Sign me up. Going March/April and I can’t wait to return to the motherland!
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thread started 
ugh raikuchi already booked at dinner. I’ll keep an eye come cancellation time though!
the ham and cheese at konbi is the best thing i’ve had there so far. cheesy, crispy, buttery delicious. and their canele is great and I think their best pastry. the crispy exterior is that perfect balance between caramelized and burnt while the interior is still soft and custard-y.
ham and cheese sandwich - twice baked croissant, jambon de paris, comte mornay, caramelized onion
that cheese skirt
roasted turnips, sugar snaps, pickled pink lady apples, sunflower seed pesto
eggplant katsu, burnt onion dashi, cabbage, bulldog sauce
quince tart, canelé ice cream
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i wonder what happened, that’s pretty sudden
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Wow wtf. We just went to the japanese breakfast on Sunday and it was so good. this is so sad, culver JUST opened
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Damn this is crazy let the wild speculation. Weren’t they restaurant of the year a couple of years back?
If we are speculating I would speculate an investor dispute/owner dispute. I would imagine cash flow is pretty good given their media coverage and the fact that they just opened a second outpost.
Anyone have insight?
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on their personal instgrams there were always references to how unsustainable the biz is, with food cost and (fair) labor costs. I think they might have just been bleeding for a while (as evidenced by the amount of changes to the formats at konbi ni, losing dinner before they even launched it, bringing back the sandwiches, etc)
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Maybe it is cash flow then?!? 
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Would think a Faulkner fan would get something elevated. Oy.
As an aside, am I the asshole for finding the LA food subreddit ridiculously cost conscious? Maybe I’m a bourgeois pig idk.
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I love the atmosphere at the original.
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Just a bunch of folks (some with fine dining kitchen cred), wanting to re-create a slice of Tokyo right here in Echo Park. Nuthin’ wrong with that. It was a good run.
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No they definitely are. Bourgeois pigs rise up.
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“It was a very different time and context pre-pandemic,” Akuto wrote in a statement to The Times. “Without that density of people upstairs and the nearby offices we had planned for, it is not possible to make our model work.”
He added that a variety of other factors contributed to the closures including “scarcity of ingredients, steep rise in the cost of goods with no relief in sight, and California mandated labor policies for small businesses which drove up our operating costs to a totally untenable degree.”
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That makes sense. While Konbi Culver City was very busy at launch, that kind of hype isn’t sustainable. I don’t know how much of Sony Studios is back in the office, but the office building Konbi is in almost certainly is mostly empty (and a bunch of it is coworking space). Unfortunately I have not seen them super busy when I’ve been by during the weekdays. Weekend business was probably pretty solid. If they couldn’t get rent concessions I can see a pre-2020 lease being much too expensive. Their food is undeniably expensive, but the quality and execution were there and it’s too bad both locations are closing. Went by today and they were sold out of many of their ice creams and some of the sandwiches. All pastries were gone (but that’s pretty typical after lunch). Recommend going when they open if you want your final fix. I’m going to miss their canelé a lot.
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Asked a friend of Nick Montgomery And he said it’s simply economics. Costs were too high and they weren’t making money
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not a huge fan of them citing this tbh. it’s a brutal, tough, unforgiving business & I have all respect in the world for restaurant owners - but pay your workers a fair wage. And if you can’t, don’t complain about it.
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Help Rev Hightower - Where is the Faulkner reference? I missed it too, I guess
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