West Hollywood’s Natural Wine Bar Fellow Traveler Closes Permanently

West Hollywood’s wine bar Fellow Traveler is officially closed. The barely eight-month-old restaurant by former Auburn sommelier Rick Arline opened a few weeks before Southern California’s winter COVID-19 surge forced restaurants to halt in-house dining on November 25.

A Food Talk Central user reports the building is boarded up, and the Instagram page is no longer live. Arline also confirmed to Eater that the primary investor dropped out and that the place will not reopen. In its early days, the restaurant was forced to operate as a retail outlet, with the gorgeous interior sitting empty for months. Arline and partner Nick Schultz developed subscription boxes and still offered wine guidance, while chef Gabriel Geiger created the menu. No word on what Arline and the crew will do next.

In other news:

• A driver crashed into comedian George Lopez’s Torrance restaurant Chingon Kitchen, says the Daily Mail. Four people were injured.
• Business Insider looked into actor and Montecito resident Rob Lowe’s claim that lines at Starbucks are longer thanks to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (that’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle) moving into the neighborhood one year ago. Turns out, it’s not completely accurate.
• Check this Compton taco crawl by L.A. Taco’s editor Javier Cabral with specialty spots like Antojitos Los Cuates, which specializes in evening antojitos and pozole.
• Toddrickallen spotted a new location for Yang’s Braised Chicken Rice in Sherman Oaks. It’s an international chain that started a decade ago in China’s Jinan Province with over 6,000 locations in Asia, Australia. In addition to another location in Arcadia, it seems that they’re shooting for a summer opening in the SFV.
• Morongo Casino, Resort, and Spa hired chef Fabio Viviani to convert their former Potrero Canyon Buffet into the Marketplace, which opens in December, reports the Pasadena Star News.
• Actor Darrell Britt-Gibson wants his own food show, writes Grub Street. And apparently, his breakfast tacos are, in his own words, “unmatched.”