{"id":405540,"date":"2026-07-20T18:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T18:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/405540\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T18:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T18:46:14","slug":"roy-choi-will-open-his-las-vegas-restaurant-best-friend-in-orange-county-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/405540\/","title":{"rendered":"Roy Choi Will Open His Las Vegas Restaurant Best Friend in Orange County Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roy Choi will bring his Koreatown-coded Las Vegas restaurant, Best Friend, to California next year with a location in Orange County set to open in 2027. The restaurant will debut at OC Vibe<\/a>, a forthcoming 100-acre mixed-use development in Anaheim, in fall 2027.<\/p>\n

When Choi first opened Best Friend at the Park MGM in 2018<\/a>, expansion did not seem on the horizon. \u201cI don\u2019t have a multi-outlet growth type of fucking outlook,\u201d Choi says. \u201cI just create albums. I just create the thing and then try to make it the best I can.\u201d Eight years later, OC Vibe reached out, and, for Choi, the timing and location felt right. Although Choi mainly grew up in Los Angeles, his family moved to Orange County while he was a teenager; he graduated from Villa Park High School and later California State University, Fullerton. \u201cIt\u2019s very full circle,\u201d Choi says. \u201cLiterally the riverbed that OC Vibe lives on is where I first started smoking weed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalls memories of watching the Honda Center being built while biking up and down Katella and getting his first tattoo just a few blocks away. \u201cIt just felt like the universe was calling,\u201d Choi says.<\/p>\n

With Best Friend\u2019s Vegas debut, Choi hoped to bring a piece of Los Angeles \u2014 and its immigrant communities \u2014 to the Mojave Desert. \u201cThe lens that I used when we first opened it was, like, if they could create all of these fantasy lands on the Vegas strip, let me recreate LA, but in our own way, in a different way,\u201d he says. Stepping through the liquor store front, guests get greeted by photographs of Los Angeles as West Coast hip-hop bounces off the walls and lush greenery hangs overhead. Still, Choi says Orange County was always part of the restaurant\u2019s story. \u201cI never really knew the borders because I moved from LA to O.C. back to LA,\u201d he says. \u201cIn one day I could go from Koreatown to Little Saigon to Carson up to West Covina. That\u2019s always kind of been reflected in the food that I cook, the places that I try to create, even the shows that I\u2019m a part of. I always try to represent this whole region.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a multi-outlet growth type of fucking outlook. I just create albums. I just create the thing and then try to make it the best I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 ROY CHOI<\/p>\n

As Choi develops the menu for Best Friend\u2019s Orange County outpost, he weighs what will carry over from Las Vegas. \u201cIt\u2019s weird because Best Friend is such a hit right now in Vegas,\u201d he says. \u201cRight now what I\u2019m going through psychologically and artistically is fighting that \u2018if it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it\u2019 mentality.\u201d Choi plans to cook through the entire Las Vegas menu, along with a handful of previous hits that have cycled through over the years, to decide what will make the cut at the new location. As the opening nears, Choi will also head down to Orange County to eat through the region\u2019s restaurants<\/a>. \u201cI think I\u2019ll get a lot of inspiration from seeing what\u2019s happening right now in Orange County, remembering what it was like when I was a teenager, and then mixing those two,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll create five or six dishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Choi wanted to approach the restaurant\u2019s design in Orange County differently from the Vegas original while still keeping the same spirit. New York-based Home Studios<\/a> will collaborate with Choi on design; the firm is best known for its work with restaurants such as New York\u2019s Theodora, which leans into soft curves and warm, inviting woods. The firm\u2019s work comes in quite a contrast to Best Friend in Las Vegas, which is what Choi hoped for. \u201cImagine that beautiful stuff, but then we came and scruffed it up,\u201d he says. \u201cA bunch of skateboarders came and scruffed it up or put a bunch of stickers on it or stuff like that. So we\u2019re kind of looking in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Spice<\/a><\/p>\n

Spice pork at Best Friend in Las Vegas. Audrey Ma<\/p>\n

\"Dining<\/a><\/p>\n

Best Friend. Amelinda B Lee<\/p>\n

In the years since Best Friend\u2019s opening in Las Vegas, Choi has approached his work as a chef with a different mindset. \u201cI truly have found a spiritual kind of zen place where I just want to cook and take care of people,\u201d he says. He compares his current state to that of a jam band, more concerned with creation than with charts or accolades<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to cook delicious food and feed people and nourish people,\u201d Choi says. \u201cIt\u2019s not about me anymore. It\u2019s not about me being the chef. I\u2019m just the caterer \u2014 I\u2019m like the spiritual caterer in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside the opening of Best Friend, Choi is also still working to revive his cult-favorite rice bowl restaurant, Chego. The restaurant closed its Chinatown location 2019<\/a>, but in the years since, the chef has teased its return as it looks for a new home. Choi points to challenges in finding a location that would allow the restaurant to remain affordable as part of the impetus for its delay. \u201cIt\u2019s really important for me that the bowls aren\u2019t $25,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel like Chego has to still stay at $12, $14 even though the world has changed.\u201d Choi says they are getting \u201ccloser and closer\u201d and hope to reopen in 2026, though development may bleed into early 2027. When the restaurant reopens, Choi says he wants for it to feel like a cafeteria for the community; a place anyone can come in for an accessible meal no matter their financial situation. \u201cAt this part of my life, that\u2019s who we feed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As Choi works toward the opening of Best Friend at OC Vibe, he looks forward to rekindling relationships with the people he grew up around and getting to know the region again. \u201cNow I get a chance to reconnect with the O.C. side of my life,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s really exciting, man. I feel like I get a second wind at creating a whole nother chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roy Choi will bring his Koreatown-coded Las Vegas restaurant, Best Friend, to California next year with a location…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1698,8472],"class_list":["post-405540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-coming-attractions","tag-la-restaurant-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}