restaurant.
Yet the restaurant was there, and had been there for over a decade. It had endured that long through the stubborn, dedicated will of its enigmatic owner-chef, who ran it alone for years before hiring its sole other employee to handle the front-of-house. His craftsmanship would almost certainly have landed the restaurant on any respectable list of izakaya cuisine in LA, and likely high on those lists, too. But the restaurant, in its lifetime, wouldn’t be found on a single list. In large part because it did not want to be found at all.
To have landed yourself in the restaurant’s dining room you must have been absurdly lucky, to either have known someone who was already a regular, who felt confident enough to invite you, or to have wandered in, randomly, on a day so slow that the kind but reluctant host had no choice but to seat you. And even then, you must have been irresistably charming.
The restaurant was in fact very much like the Isla de Muerta of Pirates of the Caribbean: “An island that cannot be found, unless ye already know where ‘tis.” You could (and I did) pass it hundreds of times and never really see it. It was not a speakeasy.* The restaurant was a true secret: a careful, unbreakable bond of trust between friends. You could not find the restaurant without help, and if you found it, you could (probably) not get in without express invitation or permitted accompaniment.
*A speakeasy is like a stage-whispered secret, a secret wildly insecure in its secrecy: “Did you hear about Secret Place? It’s a secret place where you have to know the secret to get in! It’s crazy on weekends.”
This was the essence of the restaurant’s impossibility: that a quiet, utterly anonymous restaurant could survive in Los Angeles’s increasingly cutthroat restaurant market, at all, and then for so long. There’s simply too much competition, too many other restaurants—many, many too many—vying for the limited attention of millions of distracted eyes to attract a limited share of a portion of the wallet in the least livable city in the country for a restaurant to be doing anything less than shouting itself hoarse both physically and digitally. To do less, to act in any sense short of desperation, is tantamount to drawing up a Going Out Of Business sign. A Los Angeles restaurant must demand to be seen, must promise a singular and thrilling experience, even a prestige, to its discerning, zeit-driven customers, must constantly invite, bark, and post so as not to be missed, so as not be forgotten as eyes turn to the next brightest thing, as ears tune to the next loudest voice. A Los Angeles restaurant must do all that, be all that…or else. Those are the rules. And even when the rules are followed, there’s a tragic, better-than-good chance that “else” may befall anyway. The impossible restaurant did none of it. It either did not know the rules, or was indifferent to them. If it had a voice, it was one that had never known a shout—a kind, soft murmur that spoke only to people it already knew—and still, the restaurant led a long and apparently satisfied life.
In fact, the restaurant went beyond merely not-attracting customers: it actively turned them away. This was the strangest, most mind-boggling aspect of it, perhaps its most impossible quirk. Here’s a situation that would occur not-infrequently: a passerby on the busy sidewalk would glance in the window, stop mid-step, and curiously inspect the customers dining inside. They would lean back, look up at the sign as if reading it for the first time, and walk around to the door to further investigate—and here, things inevitably went awry for the innocent stranger. For the host would intercept them with some piece of terribly unfortunate news: there would be a “three hour wait;” or, in profuse apologies, the food was “very, very traditional Japanese” and “not for everyone;” or, alas, the tables were “all reserved.” She would do nearly everything but put on white gloves and shove them out the door like a Tokyo subway pusher. Certainly, there was sometimes a wait; but not three hours. The menu was distinctly Japanese and unadapted to American tastes; but hardly unapproachable. There were no reservations. The restaurant simply did not like to take chances on the unfamiliar, unless they were vouched for by a regular.
The first time I heard about the restaurant, I was at dinner elsewhere with friends, friends who were regulars, as I was about to discover. These friends began to discuss a recent visit where they’d brought someone to the restaurant for the first time. I innocently inquired as to what restaurant they were talking about—and the conversation stopped. They eyed me suspiciously, and let the silence stretch, long, going taut…then finally replied: “We can’t tell you.”
I said:
“WHAT.”
They backpedaled. “You write about food! We can’t take you!”
“What is this, some kind of secret restaurant?” I blurted, and I saw the truth in their eyes even as they narrowed, walls going up. I tried to deescalate. “Listen, I don’t just write about anything. I’m not some kind of…” I hissed the word, “...foodie.”
But they refused to engage me any further on the subject. It required months of groveling and profuse promises of non-disclosure to finally penetrate the veil of secrecy. As antisocial as the restaurant itself was, its regulars could be far more aggressively, if justifiably, paranoid.
It was not (only) for shyness or paranoia that the restaurant evaded the public. It seemed, at least partly, in order to cultivate a consistently pleasant dining experience. The cozy dining room was never noticeably loud, even when full, and though there was music, it was played at a barely perceptible volume. “Full” also meant 16 occupied seats; hardly a crowd. Parties larger than three were rare exceptions. A soft buzz of conversation was the peak of loudness, and though there was beer and soju there was never drunkenness. The remaining background noise of the room was filled with a persistent chorus of “yummy sounds:” slurps, “ooh!”s, and “mmm…”s. It was an environment of ease and enjoyment, of a tranquility that is at best affected at restaurants, often achieved over an underlying current of tense, behind-the-scenes labor. Here the ease was real, and extended to the back of house as well as the front.
But beyond shyness, and still beyond cultivated ambiance, the principle reason for the restaurant’s reticence seemed to be that the restaurant did not want to be busy. Or rather, the restaurant did not want to be overwhelmed; barely even whelmed. They didn’t want a line out the door, or to worry about a waitlist or managing reservations or turning tables. Guests were sat first come-first serve, and if you arrived and the house was full you would either try again another day or wander back in half an hour or an hour and hope your timing was better then. Once sat, the table was yours as long as you continued to order, and guests largely understood the courtesy of leaving once finished. There were busier days and slower days like anyplace; but the distance between busy and slow felt much closer than in most restaurants. So, if business was to be added, if a new customer was to join the small, exclusive pool, they had first to meet an unspecified standard: that the restaurant would be genuinely pleased to have them back. They had to display the most common discernible trait of the clientele: an impassioned appreciation of the food. And, finally, swear to an unwritten pledge: to not spoil the carefully assembled tranquility by posting the restaurant’s name or location, tipping off a foodie influencer or publication, or bringing another guest that might do so.* It was a code of utmost discretion; and the reward for following it was, merely, a dining experience of immense quality and disarming informality.
*In other words, they had to “be cool.”
One, naturally, might be tempted to consider a simpler explanation for the lack of crowds and media attention; for the fact that the restaurant was rarely, if ever, busy; for its complete absence from mention in any notable publication: couldn’t it be that the restaurant was just not quite good enough to warrant the bustle of the masses, or the critical notice of the discerning food media? Couldn’t it be true that this was only a fine, sleepy, otherwise unremarkable neighborhood restaurant enjoyed by a few dedicated local patrons, but unworthy of the destination dining label that literally drives notoriety in the city’s food scene? Wouldn’t that be more realistic than an invisible restaurant with a conspiracy of loyal secret-keepers?
The answer is yes, it would certainly be more realistic for that to be the case; for the restaurant to have been merely, unnoticeably mediocre.
But it was not.
The restaurant boasted two staff: the aforementioned shy yet gracious host and the mysterious chef-owner, who rarely made an appearance but was the driving force behind the entire operation. Together they kept the modest dining room moving apace.
That pace was unique, too. You learned to be prepared to order, as the host would only make rounds about every…so often. Emerging from behind the kitchen curtain, she would stop at each table, taking orders with brief, friendly chat, then vanish back into the kitchen for stretches at a time. You could flag her down, or call for her, if you felt you really needed something; but doing so felt wrong, impatient, like a thing you did at other, busier, more typical restaurants; not here. Here you ate at their rhythm, deliberate, relaxed, appreciating the void of rush. Like taking a walk in the park in the middle of a busy day. You tried as much as possible to order all at once, and dishes arrived as they were ready, and if you wanted another order of sashimi or cold glass of Asahi you waited patiently for the host’s next appearance.
The dinner menu boasted 20 to 25 items and often changed without warning, based on product availability and the current motivation of the chef. A briefer menu featuring katsu curry and other mixed plates was served for lunch. An excellent shoyu ramen was served only on Saturdays.
We ordered, in no particular sequence: shrimp, vegetable, and fishcake tempura; beef stew; grilled squid and saba; lamb chops; gyoza; chicken knee cartilage yakitori; sea bass and sea bream sashimi; and more.
The sea bass, sliced just to translucence, laid in a shallow pool of soy and vinegar and topped with a field of diced scallions, captured my friend at first bite.
“Yeah…yeah…mhmm.” His head bobbed the slow, rhythmic nod of a dawning excitement. It was the feeling of finally arriving at your rental on the first day of vacation after hours of travel, cautiously touring the unfamiliar surroundings, depositing bags, and then, when you could resist no longer, allowing your gaze to draw through the bay windows to the endless expanse of sparkling blue water, igniting a burst of forgotten energy dwindled and dormant in monotony that surges even higher as you realize there’s an entire week yet to savor this sight. The first taste that enhances all tastes thereafter, that snaps to attention even the most distracted, most numbed mind. Each cut of sashimi held for a few chews, enough to enjoy the individual flavors, the dry soy, tart vinegar, sharp, fresh scallion, and the full-bodied brine of the textured, nearly sweet fish, before all melted into harmony. The sea bream, which would come last as our “dessert,” prepared similarly, was somehow even more remarkable. Of the rest of the meal, each dish was as good or better than I’d enjoyed on my unfortunately few previous dinner visits: the tempura, light, crisp, not burying ingredients under heavy batter but complementing with the most delicate crunch the onion, carrot, string bean, and best of all, sweet shrimp; grilled squid and saba, tender and addictingly savory, bites vanishing faster and faster like the best of beer snacks; lamb chops, meaty and bursting with juice, served in their own sauce; and the cartilage, skewered off-cuts of chicken prepared to an uncommon level of quality through an uncommon level of attention, succulent, succulent, succulent morsels with pleasing pops of crunch. The worst that could be said of anything was that it was merely good. But most of the many small plates contained towering flavors that resounded in the quiet, homely setting, flavors of mastery and complexity and confident simplicity more expected of more opulent environments, at five or ten times the price.
It was an astounding meal, for both the first-time guest and several-time semi-regular. It was the best meal he’d had since returning to LA (after ten years in the Carolinas), my friend exuberated. It was precisely the meal you’d wish to have in the last days of your favorite restaurant.
We don’t know for what reason, or reasons, exactly, the restaurant closed—the chef and the host maintained their friendly secrecy, even from regulars, to the end. It seemed most likely that the lease had come up, and the new rent would have become, finally, untenable; the same sad story of so many restaurants and small businesses throughout the city. The irony in dying in so common a fashion, a restaurant that had existed, for so long, so singularly.
But it was also true that the chef and the host were tired. They served lunch and dinner six days a week. The chef was not young, and for a significant chunk of the restaurant’s lifetime he had run the place alone. In the months before closing they had stopped serving lunch to give themselves a break. Breaks are welcomely addicting, more so the longer you’ve worked beforehand. When asked about closing, the host was touched by the feelings of her regulars and experiencing that tidal shift of emotions during a Great Change; but she was also clearly relieved, with a concrete uncertainty as to whether we’d see them again.
“Will you reopen somewhere else?”
She hardly considered. “Oh…I don’t know.” A small shake of the head. “Maybe, somewhere. Torrance, or somewhere. Maybe out of state. I don’t know.” She was almost apologetic, but not quite. It made the closing slightly easier, though, to see that she was ready for it. And if she was, it was likely he was, too.
When I began to plan this piece shortly after the closure, I was torn. It felt against the spirit of the restaurant to talk about it, ever, at all, except with those who knew. (Much like, you know, the obvious movie I tried very hard not to reference for this whole story.) But I also wanted to acknowledge its existence. I thought it deserved some written record that it was there, that at least this one place, for at least a decade, had triumphed in its individuality over the great, ironbound laws of Business and Restaurant in LA, had defined and achieved its own success, and had done so with a tremendous humility, to an extraordinary effect. Some mysteries must remain; but the restaurant was real, and made many people—maybe not as many as it could have, but many—very happy.
I have two remaining hopes, though the restaurant is gone. One, thinnest, is that it reopens, somewhere—though if it does I may still never hear about it—and finds a new, appreciative community.
The other, a hair likelier, is this: that if Los Angeles is any one thing it is vast, so vast that it could easily contain a dozen (no more) of these tiny, impossible restaurants, that I’d never discover unless luck improbably struck me once more. But still, they’d be there, serving in their innocent defiance of the norm, embodying a strange and delicate hospitality, enjoyed by a fortunate few. And if they are out there, which I can’t help but believe—for the alternative is arrogant—then luck has a chance to strike, any one of us, again.
Thanks to my friends, the regulars, for sharing the restaurant with me.