Kristy's Closing After 15 Years in Malibu
The Trancas restaurant will serve its last meals this Wednesday.
Holly Bieler · September 6, 2026 · Malibu
Kristy's Village Cafe, the wood oven restaurant and wine bar in the Trancas Country Market, will close on Sept. 9, after 15 years in Malibu.
Dozens of customers, including Los Angeles Rams general manager Les Snead, packed the restaurant last Thursday for a going-away party for owner Kristy Apana, [CBS LA is reporting](https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/customers-throw-going-away-party-for-beloved-kristys-malibu-owner/). Longtime customer Tara Kohlberg organized the send-off.
"She's a legend," Kohlberg told CBS. "She's a huge part of this community. It's so sad. I'm actually emotional about it, a lot of us are."
Apana, a Hawaii native, got her start in Malibu selling pizza out of a trailer at the Malibu Chili Cook-Off, according to [The Malibu Times](https://malibutimes.com/after-15-years-kristy-s-prepares-to-say-aloha-to-malibu/). In early 2011, she and her then-husband opened Kristy's Wood Oven & Wine Bar on the bluff above Zuma Beach, at the Malibu Country Inn.
In 2017, Kristy's moved up the coast, taking over the space of Le Village Cafe in the Trancas Country Market. The combined restaurant kept the French cafe's breakfast menu alongside Kristy's specialties, from the Hong Kong-style steamed fish to the French-fry pizza, and was renamed Kristy's Village Cafe. A sister restaurant, Kristy's Roadhouse on Kanan Rd. in Agoura Hills, burned down in the Woolsey Fire in 2018.
Through Woolsey, COVID, mudslides and countless power outages, Apana became known for feeding the town when it needed it most, delivering meals to nurses and doctors during the pandemic and paying out of her own pocket to feed people during the Woolsey Fire.
"I would hope if I were in a situation, someone was there to help me," Apana told CBS. "That was always the way I looked at it."
The Palisades Fire, she said, was the hardest stretch yet, and with her lease up, she decided to close. Apana plans to continue catering, and hasn't ruled out another restaurant.
"Hopefully we'll open up somewhere else," she said, "and the next chapter will be better."