Sky's Closed Its Pico Dining Room. Which Longtime Mid City Kitchens Are Still Cooking?

"Times have changed," Barbara "Sky" Burrell told Eater LA in late July. "City policy and regulations have changed. Standards in business have changed. And we have to change, too."

She said this weeks before the full-service restaurant at 5303 W. Pico Blvd., near Cochran Avenue, closed on August 15, 2026. Burrell opened Sky's in 1992 and ran it on Pico for 34 years. She also said something the farewell headlines mostly skipped. "This isn't because we failed," she told the Los Angeles Times. "Businesses evolve."

The dining room is gone, but the food is still being made. The recipes are moving into catering, shipping and a planned ghost kitchen. The style Sky's helped define is served at storefronts a few miles south. On Pico itself, two longtime kitchens are now the only places on the stretch where you can sit down to that kind of meal. If Sky's was part of your week, here's where each part of it went.

What actually closed, and why the timing makes sense

Sky's had been getting smaller for a while. Burrell opened Sky's Gourmet Marketplace in Marina del Rey in 2016. In 2018 she opened Sky's Gourmet Tacos and Marketplace in Westchester's JM Eagle Building. She told Eater that constantly changing rules for Los Angeles restaurants were part of why she closed those locations one at a time. Pico was the original location and the last one standing.

The Times listed the pressures on that final storefront: higher rent and utility costs, less foot traffic, and competition from ghost kitchens. "Economically, it just doesn't make sense anymore," Burrell said. Eater's Mona Holmes put foot traffic in local terms. This part of Mid City sits between some of the city's most densely populated communities, she wrote, yet it still gets less foot traffic than Miracle Mile and Culver City next door.

The business is staying in the family. Burrell's son Victor is still president, and her daughter-in-law Marie runs catering, which Burrell described as "solid." The plan pulls the business away from the costs of keeping a dining room open and leans on the side that was already working.

How to get Sky's food right now

The plan depends on whether you want it delivered, shipped or cooked for a crowd.

• Ghost kitchen, planned. It's slated to keep the all-day breakfast tacos, lobster tacos, wraps and crawfish burritos. When Eater reported the closing, Burrell was still negotiating a lease for a space with a prep kitchen. We haven't found a public announcement of a launch since August 15.
• Local online ordering, not live yet. The "Order Now" page on Sky's website currently says no menus are available and to check back later. Delivery apps still list the Pico address but show it as closed.
• Nationwide shipping. The official site links to Goldbelly.
• Sauces and seasoning blends. The Times reported the family will keep selling sauces, seasoning blends and merchandise. That's the easiest way to keep the Sky's flavor in your own kitchen.
• Catering. Marie Burrell leads it, and it's the part of the business the family is building around.

We also haven't seen any announcement about what will move into 5303 W. Pico.

The two kitchens still holding the stretch

LAist put Sky's in a longer story about this stretch. Roscoe's House of Chicken 'N Waffles closed its Pico location in 2023, and My 2 Cents closed in summer 2025. As of LAist's July 30 report, Stevie's Creole Cafe and CJ's Cafe were still open, "anchoring what's left" of the row. Both sit a short walk west of the old Sky's storefront, and each has a history worth knowing before you go.

CJ's Cafe has been on Pico almost as long as Sky's. Jesse Cisneros has said that his mother, Jessica, started it as a small diner in 1988, as Sweet Leisure reported. He and his brother Sergio now run two locations, and the original is still at 5501 W. Pico. The menu mixes Mexican and American breakfast and lunch, much like Sky's mixed two cooking traditions. Chilaquiles and chicken and waffles share the same menu. There's also a Sunday preorder option on its delivery page.

Stevie's Creole Cafe has a longer history than its Pico address suggests. Stephen Perry opened the original Stevie's on the Strip in 1986. He and his daughter Lauren opened the Pico cafe in 2015, and Lauren now owns it. The cafe's own location page lists hours of 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.

Together they cover a full day. You can have chilaquiles at CJ's in the morning and gumbo at Stevie's for dinner, and the two are a few doors apart. Pico also has a newer project. One operator is combining storefronts at 5500 and 5510 into a coordinated dining block, which we covered in What's Opening on Pico Boulevard in Mid City. So the longtime kitchens and the new one are now on the same few blocks.

Where the Sky's taco style is still served

The hardest part to replace is the taco itself. Eater describes it as a lightly fried tortilla shell around meats with non-traditional seasonings, topped with shredded cheese, lettuce and sour cream. Burrell is one of the chefs most closely tied to it. Food writer Bill Esparza told LAist that Sky's was "the pinnacle of the Black taco in Los Angeles." He compared losing the dining room to losing the Tijuana restaurant credited with inventing the Caesar salad. He also traces the style back to the Hot Tamale Trail of the Mississippi Delta.

LAist named two places where that approach continues today. Both are a short drive from Pico.

1. Taco Mell, 4326 Crenshaw Blvd. It's a dine-in and takeout restaurant. The official location page lists hours of Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Sunday, with delivery until midnight. SFGATE found a line at the counter when it visited in July 2025.
2. Worldwide Tacos, 2419 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. You order at a walk-up window on the street, as the Times described in 2024. It opens in the afternoon and runs into the evening, and published schedules don't all agree, so check the day's hours before you drive over.

Esparza also expects Sky's influence to show up in a new wave of Black-owned taco vendors and pop-ups. Those are harder to pin to an address, but they're part of where the style is headed.

One more legacy stop, just outside Mid City

Harold & Belle's at 2920 W. Jefferson Blvd. is in Jefferson Park, not Mid City. It belongs on this list because of how long it has been open. LAist traces it to 1969. The restaurant's site says it is third-generation family-owned. It lists gumbo, jambalaya and charbroiled oysters, plus weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. It's a good choice for a long Saturday lunch or for guests who want to try a restaurant that has run for more than five decades.

Burrell summed up what's at stake on Pico in one line to Eater: "The fiber of every city is a small business storefront. This makes the community a community." On the Mid City stretch of Pico this fall, the storefronts with that kind of history are CJ's at 5501 and Stevie's at 5545.

At Debbie Weiss, we follow storefront changes like this one on Pico, from the longtime kitchens to the new projects moving in nearby, because they shape what everyday life on these blocks feels like. If you want to talk about what changes on the Pico corridor could mean for your street, or you just want to swap notes on the best gumbo in Mid City, let's connect.