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40-Year-Old Roosterfish Gay Bar Reopens in Venice

The LGBTQ mainstay has new owners and a fresh outlook

The recently-reopened Roosterfish
Roosterfish [official]
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Venice’s longstanding gay bar Roosterfish has come back to life, adding a new chapter to the nearly four-decade-old bar saga.

Roosterfish was for the better part of 40 years a staple of the LGBTQ scene in greater Los Angeles. The Abbot Kinney bar stood as a second home for many on the Westside throughout the turbulent 1980s and ‘90s, but succumbed (like many) to the changing Venice neighborhood’s ways over the past decade. In 2016 the former owners decided to close the place for good.

Eighteen months later, new owners Mario Vollera and Patrick Brunet wanted to bring Roosterfish back from the dead. The pair are well-known in Venice, having run South End pizzeria and wine bar for years. They promised to clean up the place a bit and have it ready for Venice Pride last weekend.

And so it seems that’s exactly what happened. LA Weekly reports that the bar is back in action following a big send-up during Pride week, though the prices and some of the decor items have changed. Drinks now run in the $12 to $14 range. As for hours, Roosterfish will run daily from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., expanding to 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Roosterfish
1302 Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA