The operators of Somerville’s iconic Rosebud diner say they are negotiating to buy its building at 381 Summer St. in Davis Square, and if they can’t come to an agreement with the owner will move on to let someone else take over the space.
The restaurant closed without warning in mid-May, when an informal representative of Bindaas Concepts – the unidentified person who picked up the phone – said there was “just a small hiccup” of a plumbing problem that could be resolved within a day. May 19 came and went, and the diner has been dark since.
At a Licensing Commission meeting on Tuesday, owner Koushik “Babu” Koganti gave a different story: That Bindaas had some flooring redone. And that purchase negotiations were underway – and if successful, “in two to three weeks” the Rosebud would reopen to customers.
“In case the bill doesn’t go through, we pass it on to the new tenant or whatever,” Koganti said.
Licensing chair Joe Lynch explained to Koganti that this is not how licensing works: A new tenant would have to apply.
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.”
The restaurant has been serving its fusion of Indian and diner food since, until this spring – which Koganti explained was not a shutdown: “Honestly, we’re not closed for operation, because we did few parties in the middle, so we did not close all the 30 days in the stretch.” At the time of the commission hearing, the Rosebud had been dark for 65 days.
Here too Lynch felt he needed to school Koganti: Licensees are required under the rules and regulations of the commission to notify it of any prolonged change.
“You have hours of operation. You cannot willy-nilly close because you don’t want to do business,” Lynch said.
Koganti is no newcomer to running a restaurant or working with licenses. His 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 with 25 locations in the United States and Canada.
He accepted an offer from the commission to roll back the Rosebud’s hours to zero during the negotiations with the property’s owner. Since 2013, the city lists that as being 318 Jumbo, a limited liability corporation with offices on Avery Street in Boston. The registered officer for 318 Jumbo, Martin A. Bloom, has operated Bloom Novi LLC and Swampscott Associates LLC – owner of the Mission on the Bay restaurant in Swampscott – from the same address.
“When you’re ready, you can come back in and reapply for new hours,” Lynch told Koganti.
Koganti agreed, meaning the Rosebud diner will stay closed for the foreseeable future.
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