From Venice to Echo Park to the center of the city
Familiar Los Angeles restaurant Baby Blues BBQ is heading to Koreatown next, adding its brisket, ribs, and sausages to the neighborhood’s Western stretch just north of Wilshire. What’s more, food could be coming out of the kitchen as soon as next week.
Baby Blues emerged in 2005 as one of the more modern barbecue options in the city, adding to years of barbecue restaurant success elsewhere in South LA and the San Fernando Valley. The company’s original Venice location was busy almost overnight, and spawned a secondary location in West Hollywood that has since closed. More recently Baby Blues opened up in Echo Park, right on Sunset, and still maintains locations outside of Los Angeles in Philadelphia and San Francisco.
This Koreatown outlet will be the third for Baby Blues, and is a partnership with the ownership team from next-door lounge and club Mama Lion. The restaurant lands inside the shuttered Caffe Bene on Western, where for many weeks upstart taco operators Tacos 1986 plied their wares before being asked to move on.
In an email sent to customers, Baby Blues ownership says that the plan is to start with delivery and take out at the beginning, expanding into a full-service restaurant later in the summer. The first day food will be available is next Thursday, May 23, with an opening for the dining room to come by the end of the summer.
Meanwhile, times have changed since Baby Blues first opened 14 years ago. Not only is nearby competition Boogie Magee’s Bayou Smokehouse BBQ popular with locals, but names like Slab, Moo’s Craft Barbecue, and even Adam Perry Lang now dominate most of the barbecue headlines in the city.
Baby Blues BBQ. 607 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA.
Source: Eater LA – All – Farley Elliott