A Local Guide to New Restaurants in Laguna Beach for 2026

If you walked Coast Highway last summer and again this month, you noticed the shuffle. San Shi Go's stilt building has a new tenant. Dizz's As Is went dark after 40-plus years. Bodega's spot in the Heisler Building has been empty since early 2025. Ti Amo is finally waking up. What's arriving in their place tells you something specific about where the town is heading, and it isn't a simple like-for-like swap.

Here is the through-line worth holding onto as you read: Laguna's 2026 openings are trading long-tenured, dinner-only white tablecloth rooms for a mix of daytime counter concepts and a smaller number of ambitious full-service bets, most of them clustered on Coast Highway between Main Beach and South Laguna. That shift changes what a Tuesday lunch looks like, what a Friday reservation costs, and which corners of town stay lit after nine.

The old-to-new ledger

Seven changes in a compact stretch of highway is a lot for a town this size. Read the right column and the pattern surfaces on its own.

The stilt building finds a second act

The old San Shi Go, the sushi restaurant on stilts that regulars simply pointed to rather than named, is now Amorelia. The 185-seat room is in soft open under Gloria Seretti and her son Daniel Paniagua, the family behind a long-running Costa Mesa Mexican restaurant. Their Laguna expansion pivots the concept toward Mexico City fine dining, with a raw bar on the east side and a wine structure anchoring the entry level. Seretti described the move as years in the making, saying Laguna Beach was where she wanted to expand because it was "THE creative place you do that."

Reservations run through Resy at (949) 593-0009, daily 5 to 10 p.m. Two things to know before you go: the layout is more vertical than the old San Shi Go read from outside, and the price point has moved up in line with the finer-dining framing.

Dizz's replacement is not another Dizz's

Dizz's As Is closed on March 13, 2026 after the Pitz family had operated it on Coast Highway for more than 40 years, founded in 1977 by Marcel Pitz. The old room ran on rack of lamb, surf and turf, raspberry duck, and a decor collage no one has managed to describe accurately.

What is moving in is a different animal. Small's Smash Club, the burger-focused concept, opened its second location at 2794 S Pacific Coast Hwy in the former Dizz's building. Founder Jordan Small, a professional snowboarder, started the concept as a pandemic-era backyard project before opening the San Clemente flagship in 2025. The Laguna location kept the existing bar and liquor license, added ocean views to the room, and runs the signature smash burger menu with a full bar. The June grand-opening line stretched down the block and through the weekend.

Same building, ocean view intact, but the transaction is faster and the check average is lower. That is the shift in one address.

El Matatan brings a different flag to Coast Highway

El Matatan, a Latin concept from City of Orange operator Oscar Garcia, opened in June with a menu blending Cuban, Dominican, and Mexico City fare. The name is Dominican. Longtime Carmelita's regulars will recognize Omar, who has come on as general manager.

For locals, the Omar move is the tell. It signals continuity of service in a room that would otherwise read as unfamiliar, and it is the kind of hire only someone who already understands this town would make.

The Heisler Building's long vacancy ends

The historic Heisler Building at 400 S. Coast Hwy has been dark since Bodega closed in early 2025, and Noble Ace has been announced to fill it. The restaurant describes itself as a Golden Age Hollywood-inspired speakeasy from Chef Magellan Moore, formerly of Mastro's Ocean Club, alongside Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber. The opening is targeted for Summer 2026.

Two things are worth flagging. First, the Heisler is one of the more architecturally recognizable rooms downtown, and a speakeasy framing works with those bones in a way a bright brunch concept would not. Second, the Mastro's pedigree points to a higher-check dinner room, which puts Noble Ace and Amorelia in roughly the same price tier at opposite ends of the Coast Highway walk.

Truly's bookend strategy

The Truly Pizza concept, which opened in Dana Point in June 2023, is expanding into both ends of Laguna: Truly Pizza in North Laguna at 320 N. Coast Highway in the former "3" restaurant space, and Truly Bagels in South Laguna at 31727 Coast Highway in the long-shuttered Ti Amo building.

Bookending the town with one operator is unusual. What is more unusual is the format split. The North Laguna room is full-service pizza; the South Laguna room is a counter-service, daytime-focused bagel concept. The same brand is essentially placing two different bets on two different customer patterns in the same city.

The Main Beach corner refresh

Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba is moving into 248 S. Coast Highway across from Main Beach, filling the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory space that had been a Laguna fixture since 1984, next to Better Buzz Coffee.

Two counter concepts side by side across from Main Beach is a bet on foot traffic patterns rather than reservations, and it is consistent with the broader tilt in this year's openings.

What the pattern actually says

Cluster these seven changes and the ratio becomes clear. Three of the openings are full-service dinner-oriented concepts. Four are counter or counter-adjacent, tilted toward daytime and faster turns.

This mirrors what Best of Laguna Beach's long-term tracking of the market has been flagging. The publication frames the shift not as a rejection of hospitality but as a recalibration of risk, one that increasingly favors shorter daytime stays, faster turns and lower operational exposure. Fifteen new food and beverage concepts were announced in 2025 through the same tracking, against seven concepts lost in the same year.

That is the practical version of the story. Full-service dinner rooms are still opening in Laguna. They are simply no longer the default when a legacy tenant vacates.

How to actually eat through the summer

A few things to file away as you plan the next few weekends:

• Reservations vs. walk-ins. Amorelia and Noble Ace are reservation rooms. Small's Smash Club, Truly Bagels, and Nalu Poke will reward walking up, particularly on weekdays before noon.
• The Coast Highway parking reality. Local coverage has been blunt about summer weekend traffic on Coast Highway, which gridlocks by noon, and recommends parking at the Act V lot (Lot 16) in the Canyon and taking the free Canyon Route trolley. That advice applies to dinner reservations at the new rooms as much as it does to festival grounds.
• Festival overlap. The Sawdust Art Festival runs June 26 to September 6, the Festival of Arts runs July 7 to September 3, and the Pageant of the Masters runs nightly from July 9 to September 4. Book Amorelia and Noble Ace early on Pageant nights or expect a wait.
• Concession news for festivalgoers. AhbA is making its debut as the Sawdust's newest concession this year, serving elevated American-style cuisine and its burgers. Worth knowing if you are already inside the grounds.

A note for anyone watching the market

The turnover on Coast Highway is worth paying attention to beyond the dinner reservation. Rooms that sit empty for a year, like the Heisler Building did after Bodega, tell you something about where operator confidence is soft. Rooms that get snapped up quickly, like Dizz's was, tell you where it is holding. For homeowners in North and South Laguna, the operator mix directly outside your door is one of the quieter signals in how walkable value is priced over time. It is one of the things I watch closely.

If you are thinking about buying, selling, or simply want a candid read on what the block-by-block changes mean for your street, Vasi Vangelos is happy to talk. Let's Connect.