Last Call

WHEN IT OPENED IN MARCH of last year, Beethoven Market — a stylish Cal-Ital restaurant on a quiet residential corner in Mar Vista — was celebrated as the kind of walkable neighborhood restaurant Los Angeles needed. 

The establishment, which received an expedited liquor permit under the city’s new Restaurant Beverage Program, was built for locals. But it quickly became a citywide destination, becoming one of Los Angeles’s most in-demand reservations.

Some neighbors loved it, delighted to have a place to drop in on a Tuesday night and order pasta for the kids and a glass of wine for themselves. But other nearby residents fumed about the noise and the traffic. Some of them began filing complaints with the city. And some of them eventually sued the restaurant’s owners for creating a nuisance. 

A year later, the city has put the restaurant’s permission to sell liquor on hold, the dining room’s centerpiece bar is half empty, and the bartenders and many other staff members have quit to find other jobs. 

“It was a joy box,” said owner Jeremy Adler, adding: “I want that feeling again. I miss it so much.” 

The neighborhood, meanwhile, remains bitterly divided about what happened — a rift that once again exposes how Los Angeles’ bureaucracy can confound business owners and residents alike. The saga of Beethoven Market reveals how a flight of new ordinances that seemed like solid regulatory ground were actually a liquefaction zone, softening catastrophically with a big enough jolt. And it shows how the city often struggles to balance its larger policy goals with the needs of small groups of property owners.

City officials yanked Beethoven Market’s liquor permit in December after finding it had violated the rules of the programs it operated under multiple times. The move, which was a body blow to the restaurant’s finances, was prompted in part by more than 40 complaints neighbors filed to the city, more than half of which came from two nearby households. 

But the angry neighbors are not exulting in their victory. Instead, after a series of social media debates turned nasty, many are refusing to even talk about their complaints, aware how upset other residents are at the threat to their neighborhood gem. One after another, neighbors who complained online or to the city declined to comment to L.A. Material, with some citing a fear of harassment. 

The only person who agreed to be quoted about problems with Beethoven was a nearby resident named Angela, who requested not to use her last name due to fear of blowback from her neighbors or supporters of the restaurant. She said she loved dining at Beethoven. But it had created a war for parking on her street, and on top of that, diners returned to their cars late and loud. 

“Oh, my God, they come out of the restaurant at 11 o'clock at night on a Wednesday, and then the dogs go berserk, the kids wake up, and that kind of thing,” she said. “It's the unwanted consequences of having a popular restaurant around the corner.”

Adler, the restaurant’s owner, acknowledged that he had made some missteps, but said he tried to be a good neighbor. He also said he was often confused by the complex, seemingly contradictory rules governing his permits. A Mar Vista resident himself, he said the restaurant “brought a sense of connection and joy and community to a neighborhood that obviously wanted it.” 

FOR NEARLY 75 YEARS, the Beethoven Market was a market. Its last incarnation was a corner store where neighbors would pop in for candy and soda on the corner of Palms and Beethoven in the middle of a sleepy residential neighborhood in Mar Vista. 

But Mar Vista is changing. Once the scruffier step-sibling of its glitzier Westside neighbors, its real estate has become almost as expensive as Venice and Santa Monica, with fixer-upper bungalows selling at $1.5 - $2 million to developers who erect four or five million dollar homes in their place. 

Adler, who lives about a mile away from the spot, had a dream to make a restaurant there. When he first walked into the space, he said he felt the same emotions as when he found the home he now lives in, or when he met his wife. “My response was, Fuck, I have to do this. I saw immediately what I wanted it to look like.”

He took advantage of two programs the city of Los Angeles instituted to help restaurants after the pandemic. One, the Restaurant Beverage Program, loosened rules around getting a permit for alcohol service, while another, LA Al Fresco, cut red tape around outdoor dining and parking requirements. 

But these new programs, which have differing but exacting requirements, also came with the proviso that city officials could easily suspend permits for violations. 

Some residents were immediately unhappy to learn that their old corner store was going to become a restaurant with a liquor license. In June of 2024, nine months before the first diner was served, Fox 11 did a story on neighbors’ fears about traffic and being kept up late from restaurant noise. 

Beethoven opened its doors on March 29, 2025 to reveal a handsome white stucco building with pinstripe-swathed booths, and a glass-walled wine storage area (now off-limits). It was stylish, but approachable: The swanky patio had stroller parking. 

Within weeks, the complaints to the city began flooding in. Nearly all concerned noise. The tone was frustrated and aggrieved.

“He has outdoor speakers which are playing loud music,” read one April complaint, filed by Azadeh Hawkins, who lives very close to Beethoven Market. She added, “This is a complete nuisance to our neighborhood.” Other complaints detailed how residents asked the restaurant to turn the speakers off, and claimed that management at the restaurant refused. The existence of the speakers was a violation of the restaurant’s permits. Both the Restaurant Beverage Program and the temporary Al Fresco ordinance prohibit them.  

City inspectors descended on the restaurant on April 23 and photographed the unpermitted speakers. They also noted two other violations of the Restaurant Beverage Program: That the restaurant was not serving food at happy hour as required, and that it had replaced a small market area with more seating as the restaurant grew more popular. Both of these issues had been flagged in an April complaint by Holly Tilson, another neighbor and a former director on the Mar Vista community council for the area, who wrote, “Please enforce the city codes under which this restaurant was approved.” (Both Hawkins and Tilson declined to comment for this article.)

On May 6th, the city mailed Beethoven Market a formal letter about a code violation, which was later cited as their first “strike.” Under the RBP, a restaurant loses the use of its alcohol permit after three. 

In an oversight that Adler said he now regrets, the restaurant did not remove the speakers immediately. 

Throughout the month of May, nearby neighbors continued to complain. “The amount of noise from the customers dining at the Beethoven market is way too loud. It is keeping my kids from going to sleep,” read one complaint from May 14th, filed by Sarah Blitz, who filed 15 complaints against Beethoven during the period from April to September. (Blitz also declined to comment.) On May 27th, Hawkins filed a complaint reiterating the issues with traffic and noise and asked, “How is he being held accountable by the city?” 

Neighbors also complained the restaurant did not close precisely at 11 PM, another requirement of the RBP ordinance. On July 1st, the city mailed Adler a second letter, which also cited a code violation about their hours. The city later cited this as Beethoven’s second “strike.”

Even after the second letter, the battle over the restaurant’s hours continued. One complaint came with an attached video: It depicted someone walking with a phone in their hand that reads 11:00 PM on July 16. Then, they pan up to reveal the exterior of Beethoven Market, where a pair of people sit at a table on a side patio. Through the windows, the camera shows two tables that are still seated as the staff cleans up around them.

It was on July 17th that a small group of neighbors filed suit against Jeremy Adler, his mother Brenda Fabe Adler, who owns the building, and his company 3rd Place, LLC, for private nuisance and negligence. Three of the homeowners joining the suit had also filed complaints with the city, including Hawkins, but other parties had not. The suit alleges that Beethoven Market’s noise, parking issues, and trash decreased the residents’ property values and rental income, and caused mental distress. (Both Adler and the neighbors declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.)

On July 29, Beethoven Market finally removed the outdoor speakers. But when an inspector returned on August 27, they noted a new problem, which had been flagged to them by a city planner and which they had missed previously: There was no structure between the restaurant’s patio and the neighboring residential lot. The RBP required a building separating the two. On September 15, the city issued Adler his third citation, this time about the patio issue.

Adler thought his patio was in compliance. It had been permitted under the city’s temporary Al Fresco ordinance, which explicitly forbade enclosing it. Adler said he’d believed that was the ordinance he’d needed to follow.

Despite receiving these letters, Adler said he never believed he was in danger of losing his liquor permit. Their titles are confusing: The first reads “Notice of Code Violation,” the second an “Order to Comply,” and the third “Order to Comply - Supplemental.” 

Most of the issues he’d been cited for had easy fixes: Serve food at happy hour, notify the city of the seating changes, ditch the speakers. 

He said he also tried to address some of his neighbor’s other concerns. He enclosed his dumpsters to hide the trash after one neighbor asked him to. He also began texting all guests who had made reservations to ask them to park on Palms Boulevard, not residential Beethoven Street. With the exception of  lagging on getting rid of the outdoor speakers, he said he tried to be a good neighbor every way he could. After a conversation with one local, for example, Adler said, he installed the exact kind of soundproofing the man requested.

But in December, Adler received an email terminating the use of his liquor license effective immediately. A memo from the city cited the three strikes for failing to adhere to the RBP code. He described it as a shock.

He also does not know why there was a three month gap between his third strike and losing the use of the permit. “If you’re asking me to understand how the city of Los Angeles operates—” Adler said, then added, “It’s all very confusing.”

Since losing the use of his permit, Adler has engaged the consultant Laurette Healey, whose company, City Land Use, helps hospitality businesses navigate the thicket of city regulations and neighborhood issues alike. Healey argues that the city erred in revoking Adler’s ability to serve alcohol over the confusion about whether the patio should be enclosed. 

“Those neighbors can feel legitimately that ‘we don't want more people, more parking.’ That’s ok,” she said. “[The city] should know what the actual operator is doing and what they’re permitted to do before taking everything away. It’s the most egregious thing I’ve ever seen.”

Healey said she believes the communication breakdown between Adler and code enforcement officials occurred, in part, because of the siloing of departments and the loss of experienced staff during COVID. She said, “These guys are tremendously overworked and they have to serve more people than you and I can possibly imagine.”

Eddie Navarrette is a restaurant design consultant and member of the Independent Hospitality Coalition who helped push the RBP through city council. He said that pre-pandemic, before the new program went into effect, it was common for neighbors to organize and attack a restaurant’s alcohol permit as a way to drive out an unwanted business. And getting a conditional use permit, the old model for serving alcohol on premises, also took a year of time and tens of thousands of dollars in fees. 

“The RBP could be better, but it took us five years for it to get rolled out,” he said. (It was first proposed in 2017 and given new urgency in April 2020; it was finally launched in 2022.) Which means change to the program is unlikely, or at the very least, won’t come quickly. He also said that some responsibility falls on business owners. “If anyone is a noisy neighbor and disrupts the peace, they’re going to be open to stuff like this.” 

A representative for the city planning department said that of the roughly 350 establishments to receive a Restaurant Beverage Program permit, Beethoven is the only one to lose its use. 

On a recent Thursday evening at 7 p.m., a number of guests waited outside of Beethoven Market on the side of the building facing Palms Boulevard. There was an audible din of voices and clinking plates from the patio; outside the house right next door to the restaurant, the noise of all those diners was only slightly softened by soundproofing.

Those neighbors declined to speak; so did anyone else who answered the dozen or so doors up and down the block, where the sound of the restaurant quickly faded away. Many houses were behind gates or hedges, protecting them from traffic noise. At one point, a jet took off from the nearby Santa Monica Airport, a sharp and surprising roar.

Since losing the use of the permit, the restaurant’s revenue has dropped by forty or fifty percent, according to Adler. Reservations, once impossible to obtain, are easy to come by, even on the weekends. The dining room is often busy, but tables turn faster, and checks are down. (Alcohol, which is shelf stable and requires much less labor to prepare, is one of the few areas  where restaurants turn a profit, and a table ordering a couple rounds of cocktails or a nice bottle of wine juices tips.)

Many staff have quit. “They're not leaving because they want to. They’re leaving because they have to make rent,” Adler said.

As Adler works to figure out whether his permit can be restored, the neighbors’ lawsuit is still ongoing; the next hearing is May 12.

Adler feels some hope that he’ll resolve the restaurant’s issues, but worries about the long term future. And he misses the thriving business he’d so recently had. “We sometimes get it — but it was like that every night.” 

Beethoven Market recently opened for breakfast and lunch service in an attempt to stabilize revenue. It launched during a rainy week, and people still came in. It’s now open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and then again for brunch on weekends and dinner service seven days a week.

Angela, the neighbor who loved the food but objected to the noise, now worries that her neighbors’ efforts to fight Beethoven Market could only make things worse. 

“My concern is that he's going to get this license back. Obviously, he has to. He needs to make the business work. And with the longer hours, maybe things will become even more intense.”