Legendary N.Y.-style Chinese restaurant and music venue to close in May, live on elsewhere

Los Angeles Times

04-04-2025

For decades, a raucous restaurant-cum-music venue along Fairfax Avenue has been a top destination for Angelenos seeking a taste of Chinese American cuisine. This spring, that restaurant is set to close, possibly to be demolished along with the rest of its strip mall — but its owners are planning to save Genghis Cohen and its long-lasting legacy.
For now, the red paper lanterns still hang over a dining room filled with all walks of L.A. life. They've come to nosh on egg rolls, the 'Kanton Knish,' orange-peel beef and other specialties of the venerated New York-style Chinese restaurant. Live music bleeds through the walls from the adjacent performance space. But on May 31, Genghis Cohen will shutter at 740 N. Fairfax Ave. due to a failure to renegotiate the building's lease and plans to redevelop Fairfax Plaza.
'The future of Genghis as a whole is going to remain bright, because we're going to make sure it does,' said co-owner Marc Rose. 'Our sleeves are getting rolled up.'
Rose and his business partner, Med Abrous, are planning a temporary relocation of the restaurant as they search for a more permanent home; the restaurateurs — also behind the revitalization of Beverly Hills' La Dolce Vita and the Hollywood Roosevelt's the Spare Room — see the survival of Genghis Cohen as stewarding a bit of the city's restaurant history, and they're optimistic about keeping it alive.
That's not to say they haven't lost sleep over the move.
A company called N Fairfax Holdings LLC purchased the strip mall roughly five years ago. Rose said contract negotiations for Genghis Cohen have lasted roughly three years, sometimes including months of silence from their landlord. In November, the ownership company filed a commercial eviction against the parent LLC of Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The case is in the process of being settled, according to court documents.
The strip mall, once called Fairfax Plaza, previously included a RadioShack, a ballroom dance studio and a newsstand in addition to Genghis Cohen; all businesses beyond the restaurant have been demolished, with new construction underway.
Representatives for N Fairfax Holdings LLC could not be reached for comment. The property manager, Jude Kim of Charles Dunn Real Estate Services, declined to comment on the future of the building.
'Genghis Cohen, in that timeline, was not in the plans for redevelopment of the property, it's become clear to us now,' Abrous said. 'As the negotiations went on, it became clear that not only were we not going to be able to negotiate a rent number that would work within our business model but the actual physical amenities of the building were going to be reduced.'
The parking lot for their restaurant, they said, would have no longer been available for guests under the new lease terms.
In a tumultuous landscape that's seen hundreds of Los Angeles restaurants close in the last two years, the owners said they could not knowingly enter an arrangement that could put Genghis Cohen in a position to fail; a sizable rent increase, along with removing conveniences such as the parking lot, spurred them to look elsewhere.
'We have been working our tails off to find a solution, and I believe that we found the best possible solution to a real crappy situation that that we were put in,' Rose said, adding, 'I think people are becoming numb to it because it's happening so often, where people aren't able to survive or they're closing. We are dead set, hellbent, on not doing that. We love this place, we love what we do, and none of that is going away.'
Abrous and Rose purchased the restaurant in 2015, the third ownership change in its history. Music publicist Allan Rinde founded Genghis Cohen in 1983 as a means to serve the New York-style Chinese cuisine rarely found on the West Coast at the time. He later added the music room, which became integral to its identity, and hosted celebrated acts such as Jackson Browne, Beck, Dave Grohl, Bonnie Raitt and Tom Morello, among others. In 1997, Rinde sold the business to longtime server Raymond Kiu.
Nearly 20 years later, Rose and Abrous were approached by a realtor to take over the space but not to continue Genghis Cohen.
'I don't think they realized they were coming to two guys who loved this style of food, who loved the idea of Genghis Cohen and who love L.A. history,' Rose said. 'We had to almost convince the [Kiu] family that we were going to carry the torch and how much Genghis Cohen meant to us and what we thought it could be. We really saw so much more than just a restaurant on Fairfax.'
In their tenure, they've watched the dining tables fill with families, young skateboarders and sneakerheads making their way north from the streetwear shops along Fairfax, young Hollywood types, musicians of all ages and older generations of the restaurant's original fans.
Through the years, they've updated the dining room, reconfiguring seats and adding a blue-glowing fish tank near the entrance. They've renovated the bathrooms, revamped the cocktail program, overhauled the ingredient sourcing for the food menu and approached the live programming with renewed zeal.
'I think it's bittersweet,' Abrous said. 'On one hand, I think we never really imagined it moving. But I think evolution is inevitable, and what once was unimaginable is turning into something that can be very positive. We see this as an opportunity to do it better.'
May 31 will be the last day of service in the original location, and Rose and Abrous want the transition to be as seamless as possible.
They'll be moving south along Fairfax and temporarily taking over the former Sweet Chick space, which is surrounded by Jon & Vinny's, Canter's, Badmaash, Prime Pizza and Cofax Coffee.
Delivery will begin from the new, temporary outpost June 1, with dine-in service to follow in the ensuing weeks; it echoes their purchase of Genghis Cohen in 2015, when they never missed a day of service taking over the business.
When Genghis Cohen reopens in its temporary location, guests might find different touches and new colorways, a tandem space to the original — by no means a re-creation of the iconic dining room of 740 N. Fairfax Ave. The iconic large, three-piece neon signs might wait in storage.
While dining room seating is comparable, the bar is much larger, doubling the stools — which Rose and Abrous see as an opportunity to expand the cocktails. The food, they said, will remain the same and possibly include a few new items.
'There's such an energy and a vibe in that [original] room,' Rose said. 'We don't plan on doing an exact mirrored image because that wouldn't feel right. How could we possibly do that?'
What will be notably missing in the temporary space is a stage: something the restaurant's owners feel is a necessary component in Genghis Cohen's future permanent location. In the meantime, while they search for that home, they hope to promote shows 'under the Genghis Cohen moniker' elsewhere.
That's not to say the shows will trickle to a halt in anticipation of the move. Both owners say that they hope to fill the stage with even more performances, and new programming and specials both in the dining room and the music room.
'We're not just going to leave quietly,' Rose said. 'We're going to have so much fun in there the next couple months, because we don't want this to be a funeral. We're going to celebrate everything that 740 N. Fairfax has brought for us these years, with the intention of welcoming everything new that's going to come.'