Angelenos aren’t strangers to waiting in hours-long lines for food. Most days of the week, you can count on a parade of customers patiently waiting for crusty, fermented rings from Courage Bagels. In Chinatown and Pasadena, diners still line up for Nashville-style hot chicken from Howlin’ Ray’s, which opened its first location in 2016. In Historic South-Central, trails of people queue outside of Mercado La Paloma hours before it opens each day, hoping to try Yucatecan-style mariscos from Holbox, the chart-topping counter stall from Gilberto Cetina.
“When it’s really good, there’s no time limit,” said Brenton Graham, a FedEx driver who waited in line at Howlin’ Ray’s in Chinatown’s Far East Plaza during a recent lunch break.
But as local restaurants face mounting challenges and struggle to remain open, this year saw hordes of diners lining up for a final taste at some of the city’s most beloved spots — after they announce an imminent closure.
Call it a case of dining FOMO, with an ironic twist.
Lines are the norm at Courage Bagels in Silver Lake.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
In August, Tokyo Fried Chicken, a fast-casual diner ranked on the 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. guide for three years running, shuttered downtown. Some customers reported waiting in line for an hour before ordering, only to wait another hour for their food to come to the table.
July saw crowds wrapped around the corner of 6th and Main streets after Cole’s French Dip — the city’s oldest restaurant and saloon — announced its imminent closure. A few months before that the Original Pantry Cafe, a century-old diner in downtown L.A., drew similar lines when the restaurant abruptly shuttered.
I queued up at Papa Cristo’s before the 77-year-old Greek restaurant and market closed its doors forever this spring. The line stretched down Pico Boulevard, a mix of loyal neighborhood locals, families and foodies from all over the city hoping to order one final lamb skewer or sizzling saganaki.
I had only learned about the landmark restaurant through Times coverage of its imminent closure. Shivering in the cool weather, I reassured my sibling and two friends, whom I had persuaded to join me for a first and final visit on Papa Cristo’s last day of service, “I know the line is long, but it will be worth it. I promise.”
My meal — lamb chops that rivaled my grandmother’s paired with lemony, pillowy potatoes — was, indeed, worth the wait.
But the experience made me wonder why so many diners wait until the bitter end before visiting a restaurant they’ve been meaning to dine at for months or even years?
It’s human nature, said Allie Lieberman, an assistant professor of marketing and behavioral decision-making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, who explained that “scarcity creates a sense of urgency.”
“People are really afraid to miss out,” she said. “You know, ‘If I don’t go right now, I might lose this chance forever.’ It drives people to want to do this experience and to go to longer lengths to do it, in this case, wait in a really long line.”
Some — like me, trying Papa Cristo’s for the first time on its last day of service — are driven by “regret avoidance,” said Lieberman, or in other words, the motivation to act so as to not feel regret later.
1. 1.) Tokyo chicken sandwich from Tokyo Fried Chicken. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) 2. 2.) Customers line up outside in the rain for a table at The Original Pantry Cafe in downtown L.A. (Nick Argro / For The Times) 3. A long line of customers waits during lunch time for Howlin Ray’s signature Nashville-style hot chicken in Chinatown. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
On the other hand, regulars will revisit a favorite restaurant before it closes for a bite of nostalgia, Lieberman said. “You’re almost tying a bow on your experiences at that restaurant and you want to wrap it up one more time.”
Others may discover the restaurant because of the high visibility of the line itself. They may join the line in a concept known as “social proof,” said Lieberman, much in the same way that if you see a group of people staring up at the sky, you’re likely to stop and look up too.
Then there are those who are driven to capture the scene for social media, as Philadelphia magazine restaurant critic Jason Sheehan noted when local ramen shop ESO closed in August: “Behind me, small groups talked about the place like they were checking off a box on a bucket list. … They’d heard about the place. Seen it on Instagram. They’d come all the way from New York just to try it and couldn’t wait to post the photos,” Sheehan wrote.
There’s a term for this too — “‘signaling’ to somebody else or to yourself that you are in the know, you are trendy, you are cool,” said Lieberman. “I know about this restaurant, I know that it’s closing, and I’m signaling to other people and to myself that I’m the type of person that participates in these cultural events.”
A line as a cultural event? It makes sense. Unlike a sneaker drop or even a final clearance sale, food is sustenance. Food is also emotional, representing the social and cultural memory of a group of people. Seen in this way, standing in line for food becomes a way to imbue oneself in L.A. culture. Waiting in line becomes a ritual.
For those on the other side of the counter, though, the experience of a huge surge of customers at the end of a restaurant’s tenure comes with mixed emotions.
“Part of me is really happy to see it,” said Elaine Yamanashi, co-founder of Tokyo Fried Chicken. In the week leading up to the closure, hundreds of loyal fans waited for space in the 32-seat dining room. “It validated, like, at least we know that people loved it.”
On the other hand, she said, “Where were these people three months ago?”
Diners lined up for a final taste of All Day Baby’s diner-inspired plates when it announced its permanent closure at the end of 2024.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Cedd Moses, owner of Cole’s, said that the long lines the restaurant experienced after announcing its upcoming closure were “overwhelming in the best way possible.”
“We love that the city has shown up to support us,” he said. “We appreciate people waiting in line.”
The crowds in the initial days after Cole’s closure announcement prompted Moses’ team to delay their closing by 45 days, and then again until Nov. 1, and then again until Dec. 31. (“I’ve never been in a situationship with a restaurant before,” reads one comment on the restaurant’s latest extension announcement.)
Though Moses conceded that the surge of customers would not sustain the business in the long-term, he expressed hope that the renewed interest might attract a buyer committed to preserving the restaurant’s legacy.
The other legacy restaurant that drew lines after it announced its closure, the Original Pantry Cafe recently announced its reopening under new ownership, with Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, crediting workers for staging protests and fundraisers that drew public attention.
A neighborhood institution that has served the Crenshaw District for decades, Dulan’s on Crenshaw experienced a similar wave of support in August after Dulan posted a fundraiser on social media to help him pay back a ballooning hard-cash loan before the Sept. 6 deadline. The community showed up in droves, and though Dulan was ultimately not able to meet the deadline, negotiations are ongoing.
He said after the news broke the dining room was double its normal capacity.
“Quite frankly, [social media] is the most affordable way for a restaurant to advertise,” said Dulan during a recent dinner rush, where he was personally encouraging diners to post about their meal.
For Alice Koskas, who was eating at Dulan’s for the first time with a group of friends, the news of the restaurant’s financial troubles hit close to home.
Until recently, Koskas worked as the operations and events manager at FIN Asian Tapas, which permanently closed its doors in Culver City on Father’s Day. Like so many others, after the restaurant announced its imminent closure, Koskas said it was suddenly “slammed.”
“So when we heard about this place, I know how it is, so it was like, ‘Let’s go and support them before they have to shut down,’” she said.
Dulan said that once the decision to close has been made, a long line of support typically won’t shift the tides.
A view from the interior of Cole’s French Dip, with locals lined up outside of the landmark restaurant waiting for an hour or more to get seated for the last time.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“Sometimes people are shocked to hear that a long-standing business is facing challenges,” he said. But consistently patronizing them is important because “local restaurants are often the heart and soul of a neighborhood.”
“So if you lose it, the neighborhood is losing a little bit of its identity,” he said, “and if the restaurant is popular, the neighborhood is losing something that draws people from outside into the neighborhood, like in my case.”
After a restaurant closes, it’s the locals who miss out the most, Koskas’ friend Lori Cote pointed out. Before FIN closed, Cote would encourage her neighbors to have dinner there.
“And now people are like, ‘I wonder what’s going to end up there because there’s no good places to eat?’” Cote said.
Restaurant owners say they are always grateful for support — they just need it sooner and more consistently.
“A lot of people have been posting ‘if you love a restaurant, support it now,’ and it’s true,” Yamanashi said. “There’s a lot of restaurants that are silently suffering.”
