There is a category of person for whom the fourth Thursday in November is not a family meal. People working the day, people new to the country, people whose relatives are three time zones away, people who simply do not like turkey — and in a city of four million the category is large. What that group discovers every year is that Los Angeles on Thanksgiving is a strange, half-shut place, and that most published lists of what is open were written for somebody else.
Half the holiday is working out what is actually open near you, and listings are wrong about it every single year. Ask Karpo and it will tell you what is trading and until when.
The structural situation
Most of the city's sit-down rooms do one of two things. They close entirely, because opening for a single service on a day when suppliers are shut and staff want to be elsewhere does not pay. Or they open on shortened hours with a fixed holiday menu at a fixed holiday price, which solves their problem and not yours if what you wanted was dinner rather than an event.
The places that stay genuinely open — normal menu, normal hours, walk in and eat — tend to be the ones whose customers were never coming for turkey in the first place. That is the useful filter, and it is more reliable than any list.
Roscoe's, and the case for chicken and waffles
Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles is the obvious answer and a genuinely good one. It is a soul-food institution rather than a novelty, it runs on counter service and walk-ins rather than reservations, and its Thanksgiving proposition is simply that it is serving what it always serves.
The Hollywood room on North Gower Street is the one most visitors know, a few minutes from Sunset and the studio lots, though the chain runs several sites across the county. The food is the argument: fried chicken with a waffle, and gravy, and greens, at a price that has stayed sane while the rest of the city's has not.
One caveat that matters and is the reason this article exists: holiday hours can run shorter than a normal day. Call the specific branch before you drive across town. A soul-food counter on a public holiday is exactly the sort of place that quietly closes at eight instead of midnight, and nobody updates the internet about it.
The family-style option, and a survival story
The other reliable route on a holiday is family-style Italian, for the simple reason that the format — enormous shared bowls in the middle of the table — is already the shape of the meal everybody is trying to have. Buca di Beppo at Universal CityWalk serves its family-style spread on the day.
Worth knowing before you assume the branch nearest you is also open: the chain went through bankruptcy in 2024 and closed a substantial number of sites. The CityWalk location came through it. Several others around the country did not, which is precisely the sort of thing a year-old listings page will not have caught up with.
- Most independent LA restaurants close or run a shortened holiday prix fixe
- Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles: walk-in, counter service, normal menu
- The Hollywood branch is at 1514 North Gower Street; other sites across the county
- Buca di Beppo at Universal CityWalk serves family-style on the day
- Holiday hours are often shorter than usual — telephone the branch, not the chain
How to check properly
Do not trust the opening hours on a map listing for a public holiday. They are generated from regular hours and are wrong more often than they are right on exactly the four or five days a year when being wrong costs you an evening.
Telephone the individual branch, not the head office number, and ask two questions: are you open, and what time do you stop seating. The second one is the question that actually matters, because a great many places open on a holiday and close four hours earlier than usual, and arriving at nine to find the kitchen shut at eight is the standard way this goes wrong.
Where else to look
Beyond the two above, the general rule holds across the city. Chinatown and the San Gabriel Valley trade close to normally, as do Koreatown's late kitchens, Thai Town, and a good proportion of the taquerias — these are neighbourhoods where the fourth Thursday in November is a Thursday.
Hotel dining rooms are the other dependable category, because they are already staffed for guests who cannot go anywhere. They will usually be running a set menu at a set price, but they will be open, and they will take a booking from somebody who is not staying there.
If you are eating alone
Counter service is the answer, and it is not a consolation prize. A seat at a counter on a holiday evening, in a room that is busy for its own reasons, is a considerably better experience than a two-top in a half-empty dining room where everyone else is in a group of eight.
That is the real case for the places on this list. They are not open in spite of the holiday, putting on a brave face for stragglers; they are open because the holiday is not the point of them, and the room feels exactly as it does on any other night.
Practical notes
On Thanksgiving, most independent Los Angeles restaurants either close or run shortened hours with a fixed holiday menu. Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles stays open on its normal menu with counter service and no reservations; the Hollywood branch is at 1514 North Gower Street, with further sites across the county. Buca di Beppo at Universal CityWalk serves its family-style spread; note that the chain closed many locations following its 2024 bankruptcy, so check the specific branch rather than the brand. Chinatown, the San Gabriel Valley, Koreatown, Thai Town and hotel dining rooms are the other dependable categories. Telephone the individual branch and ask what time it stops seating, not just whether it is open.
Tags: #LosAngeles #Thanksgiving #Roscoes #ChickenAndWaffles #Hollywood #NeighborhoodGuides #LAEats #HolidayDining #UniversalCityWalk #SoulFood #ThingsToDoLA #OpenNow #BucaDiBeppo #NoTurkey
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know what is genuinely open near you on a public holiday, what hours it is keeping and whether it needs booking? Ask Karpo rather than trusting a listing page.
