Royal Rooster Team To Open The Raw Bar In San Diego’s Mission Beach

December 12, 2022

The team behind San Diego's popular harborside haunt Royal Rooster has announced plans to open a new locally-sourced, seafood-centric concept dubbed The Raw Bar.

Chef Cory Rapp opened his quaint Royal Rooster restaurant at Seaforth Marina at Quivira Basin in summer 2019. The veteran chef previously worked at several California fine dining hotspots, including Spruce restaurant in San Francisco and celebrity chef Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc in Napa. Royal Rooster quickly became an under-the-radar dining destination in San Diego, with hungry patrons lining up to get a taste of the counter service eatery's scratch-made Mexican-style menu of smoked meat tacos & burritos, seafood options and hearty breakfast dishes. 

Last September, Rapp launched a food truck at Bitter Brothers Brewing Company in Bay Park, offering a far more limited menu of "farm-to-trailer" sandwiches and specials. This past spring, both the Royal Rooster food truck ended its run at Bitter Brothers and the original location completely scrapped its popular menu, replacing it with a short list of only a handful of sandwiches and sides, much to customers' dismay. Most of the original menu has since returned to Royal Rooster. 

Dubbed TheRawBar by Royal Rooster, the new restaurant will install in the Mission Beach space that last housed Gatherer Sandwiches and Soulshine Cafe before that. Expect a menu of dishes based around locally-sourced seafood right off the boats from local commercial fishing captains, including seafood cocktails, chilled seafood, caviar specials, house smoked fish, clams/oysters on the half shell and rotating specials. 

TheRawBar by Royal Rooster is anticipated to open in February 2023 at 3864 Mission Boulevard in San Diego's Mission Beach. For more information, follow TheRawBar on Instagram.