In 2013, eight years after opening Providence, which earned its third Michelin star last year, chef Michael Cimarusti opened Connie & Ted's with the idea of offering Los Angeles an easy, more affordable way to try his cuisine and seafood. A taste of New England in West Hollywood, it quickly became known for fried clams and chowders reminiscent of Cimarusti's childhood in Rhode Island and lobster rolls stuffed with never-frozen lobster.
But on July 1, after years of ups, downs and financial setbacks, Connie & Ted's will close.
Like many other Los Angeles restaurateurs, Cimarusti, along with his wife and business partner, Crisi Echiverri, cited inflation and the high cost of labor in West Hollywood, which is one of the highest in the country at $20.25 for non-hotel employees. But the most important factor, Cimarusti said, was the decline in sales. The pandemic, followed by the 2023 entertainment industry strikes and the 2025 fires caused a prolonged loss of business.
“I wanted to be able to recreate that food here in Los Angeles and do it the right way, without shortcuts, making everything from scratch and using the best quality ingredients we can buy,” Cimarusti said. “I feel like that kitchen deserves it.”
For a long time, he added, Los Angeles agreed.
Chef Michael Cimarusti, pictured at his successful three-Michelin-starred Providence restaurant, is about to close his more casual seafood restaurant, Connie & Ted's.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
The restaurant, named after Cimarusti's grandparents, Constance and Edward, opened to fanfare, cheers and “feverish oyster shucking.” He appeared on multiple LA Times 101 lists over the years and specialized in a sort of “no shortcuts” pre-World War II philosophy, with everything made from scratch, including breadcrumbs and crackers. New England-style lobster rolls weren't always so plentiful in Los Angeles, and Connie & Ted's offered some of the best, most consistent lobsters shipped fresh from Gloucester, Massachusetts, on fluffy, grilled buns.
The lobster roll, available two ways, is a signature dish at Connie & Ted's.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
He also served some of the region's most unique specialties, such as clam cakes from a recipe handwritten by his grandmother found on the back of a fishmonger's receipt. During Cimarusti's childhood summers at Scarborough State Beach in Narragansett, Rhode Island, he would walk to a small shack and buy a half-dozen of them in a brown paper bag, sharing them with his sister on the sand. (“That's the only thing missing from the clam cake recipe at Connie's,” Cimarusti said. “There's no sand.”)
The restaurant, helmed by executive chef and Providence alum Sam Baxter, “is neither a chef's interpretation of a Rhode Island clam shack nor a New England seafood-themed fantasy,” as Jonathan Gold wrote in 2013, adding, “there may be no restaurant in Los Angeles that treats its oysters with more reverence.”
Sam Baxter, a Providence alum from Los Angeles, is the executive chef at Michael Cimarusti's Connie and Ted's in West Hollywood.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Cimarusti said he never imagined how successful the restaurant would be. Some customers still dine there once or twice a week.
“It's a restaurant that we put a lot of work into, invested a lot of capital in, and it ran very successfully for quite a while,” Cimarusti said, adding of the decision to close: “We just didn't have a choice anymore.”
To build it, they converted the former Silver Spoon restaurant into their modern seafood shack, along with business partners Donato Poto, Amy Specter Nickoloff and Craig Nickoloff. They renovated the plumbing and electrical of the 1930-founded building, added an unfinished bar, a wave-shaped wooden overhang and a fish tank, and decked out the dining room with lobster traps, mounted fish and other nautical decor.
In the winter, when they began considering closing the restaurant, they quietly searched for a buyer, but remained hopeful they could make it work. Then, in the spring, they decided to call it quits.
“People dine differently now,” Echiverri said. “Now, instead of going to a mid-priced restaurant like Connie & Ted's, they'll just order there.”
Connie & Ted's in October 2020, when the restaurant extended into the parking lot to host pandemic-era outdoor dining.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Providence, even at 21 years old, still regularly sees bookings. But for “middle-of-the-road restaurants” (between fast-casual places without extensive table service and high-end tasting menus), restaurateurs often make up for slimmer margins with volume. Without that, they falter.
Several notable Los Angeles restaurants have already closed in the first five months of the year, even before the end of May, including Cole's, Socalo, Taix, DTLA Cheese, Rao's and Fat & Flour, in Grand Central Market.
“This is a reckoning we are seeing here in Los Angeles,” Cimarusti said.
Cimarusti said it was becoming increasingly difficult to charge prices at his more casual restaurant that reflected the true cost of his burgers and lobster rolls.
Shellfish, when caught wild, vary in price due to water temperature, spawning, overfishing, and other factors. When Connie & Ted's first opened, lobster could cost the restaurant $4 or $5 per pound during the summer months, resulting in lobster rolls selling for about $25. Now those same lobsters cost more than $15 a pound, more than three times the initial cost, but Cimarusti said he can't realistically charge three times as much for the $75 lobster roll. The current price is $39.
One afternoon at the end of May, the dining room was full. Some considered themselves regular customers; others had not visited in years but wanted to say goodbye before July 1. Groups of waiting customers spilled out of the lobby and onto the front patio.
Cimarusti and Echiverri say they are grateful for the flood of guests since the closure announcement, but they hope the visits will extend into June, beyond the immediacy of the news.
Crisi Echiverri, center, photographed with Gary Menes, right, and Andre Guerrero for a 2010 article about Filipino chefs in Los Angeles.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
On June 18, Cimarusti will cook alongside Baxter for One Last Cast, a $175 sold-out dinner featuring some of the restaurant's first dishes, including Angels on Horseback: a recipe from an old cookbook that involves wrapping oysters in bacon, roasting them, and eating them with toast and champagne beurre blanc.
As Echiverri said: “We're going to finish strong.”
Connie & Ted's is at 8171 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, and is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5 to 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.; and on Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. until July 1.
