If you drove Coast Highway in January and again in July, you passed at least four different restaurants sitting where longtime institutions used to be. The Pitz family's 40-year run at Dizz's As Is ended in March. The Heisler Building has been dark since Bodega closed early last year. San Shi Go, Ti Amo, "3," and the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory space that pre-dated most current residents are all in new hands.
This is the summer Laguna's dining spine turned over faster than the Pageant swaps tableaux. It happens to coincide with a Festival of Arts season built around the theme "The Greatest of All Time." For anyone who already lives here, that overlap is worth walking. Here is what actually shifted, block by block, and how to use the July-through-September calendar without buying a ticket to something you have already seen.
The Buildings That Changed Hands
The story on the ground is not "new restaurants opened." The story is which buildings changed hands, and what that says about who is betting on Laguna right now.
| Address | Former tenant | New concept | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 400 S. Coast Hwy (Heisler Building) | Bodega | Noble Ace | Opening summer 2026 |
| 858 S. Coast Hwy | San Shi Go | Amorelia | Soft-opened spring 2026 |
| 320 N. Coast Hwy | "3" | Truly Pizza (North Laguna) | Opening 2026 |
| 31727 Coast Hwy | Ti Amo | Truly Bagels | Opening 2026 |
| 2794 S. Pacific Coast Hwy | Dizz's As Is | Small's Smash Club | Opened June 2026 |
| 248 S. Coast Hwy | Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory | Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba | Coming soon |
| Central | El Matatan (Cuban / Dominican / Mexico City) | Opened June 11, 2026 | |
| South Laguna | Empire Oyster Raw Bar (omakase) | Opening 2026 |
Read that list twice and a pattern surfaces. Three of the eight new concepts are Mexico or Latin-forward. Three are daytime-friendly counter or single-item plays. Only Noble Ace is a full-service dinner house in the classic Coast Highway mold. Diane Armitage's tracking at Best of Laguna Beach counted 15 new food-and-beverage openings across 2025 against seven closures, and the 2026 openings continue that pull toward shorter shifts and faster turns.
One Mile And A Half, Eight Doors
Start at 400 South. The Heisler Building has been sitting empty long enough that neighbors stopped noticing the "for lease" signs. That will change. Noble Ace is the brainchild of Chef Magellan Moore, formerly of Mastro's Ocean Club, and Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber, and the concept is a Golden Age Hollywood speakeasy rather than another coastal-casual room. If you have been waiting for a reason to walk downtown for dinner instead of driving to Newport, this is it.
Six blocks south at 858, Amorelia has quietly taken over the old stilt building where San Shi Go lived for a generation. The new 185-seat restaurant is now in soft open in the old San Shi Go space. For decades, the long-standing Costa Mesa family-owned restaurant has specialized in Mexican cuisine. Now with their first expansion, Owner Gloria Seretti and her son, Daniel Paniagua, have taken this new Laguna location to a Mexico City-centric finer dining focus. Reservations run through Resy at (949) 593-0009, dinner service 5 to 10 p.m. daily.
Keep going and you reach 2794 South. The Dizz's building is unrecognizable from the inside, but the ocean-view bar is still there. Small's Smash Club will retain the existing bar and liquor license, feature ocean views, and serve its signature smash burger menu alongside a full bar. An exact opening date has yet to be announced. Founded by professional snowboarder Jordan Small, Small's Smash Club began as a backyard operation during the COVID-19 pandemic before opening its first brick-and-mortar location in San Clemente in 2025. The Laguna location soft-opened in June, and per local reporting the line stretched down the block through opening weekend.
The other new arrivals are worth knowing by name even if you have not walked past them yet. El Matatan brought a Cuban, Dominican, and Mexico City menu into central Laguna in June under owner Oscar Garcia, with Omar from Carmelita's as the resident GM. Truly Pizza is finishing out the former "3" space in North Laguna, and its sibling concept Truly Bagels is taking the long-shuttered Ti Amo building at 31727 Coast Highway. Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba is filling the vacated Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory space next to Better Buzz Coffee at 248 South. From Noble Ace at 400 South to Small's at 2794 South is roughly a mile and a half on foot. That distance now contains the entire 2026 turnover.
The Pageant Is Still The Anchor
If you live here, you already know the Pageant is happening. What you might not know is how the 2026 program is built.
This year's 2026 production, "The Greatest of All Time," takes audiences on an unforgettable journey through the legendary works of Michelangelo, Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Kahlo, and Rockwell to discover who truly deserves the title of the ultimate "G.O.A.T." Performances run nightly at 8:30 p.m. from July 9 through September 4 at the Irvine Bowl on 650 Laguna Canyon Road, with the Festival of Arts fine art show running July 7 through September 3 next door.
Two practical points that outsiders miss and residents forget:
- Free Admission for Children 5 and under, military, Laguna Beach residents and those who buy a ticket to the Pageant of the Masters. If you have a Laguna Beach ID, the Festival grounds are free all summer.
- The Passport to the Arts is only $29. It includes one-time admission to the Festival of Arts, the Sawdust Art Festival and Laguna Art-A-Fair. Enjoy works of art by more than 500 artists, hands-on workshops, dozens of special events, plus a one-time, all-day free parking pass with each Passport purchased.
The Sawdust Art Festival at 935 Laguna Canyon Road and Art-A-Fair at 777 are within an easy walk of the Festival grounds. Neither requires a Pageant ticket, and both have live demos on weekend afternoons that make for a lower-commitment evening than the Bowl itself.
A Resident's Calendar For The Rest Of Summer
The dates that actually reward planning:
- Now through September 3. Festival of Arts fine art show open Monday through Friday from 4 p.m., weekends from 11 a.m., closing at 11:30 p.m. Free with a Laguna Beach ID.
- Nightly through September 4. Pageant of the Masters at 8:30 p.m. Tickets sell out well in advance, especially for weekend performances in July and August.
- Friday, August 21. After a sold out show last year, Gypsy Dreams is back Friday August 21st. Be sure to catch your favorite Fleetwood Mac tribute performing all the hits. The concert sits on the Festival grounds and does not require a Pageant ticket.
- Any Sawdust weekend. Live glass-blowing and ceramics demos on the studio floor, generally the lowest-friction way to spend a Saturday afternoon downtown.
The single most-repeated logistics complaint about Pageant nights is parking. Laguna Canyon Road backs up an hour before showtime. If you are coming from a resident address, the trolley from ACT V and the in-town summer routes are consistently faster than driving in and hunting a lot.
What This Summer Says About The Rest Of The Year
Two forty-year institutions closed inside eighteen months. A building empty for a year and a half finally has a tenant. The concepts arriving are, by and large, shorter-shift, lower-overhead plays: smash burgers, bagels, poke, boba, a raw bar. The single big-swing full-service dinner house is a chef-driven speakeasy inside a landmark building, not another patio room.
For residents, the practical takeaway is that a routine most people built ten years ago no longer describes their own town. If your default summer plan was Pageant plus one predictable dinner, half the options within a mile of the Bowl are new since last August. The Coast Highway walk is the point. The list above is a starting map. Walk it once before Labor Day and you will have a much better sense of which of these places is going to be part of Laguna's next decade and which one is filling a lease.
If you own a home in Laguna Beach and are curious how a turnover this dense reads through to what buyers are asking about right now, Matt Whitcomb tracks the corridor block by block. Request a Free Home Valuation for a straight read on what your address is worth in the current market.
