A massive circular Roscoe's chicken-and-waffle sign was hoisted into place this week at the chain's long-awaited restaurant at 1678 National Avenue, marking perhaps the most convincing evidence yet that the legendary Los Angeles soul food institution may really, finally be preparing to open its first San Diego location. After SanDiegoVille has spent more than ten years reporting on projected opening dates that have come and gone, we're not even going to attempt another prediction, but seeing the actual Roscoe's logo attached to the restaurant certainly makes this feel a whole lot more real.
We first reported in February 2016 that Roscoe's was searching for a location for its first San Diego restaurant, with Mission Valley initially rumored as a possibility. By that summer, plans had shifted to Barrio Logan, where the company was targeting properties around the corner of National Avenue and Sigsbee Street for a substantial new restaurant development.
And thus began what has become one of the longest-running restaurant opening sagas in San Diego history. Roscoe's expansion was complicated almost immediately by a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in March 2016, which came months after the company was ordered to pay $3.2 million to a former employee who prevailed in a wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuit against the chain's parent company.
By 2019, things appeared to be moving again. Roscoe's was in the final stages of approvals to demolish several existing structures and construct a new two-story building at the Barrio Logan property, and the project subsequently received approval from the City of San Diego.
Then the pandemic arrived, bringing another lengthy delay. Roscoe's eventually broke ground in 2021, and at various points the restaurant was expected to open that summer, then later that year, then in 2022, then early 2023, with each projected debut arriving without any chicken or waffles being served.
Construction eventually came to a standstill in late 2022, leaving the partially built restaurant sitting unfinished and raising legitimate questions about whether the San Diego Roscoe's would ever happen at all. The site remained largely dormant for an extended period before the company once again insisted the project was still alive.
In spring 2024, there was yet another glimmer of hope when construction resumed. By that October, Roscoe's itself shared photos showing substantial progress on the Barrio Logan building with the message, "Quick update on Roscoe's San Diego. As promised, here are some progress pics. See you soon, SD!"
"Soon," as we've learned over the past decade, is a very relative term when it comes to Roscoe's. Another year came and went without an opening, and the calendar has now rolled well into 2026, more than ten years after SanDiegoVille first reported that the Los Angeles institution was headed south.
This time, however, there is at least something tangible to celebrate. The building has continued taking shape, and the arrival of a giant Roscoe's sign is considerably harder to ignore than another projected opening date or promise that the restaurant is coming "soon."
If and when the doors finally open, the San Diego outpost is expected to feature a roughly 6,000 square-foot restaurant with its own parking and a second-story rooftop dining deck. The menu is anticipated to mirror the company's other Southern California restaurants, centered around its namesake fried chicken and waffles along with soul food staples like grits, gravy, greens, macaroni and cheese and biscuits.
Roscoe's was founded in Hollywood by Harlem native Herb Hudson in 1975 and became a Los Angeles institution by popularizing the now-famous combination of fried chicken and waffles. Over the ensuing five decades, the restaurants became particularly intertwined with Los Angeles' Black culture and attracted generations of locals, tourists and celebrity devotees.
The company's history hasn't been without substantial turbulence, however, and its prolonged San Diego development has unfolded against a backdrop of financial problems, lawsuits, restaurant closures and more recent controversies. In addition to the bankruptcy and $3.2 million employment judgment that complicated the chain's initial San Diego expansion, a longtime former employee sued Roscoe's in Los Angeles Superior Court in 2024, seeking class-action status and alleging unpaid overtime, missed meal and rest periods, unreimbursed work expenses and other labor violations.
Roscoe's also became embroiled in an unusual social media controversy in late 2024 after a giant inflatable Donald Trump appeared outside its Long Beach location, prompting backlash and calls for a boycott from some customers who interpreted its presence as a political endorsement by a restaurant with deep ties to Los Angeles' Black community. Roscoe's management disputed that characterization, maintaining that the inflatable was associated with an event at the neighboring Seabird Jazz Lounge and was not placed there by Roscoe's.
The controversy developed into a public feud with food content creator Epicurious Expeditions, who criticized the restaurant, highlighted past health inspection violations and published a video showing followers how to make a version of Roscoe's signature chicken and waffles at home. Roscoe's leadership pushed back publicly against the criticism, with its chief operating officer reportedly saying that despite calls on social media to cancel the restaurant, business had actually increased.
Roscoe's has also endured tragedy. In September 2022, rapper PnB Rock was shot and killed during a robbery while dining at a Roscoe's restaurant in South Los Angeles, an incident that generated national headlines and brought intense scrutiny to the location, although the restaurant itself was not implicated in the crime.
Yet despite all of the financial troubles, litigation, controversy, pandemic-era setbacks and seemingly endless construction delays, Roscoe's has kept returning to its long-promised San Diego restaurant. And now, more than a decade after the project first surfaced, there is a giant Roscoe's House of Chicken 'N Waffles sign hanging in Barrio Logan.
For practically any other restaurant, installing exterior signage would be an ordinary construction milestone barely worth mentioning. For a restaurant San Diegans have been told is "coming soon" in one form or another since Barack Obama was president, it feels almost monumental.
So, could 2026 finally be the year San Diego gets its Roscoe's? It certainly could, and the restaurant is looking substantially closer to completion than it has at almost any previous point, but after a decade of false starts and missed projections, we're officially retiring from the Roscoe's opening-date prediction business.
They could tell us the doors are opening tomorrow and we'll probably still wait until we see somebody sitting inside eating a waffle. Nevertheless, the sign is up, the building exists, work has clearly progressed, and for perhaps the first time in this seemingly never-ending saga, it doesn't require quite as much imagination to picture Roscoe's actually serving customers in Barrio Logan.
We'll take that as progress, but we'll believe the rest when we taste it.
Roscoe's House of Chicken 'N Waffles is eventually, presumably, hopefully opening at 1678 National Avenue in San Diego's Barrio Logan. For more information, visit roscoeschickenandwaffles.com.
Originally published on September 4, 2026.