Walk Coast Highway this week and the first thing you'll notice is the quiet. The Festival of Arts closed its gates on September 3, the Pageant of the Masters took its final bow the next night, and Sawdust Art Festival and Laguna Art-A-Fair followed on September 6. The banners that turned downtown into a single lane of foot traffic all summer are already coming down. That's the version of September everyone expects.
The version most residents haven't clocked yet is the one underneath it. While the festival crowds were filling the amphitheater and the canyon, four of the town's most-watched storefronts changed hands, a fifth long-dark building finally found a tenant, and the pattern in who moved where tells you more about where Laguna is headed than any festival recap will.
The Corner Everyone Watched, and the Corners Nobody Did
The most obvious of the changes sits at 400 South Coast Highway, in the historic Heisler Building across from Main Beach. That space had been dark since Bodega and Skyloft closed in early 2025, long enough that its vacancy became its own kind of local landmark. Noble Ace opened there on June 29, a Golden Age Hollywood speakeasy concept from chef Magellan Moore, formerly of Mastro's Ocean Club, and owners Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber. The team built out the room with real depth: Hillari Galindo, who spent two decades at Mastro's Ocean Club before a run at Red O in Newport Beach, runs the floor as general manager, and design came from Ralitsa Kombakis of Studio Rallou. It's open Sunday through Thursday from 4:30 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday until 11.
That's the bet a lot of people expected downtown to make. What's more interesting is what happened at the other end of town, roughly a mile and a half south, where the calculation looked nothing like it.
Dizz's As Is, the continental-menu institution the Pitz family had run since Marcel Pitz founded it in 1977, closed for good on March 13 after more than 40 years in business. The tenant that took the space at 2794 South Pacific Coast Highway wasn't another white-tablecloth concept. It was Small's Smash Club, founded by professional snowboarder Jordan Small, opening its second location after debuting in San Clemente in 2025. Small's kept the ocean view and the existing liquor license, swapped the menu for smash burgers and tallow fries, and opened on a Friday in June to a line that reportedly stretched through the entire weekend.
Same coastline. Same kind of building. Completely different read on what the neighborhood wants next.
Where Coast Highway Actually Turned Over in 2026
| Address | What Was There | What's There Now | Type | Status (Sept 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 400 S Coast Hwy (Heisler Building) | Bodega / Skyloft | Noble Ace | Full-service dinner house | Open |
| 2794 S Pacific Coast Hwy | Dizz's As Is | Small's Smash Club | Casual burger, bar | Open |
| 320 N Coast Hwy (former "3") | Restaurant 3 | Truly Pizza | Full-service pizza | Open |
| 31727 Coast Hwy (former Ti Amo) | Ti Amo | Truly Bagels | Daytime counter service | Coming soon |
| South Laguna, near AhbA | Former Thai restaurant | Empire Oyster Raw Bar | Omakase raw bar | Open |
| 858 S Coast Hwy ("stilt" building) | San Shi Go | Amorelia | Mexico City fine dining | Delayed, working toward 2026 debut |
| 248 S Coast Hwy | Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory | Nulu Poke Tea & Boba | Counter service | Open |
Seven addresses. Almost none of them empty for long, and almost none of the replacements matching what came before.
The Logic Underneath: Two Economies, Not One
Read that table as a list of unrelated openings and you'll miss the story. Read it by location and a pattern surfaces fast: downtown, near Main Beach and the Heisler Building, is still where operators bet on the long, full-service dinner shift. Co-owner Schreiber described the pricing and positioning of that bet simply: "This is like if Hillstone and Mastro's had a baby." That's a downtown restaurant, built for a reservation and a slow evening.
Everywhere else, the bet looks different. North and South Laguna, the bookends of town, picked up a bagel counter, a raw bar, a poke and boba shop, and a smash burger joint. These are daytime-friendly, faster-turn concepts with lower staffing and lease exposure than a full dinner house carries. It's not a coincidence. Local tracking of Laguna's food and beverage scene counted 15 new concept openings against seven closures in 2025, and the newer concepts have consistently skewed toward shorter daytime service rather than the long dinner shifts that defined Coast Highway a decade ago.
Put those two facts together and Laguna's restaurant map isn't one story this year. It's two. Downtown keeps investing in the evening. The flanks are building a town you can actually eat your way through before 3 p.m., no reservation required.
What's Actually Open This Week
If you're deciding where to eat this month, here's where things stand as of mid-September:
- Noble Ace (400 S Coast Hwy) is open nightly, currently the only full dinner-house play among the new openings.
- Small's Smash Club (2794 S Pacific Coast Hwy) is open, and if the June opening weekend is any indication, weekend waits are real.
- Truly Pizza (320 N Coast Hwy) is open with summer hours running 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Tuesdays. The Umami Mushroom pizza was named the 2026 Pizza of the Year by 50 Top Pizza USA, and the restaurant itself ranked No. 4 nationally on the same list, which is a fairly loud credential for a spot that only opened this year.
- Empire Oyster Raw Bar is open in South Laguna, half a block from AhbA.
- Nulu Poke Tea & Boba (248 S Coast Hwy) is open, taking over a space Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory had held since 1984.
- Truly Bagels (31727 Coast Hwy) is the daytime sibling to Truly Pizza and still working toward its own opening.
- Amorelia (858 S Coast Hwy) has been the slowest to land, delayed by a lead chef departure earlier in its buildout, and is still working toward a 2026 debut.
The Few Days Before the Crowds Come Back
Here's the part that actually matters if you live here and are trying to time a quiet weekend. Sawdust and Laguna Art-A-Fair closed for the season on September 6, and right now, Coast Highway is about as quiet as it gets all year. That won't last. The 71st Annual Laguna Open Volleyball Tournament takes over Main Beach starting September 18, running a qualifier round, main draw, and finals through September 20, capped by a "Battle of the Beaches" exhibition pitting Victoria Beach, Three Arch Bay, Emerald Bay, and Main Beach against each other. That same weekend, on September 19, the Laguna Ocean Foundation and Laguna Beach Police Department host California Coastal Cleanup Day at Aliso Beach.
That leaves only a handful of days, right now, before the next scheduled crowd shows up. It's the shortest window of the year when Coast Highway is both calm and carrying its newest restaurant map at the same time. Walk from Noble Ace to Small's Smash Club, order the Umami Mushroom pizza at Truly, and get a real read on what's changed before volleyball traffic and cleanup crews fill Main Beach and Aliso Beach back up.
What It Adds Up To
The festivals leaving town isn't the story this September. The story is that Laguna's dining spine turned over while everyone was looking at the amphitheater, and it turned over in a way that tells you something concrete about the town's near-term identity: a downtown still willing to bet on a long, reservation-only evening, and a set of bookends quietly building a faster, daytime version of the same coastline. Whichever version of Laguna Beach you live closest to, this is the month to actually taste the difference before the next crowd arrives.
If Laguna Beach's shifting rhythm has you thinking about what a home here could look like for your own family, Tina Tan Group can walk you through the neighborhoods, from the Heisler Building's corner to the flanks past Aliso, and help you figure out where you'd actually want to be.
