Harissa restaurant, Got Kosher? deli & bakery cite pandemic in sudden closure

(Harissa restaurant to close. Credit: Harissa)

Citing a drop-off in customers, employees and revenue due to COVID-19, Harissa, a kosher Sephardic eatery in Pico-Robertson, announced on its website on Jan. 23 that it is closing. Also closing is its sister business next door, Got Kosher Deli & Bakery.

A brief note signed by chef Alain Cohen also attributed the landlord’s decision to sell the building as among the reasons to shutter the eateries. The businesses are in the same block on Pico Boulevard as B’nai David-Judea Congregation.

The announcement said the businesses, which have been open for 22 months during the pandemic, had been losing money for months.

“We are proud to have brought to Los Angeles an…appetite for better and more diverse quality kosher food, specifically the pretzel gourmet challah, international ethnic kosher cuisines, pareve French pastries, upscale sandwiches in schools and universities and gourmet kosher frozen entrees in hospitals,” Cohen wrote on the website. “We have inspired a new generation of kosher chefs and countless customers who realized that kosher foods can be ‘supremely good.’ ”

Got Kosher will now focus on becoming a bread company, operating its wholesale bakery location at 8758 Pico Blvd., the announcement said. Cohen thanked his customers for their loyalty and wrote he hoped to serve people at the new location when it’s ready.

Cohen fused cuisine from his native Tunisia, his family’s Paris restaurant and his “American culinary experiences,” the restaurant’s website says. Harissa, which also offered full catering services, is named for the spicy condiment native to northern Africa. It opened in 2009.