'This is a reckoning': Michael Cimarusti on Connie & Ted's closure and the state of restaurants

6 min Click here to listen to this article Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print 0:00 0:00 1x This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. In 2013, eight years after he opened 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 and more affordable way to taste of his cooking and seafood sourcing. A taste of New England in West Hollywood, it quickly became known for fried clams and chowders harkening to Cimarusti’s Rhode Island childhood and plump lobster rolls filled with never-frozen lobster. But on July 1, after years of highs, lows and financial setbacks, Connie & Ted’s will close. Like many other L.A. restaurateurs, Cimarusti alongside 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 biggest factor, Cimarusti said, was the dip in sales. The pandemic, followed by the 2023 entertainment-industry strikes and the 2025 fires led to a prolonged loss of business. “I wanted to be able to re-create that food here in Los Angeles and do it the right way, without any shortcuts, and making everything from scratch, and using the finest-quality ingredients that we can buy,” Cimarusti said. “I feel like that cuisine deserves it.” For a long time, he added, Los Angeles agreed. Chef Michael Cimarusti, pictured at his successful Michelin three-star restaurant Providence, is about to close his more casual seafood spot Connie & Ted’s. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) The restaurant, named for Cimarusti’s grandparents — Constance and Edward — opened to fanfare, acclaim and “feverish oyster shucking.” It appeared on multiple L.A. Times 101 lists through the years and specialized in a sort of “no shortcuts” pre-World War II philosophy, with everything made from scratch, including its 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 and most consistent, spooning lobster shipped fresh from Gloucester, Mass., onto fluffy, griddled rolls. The lobster roll, available two ways, is a signature dish at Connie & Ted’s. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) It also served some of the region’s more unique specialties, such as clam cakes from a recipe hand-written by his grandmother found on the back of a fish-shop receipt. During Cimarusti’s childhood summers on Scarborough State Beach in Narragansett, R.I., he would walk to a small shack and purchase a half-dozen of them in a brown paper bag, sharing them with his sister on the sand. (“That’s the only thing that’s missing from the clam cake recipe at Connie’s,” Cimarusti said. “There’s no sand.”) The restaurant, led by executive chef and Providence alum Sam Baxter, “is neither a chefly interpretation of a Rhode Island clam shack nor a fantasia on the theme of New England seafood,” as Jonathan Gold wrote in 2013, adding, “there may be no restaurant in Los Angeles that treats its oysters with more reverence.” Review Connie and Ted’s, a clam shack extraordinaire Counter Intelligence: Jonathan Gold reviews Connie and Ted’s. The West Hollywood clam shack conjures Rhode Island on the West Coast, be it with clams of all kinds, lobster cooked just right or oysters treated with reverence. Sam Baxter, an alum of L.A.’s Providence, 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 each week. “It’s a restaurant that we put lots of work into, lots of capital into, and it operated very successfully for quite a long while,” Cimarusti said, adding of the decision to close: “We just didn’t have a choice anymore.” To build it they flipped the longtime Silver Spoon diner into their modern seafood shack, alongside their business partners Donato Poto, Amy Specter Nickoloff and Craig Nickoloff. They overhauled the 1930-founded building’s plumbing and electricity, added a raw bar, a wave-like wooden overhang and a fish tank, and adorned the dining room with lobster traps, mounted fish and other nautical decor. In winter, as they began considering closing the restaurant, they quietly looked for a buyer but held out hope that they could still 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 in.” Connie & Ted’s in October 2020, when the restaurant extended to the parking lot to accommodate pandemic-era outdoor dining. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) Providence, even at 21 years old, is still regularly book

'This is a reckoning': Michael Cimarusti on Connie & Ted's closure and the state of restaurants

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