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The Angeli Caffe will close its doors on Melrose Avenue on January 8, its owner and KCRW "Good Food" host Evan Kleiman announced today.
Kleiman tweeted out this message today: "I'm closing Angeli. I'm bereft and verklempt sharing this news. January 8th is our last night. Please come say bye and share a couple..."
Kleiman said that the restaurant hadn't been operating in the black for a long time, but her search for someone else to take over the 27-year-old brand failed.
"I was open for years when I probably should have closed," Kleiman told the Los Angeles Times. "It was my personal mission to get my employees past the worst of the recession, and I absorbed a lot of losses personally in order to do that and just can't do it anymore."
The restaurant will be open every day between now and the 8th — including New Year's and Monday when the restaurant is usually closed — if you want to pay your last respects. Angeli Caffe regularly made Jonathan Gold's Essential 99 list. For posterity's sake, here is LAist's first taste of the restaurant's signature gnocchi dish.