Business
Papa Cristo's is closing, joining growing list of struggling longtime restaurants in L.A.
A Greek institution on May 4 will serve its last flame-kissed grilled lamb, its final pillowy potatoes, its saganaki swan song. After 77 years, the family-owned restaurant Papa Cristo’s is closing, with its building listed for sale.
What began as a Greek market in 1948 expanded to a full-fledged restaurant and community staple over decades. It’s united generations of Angelenos who’ve flocked to the edge of Pico-Union for specialty goods and Greek feasts from three generations of the Chrys family. The restaurant became the unofficial heart of the Byzantine-Latino Quarter, a small historic-cultural district, along with the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral nearby.
“It finally came to a point where we decided we’re gonna go on our terms,” said Mark Yordon, the cousin of owner Chrys Chrys, and a member of the family business for roughly 40 years. “We’re not gonna wait for a buyer to come in and say, ‘OK, I’m going to turn it into a hotel.’ ”
Yordon declined to confirm that rent increases influenced the decision to close, but Chrys told LAist that rising rent was the culprit. “The rent got too high,” he said, “and there’s nothing we can do about it. … Tenants are pawns to the landlords.”
Yordon, who works as the general manager, said the family came to the decision upon learning the building was listed for sale. The Papa Cristo’s lot, which is zoned for mixed-use or high-density residential purposes, is currently listed at $5.2 million.
Its listing agent could not be reached for comment.
“The whole corner is for sale, and it’s never been for sale,” Yordon said. “It belonged to the same Greek family that had associations with Chrys’ dad and the current [lot] owner’s grandfather. It goes way back, to 1948.”
An L.A. institution
Sam Chrys founded what would become Papa Cristo’s as C&K Importing Co. in 1948. The market sold imported Greek foods and wine, and continues to do so today alongside broader Mediterranean and European specialty items.
In 1968, Chrys Chrys purchased the business from his father, and eventually took over an adjacent burger stand to transform it into Papa Cristo’s Taverna.
Annie Chrys, left, Chrys Chrys and Mark Yordon at Papa Cristo’s in 2016.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
The generous portions and convivial setting helped solidify Papa Cristo’s as a decades-long community staple for the neighborhood and far beyond it, and in 2010 Chrys’ youngest daughter, Annie, joined the trade.
The last few years haven’t been as easy for Papa Cristo’s, which like so many local businesses saw steep revenue downturns during the pandemic. But the market allowed for some sales to continue, and the restaurant’s catering operation — which Yordon primarily oversees — helped keep the family business afloat and its staff employed.
In the years following, inflation led to slimmer profit margins. Now with tariffs on the horizon, Yordon mused, “maybe this was a good time to go.”
Since the news broke, throngs of fans streamed into the restaurant and market. Hundreds of online comments are shouting for someone to save the business.
There could be a future where Papa Cristo’s opens in a smaller location elsewhere, though Yordon said that fate will be determined by his cousin and nieces. It’s also possible that Chrys, now 80, will take this opportunity to retire.
“He’s kind of getting to his limit,” Yordon said. “Heavy lies the head that wears the crown.”
But a public statement from Chrys on Thursday hinted that this might not be the end of Papa Cristo’s. “After 77 years on the corner of Pico and Normandie, it’s time for me to hang up my apron and for us to say goodbye (for now),” he posted to the restaurant’s Instagram page, adding, “P.S. The story of Papa Cristo’s doesn’t end here — exciting things are coming.”
More classic restaurants struggle
Some of the city’s longest-running and most cherished restaurants have announced a struggle to survive, or closed outright in the last few weeks. Chili John’s in Burbank, which opened in 1946, recently launched a fundraiser to help keep the business afloat. An owner last month said that without an increase in sales they could close in the coming months.
The early dinner special at Du-Par’s in the Original Farmers Market.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Recently Du-Par’s CEO said the 1938-founded diner famed for its hotcakes at a corner of the Original Farmers Market is also struggling. Frances Tario told “L.A. in a Minute” podcaster Evan Lovett that immigration crackdowns, increasing egg prices and a loss of business from the city’s January wildfires have hurt one of the city’s oldest surviving restaurants. Tario could not be reached for comment.
Last week decades-old French restaurant Le Petit Four closed its doors for good amid a string of West Hollywood shutterings. Last month, after 101 years of service, the Original Pantry closed and left Angelenos bereft.
Customers line up outside in the rain for a table at the Original Pantry Cafe in February.
(Nick Argro / For The Times)
Newer restaurants are also closing at a rapid clip, with a number of notable closures in the first half of the year that included Guerilla Tacos, Cosa Buona, Sage, and Wexler’s Deli in Grand Central Market.
“It’s been a real avalanche,” said local historian and tour guide Kim Cooper. “Many, many factors are piling up on top of each other and people are making very hard decisions.”
Cooper operates walking-tour and historic-preservation-minded company Esotouric with her husband, Richard Schave. The two of them have been patrons of the restaurant for years.
Especially given the rash of closures and struggles of some of the city’s oldest restaurants, Schave and Cooper hope to see more local and state programs that aid legacy businesses and provide support before it’s too late.
The pair suggested two potential scenarios that could save the restaurant. Maybe, they said, new state law SB 4, which is designed to help faith-based organizations build affordable housing, could help the surrounding Greek Orthodox community with deep ties to Papa Cristo’s to develop the lot.
Or, they said, history-minded restaurateurs could purchase the business from the Chrys family with the promise of ensuring its survival, as Marc Rose and Med Abrous did for Fairfax restaurant Genghis Cohen: an operation now undergoing its own land sale and relocation.
“By the time people who love these places hear that they’re in trouble, it’s often gotten too far and they’re announcing a closure,” Cooper said. “It feels like Los Angeles is disappearing. We’ve got to save it.”
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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