Table Of Content
Hudson saw immediate success, and opened additional locations in an old coffee shop on Pico Boulevard, one in South Central L.A., and another one in Pasadena. Roscoe’s reach has expanded and contracted over the years with locations opening and closing, including a restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area. Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles is a Hollywood, California-based soul food restaurant chain founded by Herb Hudson, a Harlem native, in 1975. It is best known, as the name states, for serving chicken and waffles, both together and separately, although they do offer more traditional menu items as well. Roscoe’s isn’t a one-trick pony, and its menu entices customers with other soul food items.
‘It’s sad, it’s frustrating, it’s infuriating’: Mourning the loss of slain rapper PnB Rock
This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. "He's [Herb] like, 'This is going to be the place for it.' And it's right outside of downtown. So we felt it would be a great location," Diane Vara, then Creative Director for Roscoe's House of Chicken ‘N Waffles told NBC 7 in 2022.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Though Roscoe’s didn’t not start fried chicken and waffles as a restaurant craze, it certainly inspired many other entrepreneurs. Fried chicken and waffles were once considered a novel addition to the dining scenes of many cities. In addition to good food, Roscoe’s fame was fueled by its proximity to, and support from, famous people.
Leading L.A. vegan restaurant goes un-vegan. ‘I knew the vitriol that would come my way’
Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles closes Pico restaurant - LA Daily News
Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles closes Pico restaurant.
Posted: Mon, 23 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Wells’ restaurant closed in 1982 when he became ill, and he died in 1987. His widow, Mrs. Ann Wells, tried to revive the restaurant in the 1990s, but after a short run, it closed permanently. That left Roscoe’s as the only notable restaurant showcasing fried chicken and waffles. Roscoe's House of Chicken 'N Waffles is an American soul food restaurant chain that operates seven locations in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It was founded by Herb Hudson in 1975.The Los Angeles Times has referred to Roscoe's as "such an L.A. institution that people don't even question the strange combo anymore."[1] The New York Times refers to it as a "beloved soul food chain."[2] The original location in Long Beach, California remains open.
Since then, it has transformed into a Southern California classic, hosting dozens of celebrities — from Stevie Wonder and Natalie Cole to Snoop Dogg and former President Barack Obama — for a plate of delicious food. The Southern-style soul food fusion restaurant has been in the works since 2016, but the expansion has been beset by issues that have prevented it from quickly moving forward. This will be the first time the chain restaurant is expanding south of Anaheim. As I ate, Carter shuffled around, putting chairs over tables, seat-down, as if the restaurant were closing. The place normally closes at 8 p.m., he said, far earlier than other locations.
Our Menu
A reporter for the Atlanta Voice newspaper playfully wrote in 1978, just a few years after Roscoe’s opened, “Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle Emporium which is a west coast version of Nu Yawk’s famous Wells Chicken & Waffles, sure has a soulful radio spot going for them on KJLH/FM Radio Station. People in the U.S. have been eating fried chicken and waffles since the 1700s, and at least a century earlier in Europe. German immigrants brought a creamed chicken and waffle tradition with them and transplanted it in rural Pennsylvania. They earned the nickname “Pennsylvania Dutch” though they should have properly been called “Pennsylvania Deutsch.” By the 1790s, this rural dish got a cosmopolitan vibe when it became fashionable in Philadelphia restaurants. The dish made its way to the American South, and the creamed chicken was substituted with fried chicken.
Eater San Diego
The restaurant chain was first founded in 1975 in Long Beach, California, by Harlem native Herb Hudson. It currently operates eight locations, with its newest location in West LA. In 1975, he opened the first Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles restaurant in Long Beach. In time, the Los Angeles Times declared that the restaurant had become “such an L.A. Institution that people don’t even question the strange combo anymore.” Forty-five years later, Roscoe’s is living proof that a restaurant can have staying power by changing public opinion. Soon after Roscoe’s was opened, Mr. Hudson’s friends in Motown and television, such as Stevie Wonder and Natalie Cole, would spread the word to other celebrities including Redd Foxx who would go on to tell their audiences about Roscoe’s incredible soul food menu offerings.
Other celebrities, like Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neil, and even global leaders including President Obama have enjoyed Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles making it a timeless L.A classic. The new Roscoe’s will take over a lot in Barrio Logan located at 1678 National Ave. — just a short walk away from Chicano Park and Petco Park. When it opens, the two-story restaurant will be about 4,000 square-feet in size, including parking. Many responses to news about the shooting suggested that Allen’s death could have been prevented if he had dined at a “safe” Roscoe’s, such as a location on Manchester Avenue in Inglewood that is frequented by people heading to or from Los Angeles International Airport.
Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock was fatally shot at a Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles on Tuesday during a robbery. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego & KUSI News. “San Diego coming [soon] #werebackon,” the restaurant said in a post on Instagram earlier this month alongside a rendering teasing the new location, which was originally released back in 2022. Resy powers the world’s best restaurants, using technology to imagine the future of hospitality. Catering packages come with your choice of side dish - please choose from sides menu below.Waffles sold separately.
Some soul-food experts may tell you that there are better chicken and waffles to be had at other restaurants or locally grown chains. It is particularly beloved for its chicken-and-waffle combos, which draw boisterous eaters from breakfast time to late into the night at any of the chain’s eight locations, ranging from Long Beach to Pasadena, as well as frequent celebrity sightings in Hollywood or Mid-City. When Hudson, a foreman with General Motors, moved to California to open the restaurant, he knew that Angelenos would need some convincing. Hudson reinforced his local music vibe when he opened his second location in the spot formerly occupied by a popular music venue called Tommy Tucker’s Play Room.
Gold also noted that others swear by the restaurant’s “hot water cornbread,” an underrated way to make cornbread by combining scalding hot water, cornmeal, and salt, forming a patty, and then frying the patty in shallow grease like one would do with a pancake. Hot water cornbread is also still on the menu, but it’s only available on certain days. By the early 1800s, notable southerners like Thomas Jefferson had fried chicken and waffles for breakfast when they entertained others, especially for a special occasion. Enslaved African Americans gained expertise making the dish because they were the principal cooks for wealthy southerners. For the next 100 years, southern elites gorged on fried chicken and waffles until the early 1900s when the dish became less fashionable. That decline in popularity created the cultural space for Wells to create and disseminate his enduring creation myth.
This week, after the initial shock of hearing that a hip-hop artist had been shot inside a restaurant in L.A., my mind turned to the cooks and servers who may have witnessed the violence and who would likely be hoping they wouldn’t lose precious work hours in its aftermath. A day after the horrifying shooting death there of rapper PnB Rock, the Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles on the 100 block of West Manchester Avenue at South Main Street was open but had few takers. As an Asian American from the Pacific Northwest, my foods growing up were steaming bowls of pho, take-out boxes piled with sticky-sweet chicken teriyaki, and occasionally, Claim Jumper's cheesy potatocakes. Chicken and waffles have always been a culinary blind spot for me. Ludacris mentioned the restaurant in the song "Call Up The Homies" from the album Theater of the Mind with the lyrics "Let's roll to Roscoe's and grab somethin' to eat",[9] while Californian band The Aquabats also mentioned Roscoe's alongside several other chicken restaurants in their 1997 song "Magic Chicken!".
Eater has been following this story since February 2016, after officially confirming the rumor that Roscoe’s was scouting for locations in San Diego. Later that year, news broke that the company had found a home at the corner of National and Sigsbee in Barrio Logan, on a 17,500-square-foot site that would include a parking lot. But hopes were dashed in 2017, when the Southern California chain put the San Diego project on hold to focus on other ventures.
The new restaurant is over 4500 square feet with parking, a feat that is hard to come by in this area. The conceptual renderings show a two-story white building with a big neon "Roscoes" sign outside and patio seating. "The delays are behind us and we are moving full steam ahead to complete the new restaurant in San Diego, shooting for a late-summer, early-fall opening," Sam White, financial and business advisor for Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles told NBC 7. The death of an inspiring music figure from Philadelphia sparked an outcry about a string of violent incidents involving hip-hop artists in the Los Angeles area, including the 2019 shooting death of local icon Nipsey Hussle.
