If you drove Coast Highway in March and drove it again last week, you passed at least four storefronts where a longtime name used to hang. The turnover is not random. Read the new tenant list top to bottom and a pattern shows up: Laguna's dining spine is quietly rebalancing toward daytime hours, counter service, and single-item concepts, with only one classic full-service dinner-house bet in the mix. That is the story worth walking this August, and it happens to line up with a Pageant of the Masters season built around an argument about what "greatest" even means.
The mile and a half worth walking
The walk from Noble Ace at 400 South to Small's at 2794 South is roughly a mile and a half, and that is the entire summer 2026 turnover in one stroll. Here is what shifted, block by block.
| Address | Former tenant | New concept | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 400 S. Coast Hwy (Heisler Building) | Bodega | Noble Ace, Golden Age Hollywood speakeasy | Opening summer 2026 |
| 858 S. Coast Hwy | San Shi Go | Amorelia, Mexico City finer dining, 185 seats | Soft open |
| 320 N. Coast Hwy | "3" | Truly Pizza, full service | Later 2026 |
| 31727 Coast Hwy (South Laguna) | Ti Amo | Truly Bagels, counter service | Opening summer |
| 2794 S. 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 | Opening |
| South Laguna (near AHBA) | Former Thai restaurant | Empire Oyster Raw Bar | Opening |
| South Laguna | Prior tenant | El Matatan, Cuban/Dominican/Mexico City | Open |
Two of those buildings anchored the town for four decades. Dizz's As Is closed on March 13 after being owned and operated by the Pitz family for more than 40 years, founded in 1977 by Marcel Pitz. The Heisler Building at 400 South had sat empty since Bodega walked away in early 2025. What is filling those rooms says something about how operators read this town right now.
Read the tenant list like an economist
Amorelia is the marquee arrival. After nearly two years that included a stall two weeks before the first planned opening, the 185-seat restaurant is now in soft open in the old San Shi Go space on stilts, where owner Gloria Seretti and her son, Daniel Paniagua, have taken their long-standing Costa Mesa family operation from Mexican cuisine into a Mexico City-centric finer dining focus. A block of the entry-level floor is given over to a showpiece bar and a serious wine structure, with a Raw Bar on the east side and patio dining beyond.
A mile south, the bet is the opposite. Small's Smash Club opened on a Friday in June with a line stretching through the weekend, the second location for pro snowboarder Jordan Small, whose original San Clemente shop grew out of a backyard COVID project into a one-of-a-kind burger in three sizes with tallow fries and onion rings. The Laguna spot retained the existing bar and liquor license and the ocean views from Dizz's. Same room, radically different economics.
El Matatan lands in the middle. The Latin-cuisine concept made its way over from the City of Orange, owner Oscar Garcia moving from dinner soft opens into lunch service, with a menu blending Cuban, Dominican and authentic Mexico City fare. Omar from Carmelita's is the residing GM.
Then the Truly team, bookending town with two very different plays. Truly Pizza, which first opened in Dana Point in June 2023, is taking the former "3" space in North Laguna, while Truly Bagels goes into the long-shuttered Ti Amo building in South Laguna. One full service, one counter. And into the old Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory space across from Main Beach, Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba is filling in a spot Rocky Mountain first opened in 1984 as one of the company's earliest outliers from the Durango mother ship.
The pattern is not subtle. Three of the eight new concepts are Mexico or Latin-forward, three are daytime-friendly counter or single-item concepts, and only Noble Ace is a full-service dinner-house play in the classic Coast Highway mold. The scoreboard for last year points the same direction. Diane Armitage's tracking at Best of Laguna Beach counted 15 new food-and-beverage openings across 2025 against seven closures, with newer concepts skewing toward shorter daytime service and faster turns rather than the long full-service dinner shifts that defined the last generation of Coast Highway. What is emerging is not a rejection of hospitality but a recalibration of risk, one that increasingly favors shorter daytime stays, faster turns and lower operational exposure.
If you live here, you have already felt this. Dinner is a shorter proposition than it used to be. The interesting question is which of these openings still gets you out at 9 p.m. Noble Ace is the one built for that. The historic Heisler Building will teem with new life after Noble Ace announced its opening, a Golden Age Hollywood-inspired speakeasy restaurant and bar from Chef Magellan Moore, of Mastro's Ocean Club, and Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber. Moore comes from Mastro's Ocean Club, and Elizabeth Schreiber told the Orange County Register the two had first worked together at Mastro's twelve years earlier while she was finishing her USC degree.
The Pageant's argument this year
While Coast Highway is arguing with itself about what dinner should look like, the Festival grounds are running a parallel argument about greatness. The Pageant of the Masters re-creates famous works of art, and in 2026, it presents "The Greatest of All Time." In the Laguna Beach Independent, longtime Pageant Director Diane Challis Davy laughed at the idea that art history has one clear "greatest," then explained the show was built by picking forty works that could each argue the case.
That framing is the interesting one to hold in your head while walking the highway. Forty works, each with a claim. Eight new restaurants, each with a claim. The Festival is settling nothing. Neither is the block.
The August calendar you actually use
Sunday evenings are the residents' hour in August. The free Music in the Park series runs at Bluebird Park, and the lineup for the rest of the month is set.
- Aug 2, Sunday — Spencer the Gardner, Indie Surf Salsa
- Aug 9, Sunday — Missus Jones, tribute to Amy Winehouse
- Aug 16, Sunday — Rose's Pawn Shop, American Roots Music
Music in the Park is a free public concert series held Sunday evenings in July and August at Bluebird Park, with concerts starting at 5:00 p.m. and no setup permitted before 3:00 p.m. A few practical notes worth knowing before you carry a low chair up the hill: no dogs at Bluebird Park under LBMC 6.16.020, no smoking, and alcohol is permitted for guests 21 or older but must be accompanied by a full meal. The city encourages the free trolley for anyone trying to skip the parking problem.
Two other August dates worth pinning to a fridge. On Thursday, August 6, the Woman's Club of Laguna Beach is hosting a backpack fill for LBUSD students in need from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. And the de la Torre Brothers exhibition runs through the month at Laguna Art Museum on the Tuesday-through-Sunday, 10-to-5 schedule, per the museum's listings.
How to walk the summer
The honest way to see what has changed is to do the mile and a half from Heisler down to Small's on a single Saturday, book a Sunday for Bluebird, and slot a weeknight for the Pageant. Order at Small's or El Matatan if you want to see who bet on daytime, and sit down at Amorelia when you want to see the counter-argument. If Noble Ace opens on schedule, add it as the classic dinner bookend. The three visits are not the same story told three ways. They are three different theories of how a small coastal town keeps its restaurants full after the summer crowds leave, and by October you will have a view on which one is going to hold up.
Whether your interest here is the next dinner reservation or the next home, the Annie Clougherty Team tracks Laguna's block-by-block shifts the same way we track its market. Request a private consultation when you are ready to talk.
