Copper Cowboy brings a Western saloon to the Gaslamp

The Gaslamp Quarter is about to get a lot more country. A new Western-themed spot called Copper Cowboy Country Restaurant & Saloon is taking shape at 818-822 Fifth Avenue, inside the historic five-story Keating Building, with a planned opening in mid-January 2027, timed to line up with rodeo season. The project is taking over the space once held by the Coyote Ugly Saloon, which ran from 2014 to 2020, and the neighboring Samurai Pie pizzeria that closed in May 2020.

It is not a simple restaurant. The plan packs three concepts into roughly 6,000 square feet: an upscale American restaurant with Western influences, a live-music saloon modeled after Nashville honky-tonks, and the Stets & Stone Hat Shop and Bar, where you can actually customize your own cowboy hat. The interior is leaning hard into the theme, with exposed brick walls, warm wood floors, tan leather banquettes and bar stools, and a stamped copper ceiling, plus a raised performance stage set above the bar. By night, the saloon is built for country and rock bands, DJs and line dancing; by day, it keeps the doors open for dining, drinks and sports on the screens.

The names behind it carry some weight in the local scene. Chef James Montejano is leading the kitchen, with more than 30 years of experience at the Four Seasons, L'Auberge Del Mar, La Valencia Hotel and the Michael Mina Group. He graduated from the California Culinary Academy in 1993 and has worked at Aqua with Michael Mina and George Morrone, Pampelmousse in Solana Beach, Cafe Japengo in La Jolla, McCormick & Kuleto's in San Francisco and RMD Group. He has picked up a string of awards along the way, including two consecutive Best Sushi honors from the California Restaurant Association and People's Choice and Best Seafood at the 2014 San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival. Alessandro Minutella, the restaurateur behind AKA Gaslamp, Zama, Greystone The Steakhouse, Osetra, Osteria Panevino and Romanissimo, is a key principal here, and Dustin Noblitt, CEO of HatCo, the company behind the Stetson and Resistol brands, is heading up the hat bar. The space is being designed by Tucker Sadler Architects, the San Diego firm behind the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park and Portside Pier, and the whole thing is being developed by San Diego Western Venture LLC, with Minutella in through AM Restaurant Holdings Inc. and Giancarlo Guttilla through GG Foods Inc. The project is expected to create around 40 to 50 jobs.

It is worth noting the building itself. The Keating Building is a Romanesque-style commercial building that once boasted state-of-the-art steam heating and the city's first passenger elevator; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and designated a Historic Landmark by the San Diego Historical Resources Board on June 2, 1972. The renovation is running about $1.5 million, so there is a fair amount of money going into the bones of the place. With the opening set for mid-January, it is still a ways off, but the combination of a full kitchen, a live-music saloon and a custom hat bar makes it one of the more ambitious additions the Gaslamp has had on the books in a while.