World-famous San Francisco noodle house to close ritzy LA location

After nearly 30 years, an iconic San Francisco-based restaurant is readying to serve its last orders of garlic-roasted Dungeness crab and signature garlic noodles in upscale Beverly Hills.

Crustacean, the restaurant founded by pioneering chef Helene An and her family, announced it will soon be shuttering its recognizable location on the corner of Bedford Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, just blocks from the world-famous Rodeo Drive. "As we prepare to begin a new chapter, we also prepare to bid Bedford adieu," the Instagram post reads. "While our address may be changing, the heart of Crustacean never will. It lives in the people who have filled our dining room with laughter, conversation, celebration, and love for the past 30 years."

After fleeing Vietnam and arriving in the United States as a refugee, An opened Thanh Long in San Francisco's Outer Sunset in the 1970s. The original, more upscale Crustacean debuted in Nob Hill in 1991 before relocating to the Financial District in 2025. Crustacean Beverly Hills opened in 1997; the House of An restaurant group also operates Tiato in Santa Monica and AnQi in Orange County.

An has been heralded as "the mother of fusion cuisine" for her melding of Vietnamese, Chinese and French flavors, and she was honored by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History for her pioneering contributions to the culinary world. Last year, An was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in Sacramento as well.

In an interview with Fox 11 Los Angeles, Helene's daughter Elizabeth, who serves as the restaurant group's CEO, stated that the building housing Crustacean has been sold and that the new landlord "has other plans" for the space.

"We thought at the very least we would have a couple of months for the transition," Elizabeth An said in the interview, during which she indicated that the family would like to find Crustacean a new home. "Thank goodness we have a wonderful restaurant in Santa Monica, Tiato, and so we're going to do a Crustacean pop-up from now until the end of the year. That's my plan."

Over the decades, Crustacean Beverly Hills has been a celebrity favorite known for its bamboo garden and aquarium walkway filled with koi, drawing in everyone from Billy Joel to Leonardo DiCaprio.

Surprisingly, despite the July 27 goodbye date posted by the An family on the Crustacean Beverly Hills social media, SFGATE was told by Crustacean's PR representative Carl Larsen via email that the building's landlord had a "change of heart" following the Fox 11 appearance and has sent the restaurant a short-term lease extension, which is currently under review. The team, he says, is hoping for an extension through September 30.

Larsen said that regardless, "it is safe to say that Crustacean Beverly Hills' presence in the Golden Triangle is coming to an end in the near future."

"Over the past three decades, Crustacean Beverly Hills has been so much more than a restaurant," Crustacean's Instagram post reads. "It has been a place where life happened. And the greatest privilege of all has been sharing those moments with you."

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