If you drove Coast Highway in early 2025 and again last week, you passed at least four restaurants sitting where longtime institutions used to be. That is the real August story in Laguna Beach, and it is bigger than any single opening. The forty-year dinner houses that defined the last generation of the highway are not being replaced by other forty-year dinner houses. They are being replaced by chef-driven daytime concepts, counter-service single-item plays, and Latin-forward menus, and the last four weeks of festival season is the window to walk it before the calendar turns.
Diane Armitage, who has covered the Laguna dining scene for eighteen years 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. That two-to-one ratio is the number to hold in your head as you read the rest of this.
What actually changed, block by block
Here is what has turned over on Coast Highway since last summer, with the addresses so you can walk it in an afternoon.
- Amorelia Cocina Artesanal at 858 S. Coast Highway. The new 185-seat restaurant is in the old San Shi Go stilt space, and after decades running a Costa Mesa family-owned Mexican restaurant, owner Gloria Seretti and her son Daniel Paniagua have taken the Laguna location to a Mexico City-centric finer dining focus with a raw bar, wagyu, uni and five seating areas. Word travels fast: the World Cup finale brought a couple of surprise guests to Amorelia, with Ray Allen and Mark Cuban stopping in with friends to catch the action.
- Truly Pizza North Laguna at 320 N. Coast Highway, in the former "3" space by Urth Caffe. This is the Dana Point original's first expansion.
- Truly Bagels at 31727 Coast Highway in South Laguna. A counter-service daytime concept from the Truly Pizza team, in the long-shuttered former Ti Amo space.
- Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba at 248 S. Coast Highway, next to Better Buzz. It sits in the space Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory occupied since 1984. That sentence alone is worth rereading if you grew up here.
- El Matatan, Cuban, Dominican, and Mexico City cooking from owner Oscar Garcia, expanded from the City of Orange, opened for lunch in June 2026, with Omar from Carmelita's as GM.
- Risen, the second location after San Clemente, opened June 2026. It was founded by pro snowboarder Jordan Small and kept the ocean-view bar and liquor license from Dizz's As Is, whose forty-year Pitz-family run ended on March 13, 2026.
- Empire Oyster Raw Bar in South Laguna, an omakase raw bar in the former Thai-restaurant space a half block from AHBA.
Two more are landing before Labor Day.
- Bar ízi, at Glenneyre and Thalia. The long-awaited small plates concept is targeting an end-of-August or early September debut in the former Evan's Gourmet location, also remembered as Cafe Zoolu and ROUX Creole. Owner Sam Rabon has reimagined the interior to honor one specific and dearly loved Laguna culinary icon, which the Best of Laguna Beach VIP notes have been teasing.
- Noble Ace, in the historic Heisler Building at 400 S. Coast Highway. A Golden Age Hollywood-inspired speakeasy from Chef Magellan Moore of Mastro's Ocean Club with Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber, targeting a summer 2026 opening. The Heisler has been empty since Bodega closed in early 2025, so this one matters for the block.
Read that list twice and the pattern surfaces. Three of the eight are Mexico or Latin-forward, three are daytime-friendly counter or single-item concepts, and only one, Noble Ace, is a full-service dinner-house play in the classic Coast Highway mold. That is the shift. It is not a scarcity story. Diane Armitage said she is fielding regular calls from national and regional operators asking what full-service Laguna space is available. The demand is there. What is changing is which slice of the day operators are willing to bet on.
The Sawdust hack most residents forget
The Sawdust Art Festival is in its 60th year and runs through September 6, so you have roughly a month of festival left. The two things worth knowing if you live here:
Every Thursday, Laguna Beach residents get in free with valid ID. Bring your driver's license and skip the ticket line. If you have out-of-town family arriving on a Sunday, Los Angeles County residents get free entry on August 9, San Diego County residents on August 16, and Riverside and San Bernardino residents on August 23. Tell your visiting relatives which Sunday to drive down.
For everyone else, a single-day ticket in 2026 runs $12.50 for adults, $10.50 for seniors 65 and up, and $5.50 for youth ages 6 to 12, with kids under 5 free and veterans free any day with military ID. Two food notes for the August visits: The Cove by Starfish is serving a churro bao bun that has become a festival favorite, AhbA is debuting as the newest concession with elevated American-style burgers, and Taco Loco under Gonzo Rebollar is running the savory side.
Parking is the friction point most locals learn the hard way. The trolley is free from Lot 16 and runs from Downtown to Sawdust between 10am and 8pm during the show Friday through Sunday, with the trolley tracker on the City of Laguna Beach website, and free trolley service is also available from the City of Irvine.
Blocking off the August calendar
The last full month of the Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters overlaps almost entirely with the Sawdust closing stretch. The Pageant runs July 7 to September 4, 2026, with local volunteers recreating living paintings, and this year the theme is The Greatest of All Time.
Other August dates worth writing on the fridge:
- August 1, all month. The de la Torre Brothers exhibit is on view at the Laguna Art Museum, Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm.
- August 1, 8pm. The LBCAC Comedy Series at the Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center.
- August 1, 8pm. Teresa James and the Rhythm Tramps at Laguna Beach Live.
- August 5, 10am. Rivian and the Ocean Institute run a joint program in Dana Point that a lot of Laguna families make the short drive for.
- August 7, 8pm. The Blues Legends Series continues with an Evening of Modern Blues, doors at 7:30.
If you have family visiting on a weekend and want a single template that flatters the town, walk the Festival of Arts grounds in the late afternoon, cross Laguna Canyon Road to Sawdust for dinner and the eucalyptus-lit stroll, then Pageant of the Masters seats after dark. It is the one night of the year the town's whole art infrastructure runs simultaneously.
The closing footnote that will change your fall drives
The other reason to walk Coast Highway now is that Dana Point Harbor is losing its familiar dinner map on your Halloween weekend. As the $600 million redevelopment of Dana Point Harbor moves forward, Turk's and Proud Mary's both close on Halloween 2026, and their longtime companion Wind & Sea is set for a September 15 farewell. Frisby Cellars Winery and Cocoa Bloom Café also close on October 31, joining El Torito, Harpoon Henry's, The Brig, Beach Harbor Pizza and Gemmell's on the departures list. If Turk's has been in your rotation for twenty years, this is the last summer of that drive.
The reading you can take from all of this: the Coast Highway you show your visitors this month is not the one you will be showing them next August. Two of the eight openings above were second locations, three were Latin-forward, and only one was the classic full-service dinner house that used to define the drive. The Heisler Building has a tenant again after eighteen months dark. The Pitz family's forty-year run at Dizz's ended in March and a snowboarder now runs the bar. That is a different Laguna than the one on the postcards, and the transition is happening in real time between now and September 6.
If you are thinking about how the changes on your block factor into a future move, whether that means selling into the summer's remaining buyer window or finding a home closer to the walkable stretch you actually use, the Swardstrom Group knows this coast at the level of the individual building. Reach out through our Laguna Beach neighborhood page or the contact form and let's connect.
