James Beard Award-winning chef Roy Choi will open a second permanent location of his Korean barbecue restaurant Best Friend at OCVIBE, the 100-acre mixed-use district under construction around Honda Center in Anaheim, California, with an anticipated Fall 2027 debut.
The restaurant marks the first signed chef-driven concept in OCVIBE's curated signature dining collection — and the first permanent Best Friend outside its flagship at Park MGM in Las Vegas. For foodservice operators and kitchen designers tracking large-scale commissary and multi-concept buildouts, the project signals the scale of back-of-house infrastructure being planned for the district.
Kitchen Build Context
The OCVIBE culinary program is anchored by Katella Commons, a 50,000-square-foot chef-driven market hall scheduled to open in early 2027. That facility — which will house multiple independent food-and-beverage concepts under one roof — represents one of the larger single-structure foodservice buildouts currently in development in Southern California. Operators and equipment specifiers working on market-hall or ghost-kitchen formats will find the OCVIBE model instructive: the developer is deliberately sequencing a shared-infrastructure market hall ahead of its signature standalone restaurants, a phasing strategy that allows central receiving, cold storage, and utility infrastructure to be commissioned before individual concept kitchens come online.
Best Friend's menu centers on Korean barbecue, which places specific demands on ventilation design, including high-capacity exhaust systems capable of handling tableside grilling smoke loads. Consultants specifying similar live-fire or tableside-cooking environments should note that Korean BBQ buildouts routinely require custom exhaust-per-table solutions rather than standard hood configurations — a factor that can materially affect both project timelines and equipment budgets. For a deeper look at ventilation considerations in high-heat concepts, see our ventilation spec coverage.
What the Project Signals
"Roy Choi has fundamentally changed the way people think about food, culture and community," said Anthony Olheiser, Senior Vice President of Hospitality at OCVIBE. "Best Friend embodies that philosophy, and we're incredibly proud to welcome Roy as the first chef to join our signature restaurant collection."
The $5 billion OCVIBE development — privately funded by the Samueli Family — is one of the largest private real-estate investments in Southern California history. When fully built out in 2033, the district will include more than 2,000 residences, three entertainment venues, 20 acres of open space, and 35-plus dining experiences. That scale of F&B density creates sustained demand for equipment dealers, service agents, and rep firms operating in the greater Los Angeles and Orange County market, particularly as new concepts are signed and individual kitchens move from design development into construction documents over the next 18 to 24 months.
Additional chef partners for OCVIBE's signature restaurant collection are expected to be announced in the coming months, each requiring its own kitchen program. Equipment specifiers and dealers active in the Southern California market should track the project as one of the region's most consequential foodservice buildout opportunities of the decade.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
