It always sucks when your favorite L.A. restaurant closes. Multiply that feeling tenfold if you happen to be vegan and already live as an outlier. While Los Angeles has long been seen as a hub for plant eaters, lately, not everyone has felt that way.
Donna Jean, an Italian-inspired vegan restaurant in Sherman Oaks, which shuttered at the end of 2025, was just one L.A. restaurant to close in recent years. Chef Roy Elam opened Donna Jean, which became a beloved community staple, in 2022, naming it in honor of his mother who died of breast cancer but switched to a vegan diet in her final months, in lieu of another round of chemo. The restaurant became known for preparing all its pizzas, pastas and sauces from scratch while using top-notch ingredients.
“It really felt like a small-time kind of community restaurant in a lot of ways,” said Josh McClain, a former manager, going as far as calling it a “lifeline” for certain customers with niche allergies.
In spite of its dedicated fanbase, at the end of the day the restaurant just never was able to expand beyond them, said Elam, who still operates the original Donna Jean restaurant in San Diego.
“We could have a $10,000 day and that would be our whole entire week, and every other day would be, like, $0.”
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