Good Girl Dinette, Highland Park’s Beloved Vietnamese Spot, to Close After Nine Years

Popular Highland Park restaurant Good Girl Dinette is closing on October 5, and there is already a replacement restaurant ready. That’s according to multiple sources who have confirmed the impending shutter with Eater.

Owner Diep Tran declined multiple requests to speak on the record regarding the closure, ultimately announcing the shutter through the LA Times earlier today. Casual Chinatown shop Burgerlords will take over the restaurant address just off Figueroa, doing burgers, vegan nuggets, sides, and shakes inside. Burgerlords previously ran food from a different Highland Park location, a walk-up window at Hi-Hat over on York Boulevard, but closed that operation in May.

Elizabeth Daniels

Good Girl chef/owner Diep Tran has been in her Highland Park location for nine years, helping to anchor that stretch of Figueroa long before the new bars, restaurants, and redone bowling alleys came rolling through. Tran spoke with Eater back in 2014 about the struggles and successes of running a restaurant that focuses on quality ingredients and paying workers a fair wage, saying at the time:

You have to deal with these razor-thin margins, while still giving people an experience. They’re coming in to be taken care of, not to take care of you. So the highs are high, but the lows are low. The highs are smaller stories. I have a lot of customers that come in with their kids, and I fed those kids in utero. Now they’re going to pre-school. Or when the pie dough just works, or a dish comes out perfect. Those are the highs; they’re more intimate.

Good Girl Dinette also earned a Jonathan Gold review back in 2009, when he called the place “astonishingly good.” More recently, Tran was a guest on David Chang’s podcast over at The Ringer, where the always-direct chef told deeply personal stories about immigrating to the United States from Vietnam, and about coming out to her family as a member of the LGBT community.

Good Girl Dinette. 110 N. Avenue 56, Los Angeles, CA.

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