Years ago, news broke that trendy Los Angeles-based hotspot The Bungalow would be opening a sprawling indoor & outdoor party house with a celebrity chef-driven restaurant in San Diego, but there have been no updates on the project ever since? So what happened to The Bungalow's San Diego location?
From Los Angeles nightlife extraordinaire Brent Bolthouse, The Bungalow is restaurant and bar concept that first opened at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows in Santa Monica in August 2012. Bolthouse expanded the brand with a second location at Pacific City in Huntington Beach in 2016 with Bear Flag Fish Co. as its exclusive culinary partner. In 2021, The Bungalow opened in Belmont Shores in Long Beach with a kitchen helmed by San Francisco based celebrity chef Michael Mina, who also operated an outpost of his International Smoke concept as part of the incoming One Paseo project in Del Mar before the restaurant shuttered in early 2022. The Long Beach location temporarily closed in March 2023 after parting ways with Chef Mina and has since reopened.
The San Diego outpost of The Bungalow was set to open as part of Westfield UTC's ongoing expansion project, but it appears the project has been completely abandoned. The Bungalow's San Diego branch was to be housed in a standalone building, occupying a total of 10,000 square feet with more than 5,000 square feet of outdoor space. It was also expected to have an onsite restaurant in partnership with Chef Michael Mina. The company was scheduled to break ground on the project in summer 2019, but that never happened. It is believed the COVID-19 pandemic may have caused The Bungalow's ownership to scale back and focus on existing projects in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.
