It would be easy to think The Rosebud diner in Somerville is closed again. It’s dark inside, lifeless, and has been for at least three days. There’s no sign on the door, and no information online; the last social media updates were in October. On Reddit, diners say they went during a reserved time Saturday and were shut out without warning.
“Chaotic, especially on a graduation weekend,” said one user of the social media site. “Can confirm I had a reservation today for 12:30 for tufts graduation and it was completely dark inside with no notice. Painted Burro took us in with open arms and confirmed they are permanently closed,” a user replied.
But the Indian fusion restaurant in the iconic diner space at 381 Summer St., Davis Square, might reopen as soon as Tuesday. That’s according to an informal representative of the company, a person reached at a phone number given for parent company Bindaas Concepts but who said they were not an employee – and were answering because owner Koushik “Babu” Koganti was away at that moment.
There was a plumbing problem, the person said, calling it “just a small hiccup” that would be resolved within days, or just one more day. He said the company was “talking with the people” who had dine-in reservations but instead found a locked door.
A manager at Eat Greek Gyros, the restaurant next to the Rosebud American Kitchen & Bar, said she believed that there was a plumbing problem that was being fixed. There was no sign of work being done or contractors present during a visit to the Rosebud on Monday.
The Rosebud opened in 1941, becoming a beloved part of the square’s culinary scene over decades of Nichols family ownership and landing a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The diner car and more traditional attached restaurant space at the rear got a refresh from Joe Cassinelli’s Alpine Restaurant Group with chef John Delpha after a 2013 purchase, then shut down suddenly in 2023 for an $800,000 sale and a revamp under Koganti. There was mystery then too because of Bindaas’ initial silence about its plans, and bad publicity from the sacking of 55 staff members “out of the blue.”
Koganti’s group runs Madras Dosa, which has a Cambridge location in Harvard Square and one in Boston’s Seaport and is in Chestnut Hill, New Jersey and New York; and Godavari, another Indian chain.
After failing to reach Bindaas management through the Rosebud phone number, an attempt was made to find Koganti through the Harvard Square location of Madras Dosa. A manager there said Rosebud closed a year ago.
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