Downtown Italian Restaurant Rossoblu Will Close Nov. 1

Steve and Dina Samson are ending a nearly decade-long run in the Fashion District, and reservations booked past closing night will be honored.

Rossoblu, the Bologna-inspired restaurant in downtown Los Angeles's Fashion District, will serve its last dinner Nov. 1, nearly a decade after it opened. Chef-owner Steve Samson and his wife and business partner, Dina Samson, announced the closure Friday in a joint statement posted to Instagram and sent to their mailing list, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The reasons the couple gave the paper are the ones every independent operator in this city is reciting right now: a lease running out at the same moment goods and services cost more and diners show up unpredictably. Business has been badly slow this year, Steve said, with the World Cup the exception. The strain hurt their physical and mental health, they told the outlet.

Dina said they'd been considering it for about a year and a half.

Part of what made the decision hard is that the calendar always promises relief — fat months around the holidays, empty ones in summer and at the start of the year — so there's always a reason to hang on one more cycle, and the hanging on is its own kind of stress.

"We weren't thriving, and it just became too much to handle between the two of us," Steve told the Times.

This isn't the couple's first exit. Their Westside restaurant, Superfine Playa, shut down late in 2025, and the pressures behind that decision were much the same, the outlet reported. What happens to Superfine, the pizzeria that runs alongside Rossoblu, hasn't been decided.

Rossoblu opened in 2017 as an anchor tenant of City Market South, the industrial mixed-use plaza, in a space of 7,500 square feet. Jonathan Gold, the late Times restaurant critic, reviewed it warmly that year, singling out the handmade pastas, the coal-roasted vegetables and the chicken cooked under a brick. The restaurant has since appeared on the L.A. Times 101 list of the city's best.

In their statement, the Samsons said something else is coming to the room but wouldn't say what.

The last two months are being programmed as a send-off rather than a wake. The kitchen plans to bring back dishes that fell off the menu, host a dinner pairing Steve with guest chefs, and hold an event honoring current and former staff. Reservations and special events already booked past Nov. 1 will be honored, and the team will keep taking private bookings through December. At-home Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts are still on, and a New Year's Eve party is under consideration. Among the final events in the dining room: the wedding of the restaurant's chef de cuisine and sous chef, who met working there.

Dina said the couple isn't leaving the business behind entirely. She plans to stay involved with Regarding: Her and the Independent Hospitality Coalition, two organizations that support restaurateurs and chefs. Steve said he'll keep cooking in Los Angeles, without saying where.

"Steve will still be cooking in L.A. He's not going anywhere, and I'll still be here to help people that need help in the industry," Dina told the Times.

Rossoblu is at 1124 San Julian St., serving Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 9:30 p.m., through Nov. 1.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved September 6, 2026.