San Francisco's The Slanted Door Arrives in Downtown LA Next Year

Well, it looks like we now know where Steve Samson’s upcoming Downtown restaurant Rossoblu is going to land: right next door to one from Charles Phan, in the heart of the Fashion District.

According to the LA Times, San Francisco’s wonderfully talented Slanted Door chef has plans to join Samson — plus bar maestros Pablo Moix and Steve Livigni — as part of the new City Market South, an in-the-works development hoping to tackle that currently under served stretch of DTLA. Tucked right in around 11th Street and San Pedro, the upcoming plot plans to offer creative space, retail, and of course a large footprint for several restaurants.

First up is Phan’s Slanted Door, which is set to be expanding into Downtown sometime in early 2016. Phan spoke to the Times about the decision to take his Bay Area spot south, telling the paper that he was "drawn to Downtown Los Angeles because of the exciting redevelopments taking place there."

That’s certainly true, though this particular patch of city has been largely untouched by the rest of Downtown’s revitalization — until now. Apparently the City Market South site, which will offer a large plaza for casual eating and walking around, comprises some two and a half full acres, meaning there’s loosely 75,000 square feet worth of new projects ready to move in at any time.

Numbers like that should give Moix and Livigni plenty of space to move around inside their unnamed bar project. Tucked into what Livigni calls the ‘banana building’ — this is the original site of LA’s produce market, now located several blocks east — the plan is for the bar to be a largely outdoor affair, which the city is still in desperate need of as places like Loreley Biergarten take forever to come to life.

And finally there’s Samson’s Rossoblu, which is likely to arrive early 2016 as well. With the attached plaza and lots of space to seat customers, it’ll be a new look for the amiable chef, who so far has been quietly pushing out some of the city’s best casual Italian fare at Sotto.

With a development this large, there’s likely still more news to come from City Market South, as if Charles Phan, a bar from Moix and Livigni, and Samson’s Rossoblu weren’t enough. As it stands, the overall rehab project from the LENA Group (of which City Market South is just one part) for the area will comprise mixed-use living, retail, and hotel space, with nearly a quarter-million feet alone dedicated to shopping and eating space. Stay tuned.