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Suehiro Cafe, Little Tokyo Mainstay For Half Century, To Be Evicted Next Month
Suehiro’s owner Kenji Suzuki has opened a new location downtown (pictured) in anticipation of being evicted from his Little Tokyo location.
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Josie Huang
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Suehiro Cafe has been a Little Tokyo staple for half a century, surviving the pandemic, the founder’s death and the current owner’s bout with cancer.
Ultimately, it will be the landlord who will end the restaurant's run.
After a months-long threat of eviction by Anthony Sperl who wants to make way for a new tenant, Suehiro’s owner Kenji Suzuki on Tuesday agreed in court to leave by January 16. He had at least wanted to stay open through the holidays for the sake of his employees.
His struggle to stay in Little Tokyo has become emblematic of the changes facing the historic neighborhood. Neighborhood activists say rising rents and land values have only been accelerated by the arrival of a new Metro station.
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They’re calling on the city to help preserve legacy businesses like Suehiro, which they say give the neighborhood its character. A rally in support of Suehiro will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. outside the Little Tokyo Metro station.
Suzuki said at first he stayed quiet about his eviction woes. But as patrons and activists expressed outrage and concern about the loss of Little Tokyo businesses like his to the pandemic and gentrification, he changed his mind.
“Now I think I need to rock the boat and create some waves to let everybody know about what's happening and that Little Tokyo needs everybody's help,” Suzuki said.
The beginning of the end
Suzuki, whose mother opened the restaurant in 1972 with her sister and died of COVID-19 in 2021, found himself in a vulnerable position because he had been on a month-to-month lease for the last 10 years or so.
Suzuki said he saw trouble on the horizon when Sperl last year asked for $100,000 to enter into a long-term lease, which Suzuki could not afford, and raised the monthly rent from $6,400 dollars to $10,000 which Suzuki felt he had not choice but to pay.
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But then Suzuki's lawyer Clifford Jung said that Sperl stopped cashing rent checks and started eviction proceedings, alleging nonpayment of rent. When that claim was dismissed, Sperl initiated a legal end to the landlord-tenant relationship with Suzuki, Jung said.
"(Sperl) just decided he didn't want to work with us anymore," Jung said.
Suzuki expected to be evicted by law enforcement as early as this week but during a court hearing Tuesday, the judge asked the two sides to confer and Jan. 16 was chosen as the date that Suehiro would vacate. Jung said the other option was to take the case to trial.
"If (Suzuki) wanted to go all the way, I would have done it," Jung said. "But he just wanted to try to find a way to get to the end."
Jung said that Suzuki reserves the right to file a separate action against Sperl if he wants. Neither Sperl nor his attorney Dennis Block could be reached for comment.
The lunch crowd at Suehiro Cafe enjoys specials like curry rice and miso-flavored pork.
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Josie Huang
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The community rallies
For months, the Little Tokyo community has been rallying to save the restaurant, which has been serving miso-flavored pork and curry rice, affordable to local seniors and downtown workers alike, in its current location for more than 35 years.
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A pegboard at Suehiro Cafe lists the lunch specials.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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Recent days have seen Japanese American activists gathering signatures from patrons outside Suehiro calling for a stop to the eviction.
Kristin Fukushima, managing director of the Little Tokyo Community Council, said Monday that dozens of legacy businesses have been lost in recent years.
A coalition of Japanese American activists asked the public to support Suehiro's fight against its eviction.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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“We are at a point where Little Tokyo is facing an existential threat as to what our future is,” Fukushima said.
Reports that Sperl will replace Suehiro with a marijuana dispensary have been especially worrying.
Longtime Suehiro patron David Palos, holding his daughter, Lola, signed a petition to keep Suehiro Cafe in Little Tokyo.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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A coalition of Japanese American organizations said they would organize a boycott of a dispensary or any replacement that's not a fit for the neighborhood.
“We are at a point where Little Tokyo is facing an existential threat as to what our future is.”
Mark Masaoka of the social justice group Nikkei Progressives said that Sperl's late mother, from whom he inherited Little Tokyo properties, had been a friend to local businesses and lived in the neighborhood herself.
Suehiro Cafe, opened 49 years ago by Junko Suzuki, is at a crossroads.
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Courtesy of Suehiro Cafe
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"She would have been horrified at the thought that he was tossing out all these Japanese American long-standing institutions here to replace them with what he is doing right now," Masaoka said.
Advocates say there need to be more ways to save struggling legacy businesses through efforts such as the Little Tokyo Community Impact Fund, which has raised about $750,000.
New faces in the neighborhood
Neighborhood advocates say that Sperl had already pushed out a neighboring Japanese American business, Family Mart. It's been replaced by Space City Vintage which moved its clothing store from the second floor to the first.
Several new tenants have moved into the upper-level space once occupied by Space City, including tattoo artist Stefan Farrera.
Farrera, who specializes in "American and Japanese traditional" art at Black Sun Tattoo, said that he had not even known that he shared a landlord with the restaurant, and he bemoaned its departure and potential replacement by a dispensary.
He declined to comment on Sperl and his history with other tenants but said the landlord had rented him an affordable space that he shares with a multicultural mix of creatives: a leather worker, plant seller, streetwear vendor and upcycle store. Together, he says, the new tenants have helped to bring a “charge” to Little Tokyo.
Stefan Farrera, owner of Black Sun Tattoo, shares the same landlord as Suehiro Cafe.
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Josie Huang
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“The space offers us an opportunity as small, small business owners to make our living doing what we want to do and I think that brings a DIY element to Little Tokyo, which is very big in our punk scenes,“ Farrera said.
What's next
As for Suzuki, in September, he opened a new Suehiro location downtown on Main Street in anticipation of being evicted.
He is also running a smaller restaurant in Chinatown — a juggling act that's tough on his shaky health. Suzuki, 61, is in remission from leukemia. Then in August, he was struck while in his car by a motorist in a stolen vehicle, a crash that's left his legs aching as he serves customers.
Despite the collision of challenges, Suzuki says he will fight to be able to serve his mother's dishes again in Little Tokyo.
“I know someday we will return,” Suzuki said. "We have to return. That’s almost a non-issue for me.”
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