Suehiro Cafe Serves Its Last Meals In Little Tokyo

Published Jan 9, 2024 4:35 PM

Two young women eat Japanese meals at a table in a restaurant.

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For long-time Angelenos and newcomers alike, Suehiro Cafe in Little Tokyo has been more than just its famed curries and tonkatsu. It's also a community space whose closure Tuesday after more than 50 years of serving the neighborhood cuts deep.

Suehiro Cafe Closing in Little Tokyo
Closing time: 1 a.m., Jan. 9
Where: 337 E 1st St

Loyal customers waited in a line Tuesday that at times spilled onto 1st Street, as the restaurant served its last meals before its eviction next week by a landlord who wants to make way for a new tenant.

A table of six Asian American, Latino and white diners eat at a Japanese restaurant.

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Landscaper designer Eri Yamagata squeezed in as many meals as she could before Suehiro shuttered.

After having dinner at the restaurant the night before, Yamagata returned the next day with three of her co-workers for takeout. The cozy eatery popular with downtown workers and older Japanese American diners has been a regular spot for Yamagata since she moved to L.A. nearly six years ago from Tokyo.

A Japanese woman in a beige barn coat beams while standing in a busy Japanese restaurant.

“Like when I came here, it felt so like home that I feel like I've known this place for so long,” Yamagata said.

Madisen Matsuura, a sophomore at Santa Monica College, has been dining at Suehiro since she was a child with her father. As third and fourth-generation Japanese Americans, the pair felt some removal from their Japanese heritage, but they connected over their Japanese comfort food meals. Udon for Matsuura. Tempura for her father.

“It’s like something my dad and I have to bond on,” Matsuura said. “This is something special he passed on to me.”

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A table filled with several Japanese dishes including a house special of eggplant and beef cooked in a miso sauce.

Sadness over Suehiro’s closure was mixed with anger among customers that a family-run business that has served generations in Little Tokyo was being forced out. Community activists concerned about gentrification in Little Tokyo they say has been sped up by the opening of a new Metro station plan to rally outside the restaurant on the afternoon of Jan. 16— the deadline by which Suehiro must leave, per a court agreement with the landlord, Anthony Sperl.

Brand designer Martie Flores and his wife said they would want to attend the rally. The couple chose to live in Little Tokyo exactly because of small businesses like Suehiro.

An Asian American woman in a green shirt and Asian American man in a black t-shirt pose for a picture inside a Japanese restaurant.

“To kind of see the times and how things are changing, it's super sad because Little Tokyo is only one of the last three or four in the entire nation,” Flores said.

Customers said they would patronize the two other Suehiro locations — one in Chinatown, plus a downtown spot opened just last year by Suehiro owner Kenji Suzuki. His late mother Junko launched the restaurant with her sister in 1972 at its first Little Tokyo location on 2nd Street, before moving to 1st Street in the late 1980s.

Suehiro Cafe may be leaving Little Tokyo but there are two other locations in L.A.:

Suehiro Cafe Downtown: 400 S Main St #102
Suehiro Mini Chinatown: 642 N. Broadway #5

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The restaurant's forced departure from Little Tokyo is not just a loss for the neighborhood but for the whole city, said longtime customer Julia Jones. The film writer/director from Echo Park said kindly staff have let her post up for hours working on her scripts as parties of friends a few seats away would laugh and eat into the late night.

An Asian American man and woman walk into a restaurant with an awning that reads Suehiro Cafe.

"You really feel like you're in a place that is just a central hub of this community," Jones said. "And that doesn't mean only for Japanese Americans — that's obviously a huge part of this — it really is welcoming to everybody."