Walk from the Heisler Building at 400 South to the old Dizz's stilt-house at 2794 South and you cross about a mile and a half of sidewalk. You also cross almost every restaurant turnover Laguna has seen in 2026. If you have lived here long enough to remember Bodega, Ti Amo, San Shi Go, and the Pitz family's forty-year run at Dizz's As Is, that walk is now a different town.
The interesting part is not that the buildings have new tenants. It is what kind of tenants they are, and what that means for a resident trying to plan a Wednesday dinner between a Sawdust visit and the Pageant curtain.
The mile-and-a-half that changed hands
Starting at the north end and moving south, here is what actually shifted this year.
320 N. Coast Highway. The former "3" space is slated to become the full-service second location of Truly Pizza, which the same team launched in Dana Point in June 2023.
248 S. Coast Highway. Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba is filling in the space that housed Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory since 1984, one of the chocolate company's first locations outside its Durango, Colorado home base.
400 S. Coast Highway. The historic Heisler Building, empty since Bodega closed in early 2025, is being taken over by Noble Ace, a Golden Age Hollywood speakeasy concept from Chef Magellan Moore of Mastro's Ocean Club with partners Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber. Elizabeth Schreiber told the Orange County Register she and Moore first worked together at Mastro's twelve years earlier while she was finishing her USC degree. Opening is planned for summer 2026.
858 S. Coast Highway. The old San Shi Go "stilt" building is now Amorelia, a 185-seat Mexico City–focused fine dining room from Costa Mesa restaurateur Gloria Seretti and her son Daniel Paniagua. It is their first expansion after decades of running a family Mexican restaurant in Costa Mesa. Seretti told Best of Laguna Beach's Diane Armitage that she had spent years looking for the right Laguna site.
El Matatan arrived in June from the City of Orange, serving a blend of Cuban, Dominican, and Mexico City fare. Owner Oscar Garcia hired Omar, a longtime Carmelita's veteran, as GM.
2794 S. Coast Highway. Small's Smash Club took over Dizz's As Is after the Pitz family closed on March 13, 2026, ending a run that began in 1977 when Marcel Pitz opened the eclectic continental restaurant. The new tenant kept the bar, the ocean-view liquor license, and not much else. Founder Jordan Small, a professional snowboarder, built the concept in his backyard during the pandemic before opening the first location in San Clemente in 2025. The Laguna doors opened in June with lines that stretched the sidewalk.
31727 Coast Highway. The long-shuttered Ti Amo is becoming Truly Bagels, a counter-service daytime spin-off from the Truly Pizza team.
The pattern under the pattern
Diane Armitage's tracking at Best of Laguna Beach documented 15 new food and beverage openings across 2025 against seven closures. That is not the number that matters. The concept mix is.
Of the eight new arrivals concentrated in this Coast Highway stretch, three lean daytime or counter service (Truly Bagels, Nalu Poke, Small's), three are Mexico or Latin-forward (Amorelia, El Matatan, and arguably Small's late-night bar hours), and only one, Noble Ace, is a classic full-service dinner house of the kind Coast Highway used to be built on. Armitage frames it as a recalibration of risk: shorter service windows, faster turns, lower exposure.
For a resident, that recalibration reshapes the practical question of where to go on a warm Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. after a walk downtown. The town has more places to eat than it did two years ago. It has fewer places to eat late.
Which of the new spots keep dinner hours
| Restaurant | Address | Format | Evening service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Truly Pizza (opening 2026) | 320 N. Coast Hwy | Full service | Dinner |
| Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba | 248 S. Coast Hwy | Counter | Daytime-leaning |
| Noble Ace (opening summer 2026) | 400 S. Coast Hwy | Full service speakeasy | Dinner and bar |
| Amorelia | 858 S. Coast Hwy | Full service | 5 p.m.–10 p.m. daily |
| El Matatan | Laguna Beach | Full service | Lunch and dinner |
| Small's Smash Club | 2794 S. Coast Hwy | Counter and bar | Dinner with full bar |
| Truly Bagels (opening 2026) | 31727 Coast Hwy | Counter | Daytime |
Amorelia is currently the most useful new addition for a nine o'clock table with out-of-town guests. Small's has taken the after-Pageant crowd that used to end up somewhere quieter. Noble Ace, when it opens, will be the only one of the new arrivals with the design vocabulary the Heisler Building has always asked for.
Pairing the openings with festival nights
The three festivals in Laguna Canyon are the reason August evenings are worth planning at all. The 2026 season leans heavier than usual because two of the three are hitting anniversaries.
Sawdust Art Festival, 60th anniversary
Sawdust runs June 26 through September 6 at 935 Laguna Canyon Road, with more than 180 local Laguna Beach artists in a non-juried, artist-run village under the eucalyptus. Hours are Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Single-day tickets are $12.50 for adults, $10.50 for seniors 65 and up, and $5.50 for youth 6 to 12. Kids under 5 are free, and veterans with military ID are free any day.
Locals who have not been in a few years should know that AhbA is debuting this summer as a Sawdust concession, and Gonzo Rebollar's Taco Loco is back on the food lineup. The Cove by Starfish is serving a churro bao bun that is already the summer's most-photographed festival dessert.
Festival of Arts
The Festival of Arts fine art show runs July 7 through September 3 with a juried exhibition of roughly 120 Orange County artists. Admission is free for Laguna Beach residents, for children 5 and under, for active military, and for anyone holding a Pageant ticket. Saturday afternoons bring Concerts on the Green from 1 to 2 p.m., Saturday evenings bring Showstopper Saturdays from 5:30 to 7 p.m., and Sunday evenings bring the Southern Songbook series in the same window.
Pageant of the Masters, "The Greatest of All Time"
The Pageant runs nightly from July 9 through September 4, with tickets starting at $42. This year's production, "The Greatest of All Time," is director Diane Challis Davy's answer to a prompt she has publicly called unanswerable. In the Laguna Beach Independent she laughed at the idea that art history has a single greatest work and explained the show was built by choosing forty pieces that could each argue the case. The tableaux span Michelangelo, Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Kahlo, and Rockwell.
The one number worth knowing this summer
The Passport to the Arts is $29 and gets you one-time admission to Festival of Arts, Sawdust, and Art-A-Fair, plus a single free parking pass at the Act V lot at 1900 Laguna Canyon Road with trolley service back into town. It is only sold at the three box offices between June 26 and August 30, not online. It does not include the Pageant.
For residents who tend to buy Pageant tickets and skip the daytime shows, the math is different this year. Sawdust and Art-A-Fair are both at 60. Whatever you thought about the festival grounds a decade ago, this is the season to walk them again.
How to use August and September
A workable rhythm: a Saturday afternoon at Sawdust for the anniversary programming, dinner at Amorelia before an 8:30 curtain across the canyon, a Sunday Southern Songbook set at the Festival of Arts, and a Small's burger on the drive home after a Pageant night. When Noble Ace opens at the Heisler Building, that walk from 400 South to 2794 South becomes the whole festival dinner circuit in a single mile and a half.
If the summer has you thinking about your own home, whether about a renovation to the courtyard that finally gets used in July, an addition that unlocks the ocean view you have been half-seeing for years, or a quiet conversation about what the property is worth in this market, the team at Marcus Skenderian Real Estate is here for it. Request a Complimentary Home Valuation and we will bring the same attention to your home that we bring to the block.
