Community Bored

Deep Izakaya Dry Izakaya, For Now

Deep Modern Izakaya could be prohibited from selling booze for as long as a year, thanks to a neighbor who protested their application for a beer and wine license. This week was supposed to be the big opening splash for the restaurant, which has been in soft opening since August 26, but the licensing debacle seems to have dampened the festivities. They’ve pushed their dinner debut to Saturday, according to their facebook page, and when they do start serving the general public it will be sans booze.

A neighbor filed the protest with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control on September 14, two days before the restaurant was supposed to open, and now it’s entered a Kafka-esque world of bureaucratic holdups. “Sometimes it gets cleared up very quickly and can be a matter of a month or two. Sometimes it can be a year or even longer,” ABC spokeswoman Juliet Lac told Grub Street on the phone. She wouldn’t divulge the nature of the complaint, but said the issue won’t be resolved until both parties can come to an agreement and the neighbor retracts it. According to records the space has had a beer and wine license at least back to 2000. Fortunately (at least according to Thrillist), the Deep team is cool with brown bags.

Deep Izakaya Dry Izakaya, For Now