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Downtown LA’s Terroni Faces Uncertain Future Without a New Lease Deal

Plus: La Dijonaise closes after 22 years, a coffee shop’s anti-mask tweet, and free fried chicken for a year

The corner Italian restaurant Terroni shows its plywood after a night of damage.
The boarded up Terroni in Downtown earlier this summer.
Farley Elliott
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

So what exactly is going on with Terroni, the seven-year-old Italian restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles? That’s a question many in the neighborhood have been wondering themselves, and now local blog What Now LA seems to have a few answers, as murky as they are. While the restaurant’s ownership isn’t speaking specifically to any formal closure or reopening plans, a person at the management company that owns the building told the site that lease negotiations are ongoing. The restaurant has been “hard hit” as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and weeks of unrest in Downtown, they say, but returning to life long-term is in the “best interest” of everyone involved. Driving past last week, employees were inside the space and, while some of the equipment had been packed up for possible removal, the place is far from cleared out.

And in other news:

  • Longtime Franklin Village coffee shop Bourgeois Pig is backtracking after a series of anti-mask and anti-Black Lives Matter Twitter activity in recent days, reports LA Magazine.
  • The LA Times has a great series of personal stories surrounding the coronavirus, specifically the way in which it disproportionately affects various groups and exposes inequalities in Southern California society.
  • Lucky Bird is open at Grand Central Market in Downtown LA again, and to celebrate the reopening the company is doing a giveaway contest where one lucky contestant can win free fried chicken for a year.
  • Ms. Chi Cafe is open once again in Culver City, turning out orange chicken, dumplings, tea-smoked duck and more.
  • Apparently anonymous tipsters are helping to drive the latest compliance push for restaurants, bars, and other businesses. That’s per NBC LA, who say that more than 2,000 tips are coming in every single week.
  • 22-year-old Culver City restaurant La Dijonaise has closed. The final day of service was July 31.