Hostaria del Piccolo Closes, Juicy Burger Dunzo, and More Restaurant Shutters

It’s been a high-flying restaurant news weekend around Los Angeles, with big details coming from some long-awaited places, and one chef swapping in for another at smoke.oil.salt. But sadly, as some new names come together, others must depart, and so presented below is a quick smattering of a few of the more recent (and unfortunate) shutters from around the city.

First up is Hostaria del Piccolo, the Rose Avenue Italian spot with the sleek bar and patio up front. The management team behind the restaurant — which also operates Hostaria del Piccolo in Santa Monica, as well as there regular ol’ Piccolo in Venice — hasn’t yet said what caused the casual space to shutter, only noting on their website that it’s now closed. Of course, Rose Avenue has become a sort of secondary hotspot for restaurant concepts in the area (following Abbot Kinney’s lead, of course), so rising rents for the nearly three year old restaurant could certainly be involved.

Next is Juicy Burger, the beefy fast casual spot that quickly branched out from one Hollywood location to a second home on Vermont in Los Feliz, way back in 2011. This seriously walkable location has seemingly always had one problem or another, from apparently operating without the right permitting to slumping sales as the burger trend died down. Customers noted the upcoming shutter late last week, saying the staff was basically selling out of everything on the menu and cooking off all of what was left. As of Monday morning, the place is in full shutter mode, making two empty restaurant storefronts (along with the El Greco Cafe on the corner) just about side by side on that strip of otherwise popular Vermont.

And the third sad shutter comes from up in San Fernando, where the genre-bending specialty coffee shop and Mexican-themed cafe Compañia de Cafe winds down. In a statement posted to their Facebook account, the shop calls today’s shutter merely "temporary," before going out in the usual blaze of praise for their customers over the time they’ve been open. There is a silver lining though, as the shop says they’re hoping to "reopen in a new way," though what that means is unclear.