Is Cravings in West Hollywood Coming Back from the Dead?

Here's one nobody saw coming: it looks like Cravings restaurant on Sunset Boulevard may well be coming back from the dead, in one form or another, per this pending ABC license. But beware: this might just be a zombie version of the place upscale Hollywood Hills types used to love.

Last fall, Cravings fell by the wayside after a long run along Sunset Boulevard, leaving behind some prime real estate — though it's worth noting that not everything in that area succeeds, as evidenced by the three-month run of Avenue 31 in the former Le Clafoutis space. But with this new paperwork available, it seems as though someone (namely The Distinguished Gentlemen LLC) is hoping to trade in on all those years of goodwill by bringing the place back to life, name and all.

But a more thorough search of said LLC points to an address that, lo and behold, belongs to the corporate offices of Chin Chin, the middle-market Chinese food sit-down option that actually operates a restaurant just across the street. A call to their corporate headquarters confirms that they've taken ownership of the Cravings space, but no one seemed ready to say quite yet what they're going to do with the place.

So why would Chin Chin, with multiple locations around Los Angeles and Las Vegas, want to take over an old restaurant across the street from one of their existing storefronts? So far they're not talking, so chalk this one up as something to keep your eye on. But if the DBA name on the ABC paperwork for Cravings has any validity, we could all be seeing the return of a longtime Sunset Strip spot, in one form or another, soon enough.