Next month, one of the most unique Asian restaurants in Los Angeles will close after almost a decade in operation. Cassia-Hogar of “shrimp with the sun”, the creamy loaks of Laksa and the flat loaves of the chef Bryant Ng, will serve their combination of Chinese, Singoporian and Vietnamese dishes with a French-Brazerie touch until its last night on the 22nd of February.
In a statement sent to The Times, the owners NG, Kim Luu-Ng, Zoe Nathan, Josh Loeb and Colby Goff quoted a variety of difficulties and occurrences of the industry that led to their decision: the increase in operational costs, sustained Decreased business From the strikes of the 2023 entertainment industry and, more recently, the city's forest fires that destroyed thousands of lives, homes and businesses.
Customers enter Cassia in 2021.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“We are not unique, but it has been a safe challenge,” said the statement. “While we have done our best to adapt, these circumstances have made us unable to continue operating. With respect to fires, we want to extend our deepest sympathies to all who have lost their homes or have been affected by recent destruction. It is an unprecedented event that will remodel our city and the life of so many people we know and worry in the coming years. ”
According to NG, the fires greatly accelerated the decision of the owners to close, although the question of whether the restaurant could sustain was in consideration during the last year. The first “change,” he said, occurred during the entertainment strikes of 2023, when his previously consistent business began to immerse himself; In 2024, the months were up and down, and “quite difficult to predict.”
“For us, since Cassia is such a big restaurant, when things change, they tend to change significantly and quickly in any direction,” NG said in an email. “When things change negatively, it is a difficult blow due to all our operations, administrator, work, [cost of goods sold] and occupation costs. The fires really shortened our financial track since many of our guests live in areas affected by recent fires. My heart is with them due to the livelihoods and houses that were lost. ”
The Cassia closure, a long -standing concept of celebration of the Rustic Canyon Family Restaurant Group, is one of the growing in the last year. More than 100 restaurants and closed notable bars In the Los Angeles area in 2024, including the location of Santa Monica by Sweet Rose Creamery, another Rustic Family operation of Canyon (Brentwood's original advanced position remains open). Multiple restaurants such as Guerrillas Tacos, Lustig and Monette bar He announced his closures This month too.
NG, a multigenerational chef-restaurant, was based on his culinary experience, as well as those of his family and the Vietnamese inheritance of his wife, Luu-Ng. After emigrating from China, his grandparents operated Bai Hai, a Cantonese-Polinesio restaurant in Culver City in the 1950 And more in its white pepper crab, curry, chicken glazed with lemon grass, fried rice of sichuan-chile and satay.
That tasty cultural crucible, as well as the background and perspective of California of NG, is only one of which the general manager of Times Food, Lauria Ochoa, Tapped Cassia as winner of the 2019 Gold Prize.
“I love that Cassia's food is not just Vietnamese or Asian, but from southern California,” he said at that time. “Encarna one of the great ideas behind the prize:” Expanding the notion of cuisine in southern California. “Fish sauce can be as important for angels cuisine as olive oil.”
In 2015, former Times Food Critic Jonathan Gold wrote That “NG, trained at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, is claiming the essence of French cuisine as theirs; colonizing the colonizers.”
Chef Bryant NG and his commercial partner and wife, Kim Luu-Ng, in Cassia in 2019.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Cassia appeared on the list of the best Times 101 restaurants many times, including The most recent guide of 2024Where Times Food's columnist Jenn Harris wrote that “NG has perfected her syncretic style, and each dish feels immensely personal.” He was appointed the best new restaurant of Bon Appétit, GQ and the Weekly.
Before opening Cassia, NG served as an opening chef in Pizzeria Mozza and directed the restaurant in southeast of Spice Table. In 2012, one of Food & Wine's best chefs was named in the country.
NG and Luu-Ng plan to open a new American Chinese restaurant called Jade Rabbit in Santa Monica that will have a faster and more casual format. The restaurant, said NG, is scheduled for a spring opening.
“We will celebrate Chinese-American food,” NG told The Times: “which is a unique cross pollination of Chinese and American kitchens built by necessity, hard work, creativity, perseverance and entrepreneurship of American Chinese immigrants.”
Meanwhile, the Rustic Canyon family will continue to operate its restaurants in Los Angeles and Ojai, including Birdie G's, Rustic Canyon, Sweet Rose Creamery, Milo + Olive, Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe, The Dutches and Cassia-Adyacent Ester's Wine Shop & Bar.
