A legendary West Hollywood sushi spot that once drew Rihanna, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Stevie Wonder is closing its doors at the end of September, the latest casualty of soaring rents and vanishing foot traffic on one of Los Angeles's most iconic stretches.
Sushiya, which opened on Sunset Boulevard in 1998 and became a late-night fixture for Hollywood regulars and neighborhood locals alike, announced on Instagram that September 29 will be its final day of service. The restaurant called itself "the last remaining legacy restaurant at Sunset Plaza", and said its closure marks the end of a "defining chapter" for the area.
It is not closing alone. Employees Only, Electric Owl, The Belmont, and Connie & Ted's have all shut down in recent months along the same corridor. The pattern is not a mystery. Rents keep climbing, visitors keep dropping, and the small operators who gave the Strip its character cannot hold on.
Sofi Mamo runs A Divine H20, a small business on the Sunset Strip. She told the California Post that her rent has almost tripled since she opened two decades ago. The squeeze is not unique to her.
"A lot of the businesses are struggling to break even because the cost of living is rising and the rent is rising."
Mamo did not hold back about where things are headed.
"I think every small business, every mom-and-pop, all the small businesses are in danger of extinction."
That is not hyperbole from a business owner watching her neighbors disappear one lease at a time. West Hollywood city council data shows the Sunset Strip ranks among the most expensive commercial corridors in the Los Angeles area, trailing only Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and nearby Melrose Avenue. For a sushi restaurant or a boutique shop, competing with that kind of overhead requires a steady stream of paying customers. And the customers are not showing up the way they used to.
City figures show 300,000 fewer visitors came to West Hollywood in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier. Retail vacancy in the city hit 10.3 percent last year. Office vacancy was worse, 16.3 percent.
Those numbers tell a story that no amount of celebrity nostalgia can paper over. When a California Post reporter walked the Sunset Strip earlier this summer, the conditions on the ground matched the data: a corridor losing its tenants and its draw.
Sushiya's own farewell acknowledged how much the boulevard has changed around it. In its Instagram announcement, the restaurant said Sunset Boulevard "has changed enormously over the years, but Sushiya remained much the same, staying open late for familiar faces, neighborhood regulars, and generations of guests who came to think of it as their place on Sunset."
Fans responded with grief. "Honestly what is happening," one commenter wrote. Another said: "Ugh I'm going to miss this SO hard. Beyond love you guys and all the memories at Sushiya." A third called it "the best sushi in LA period."
Sushiya was not some struggling unknown. Over its 28-year run, the restaurant served Rihanna, Leonardo DiCaprio, John Travolta, and Stevie Wonder. It was the kind of place that traded on loyalty, regulars who treated it as their own, staff who kept the kitchen open late. Name recognition was never the problem.
But star power does not pay the landlord. And in a city where commercial rents climb faster than revenue, even a well-known restaurant with a devoted following runs out of room. Sushiya opened in 1998, when the Sunset Strip still operated as a magnet for nightlife, dining, and the entertainment industry's after-hours crowd. Nearly three decades later, the street is pocked with vacancies, and the economics have flipped against the small operators who gave it life.
No specific reason for the closure appeared in Sushiya's announcement beyond the broader reality the restaurant described, a boulevard that changed while the restaurant tried to stay the same. The restaurant did not name rising rent or falling traffic directly. It did not need to. Every other business owner on the block is saying it for them.
When the most famous sushi spot on the Sunset Strip cannot survive, the problem is not the restaurant. It is the city that made it impossible to stay.