Five of the most-watched addresses on Coast Highway sat dark through most of 2025. The historic Heisler Building at 400 South Coast Highway went quiet when Bodega and Skyloft closed in early 2025. Dizz's As Is, run by the Pitz family since Marcel Pitz opened it in 1977, served its last rack of lamb on March 13, 2026, after more than four decades in the same room. The stilt-house perch at 858 South Coast Highway sat empty once San Shi Go moved out. The old Ti Amo building in South Laguna went dark too, and a former Thai restaurant space near AHBA joined the list not long after.
By midsummer, every one of those five was lit again. On its own, that is not much of a story. Storefronts turn over on Coast Highway the way they do on any main street. What is worth your attention is that the operators who filled them made almost opposite bets, and reading the list together tells you something the individual opening announcements do not: Laguna's food scene is quietly running two different economies at once this summer, one built around a full night out and one built around getting you in and out fast, and neither is trying to beat the other at its own game.
The Heisler Building bet on staying open late
Noble Ace opened Monday, June 29, in the Heisler Building, and it is the one full-service dinner house in this year's list that plays it straight. Chef Magellan Moore, who comes from Mastro's Ocean Club, partnered with Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber to build what the team describes as a Golden Age Hollywood-inspired speakeasy. Elizabeth told the Orange County Register the idea had been years in the making.
"Magellan and I met 12 years ago when we worked together at Mastro's while getting my degree from USC," she said. "For a long time he said no. But about a year ago, he finally agreed."
The staffing tells you how seriously the room is being run. Hillari Galindo moved into the general manager role after two decades between Mastro's Ocean Club and Red O in Newport Beach, and Danny Reyes returned as assistant GM after starting his Laguna career at Odessa. Ralitsa Kombakis of Studio Rallou designed the space to keep the character of the historic building while giving it the feel of a modern supper club. Current hours run Sunday through Thursday from 4:30 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 4:30 to 11 p.m., and Schreiber has described the pricing spread as something like a cross between Hillstone and Mastro's. That is a bet on the long dinner shift, the reservation, the piano bar downstairs and the chef's table upstairs. Patch reported the opening as one of the more anticipated returns to a building that had sat vacant for over a year.
Two blocks south, the bet was speed
Small's Smash Club took over Dizz's old room at 2794 South Coast Highway, and it is the clearest contrast on the street. The brand was founded by professional snowboarder Jordan Small, who started it as a backyard operation during the pandemic before opening a first brick-and-mortar location in San Clemente in 2025. The Laguna location, its second, kept the existing bar and liquor license and the ocean view, and built its menu around a smash burger, tallow fries and onion rings rather than the continental fine dining Dizz's had served for forty years. WhatNow reported that the concept was expected to draw both longtime locals and visitors with its combination of coastal views and a casual, high-turn format. When it opened on a Friday in June, the line stretched through the weekend, which tells you something about how quickly this town will show up for a casual concept when the room still has the same water view it always had.
Same building, same ocean, entirely different economics. One operator is staffing for a two-hour dinner reservation. The other is staffing for a burger you can eat in twenty minutes and get out.
The chain that hedged both directions at once
Truly Pizza, which first opened in Dana Point in June 2023, is the one operator this summer betting on both models simultaneously, in two different buildings, at the same time. The North Laguna location takes over 320 North Coast Highway, the former home of "3" restaurant, and runs as a full-service pizza concept. A South Laguna sibling, Truly Bagels, is opening in the long-shuttered Ti Amo building at 31727 Coast Highway as a daytime counter-service shop. Trade filings with OC Health confirm the split: Donna Baldwin, who co-owns the original Truly Pizza in Dana Point, is listed as the registered agent for the Truly Bagels location. If you live between Aliso and Three Arch, the practical effect is a walkable South Laguna bagel option in a spot that has not had one since Ti Amo went dark.
Here is how the summer's turnover maps out address by address:
| Former tenant | New occupant | Location | Concept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bodega/Skyloft | Noble Ace | 400 S. Coast Hwy | Full-service dinner house |
| Dizz's As Is | Small's Smash Club | 2794 S. Coast Hwy | Casual burger and bar |
| San Shi Go | Amorelia | 858 S. Coast Hwy | Full-service fine dining |
| "3" restaurant | Truly Pizza | 320 N. Coast Hwy | Full-service pizza |
| Ti Amo | Truly Bagels | 31727 Coast Hwy | Counter-service, daytime |
| Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory | Nulu Poke Tea & Boba | 248 S. Coast Hwy | Counter-service, daytime |
A former Thai restaurant space near AHBA also filled this year, with an omakase raw bar called Empire Oyster Raw Bar taking the room. Small footprint, specialty menu, another entry in the faster-turn column rather than the long dinner shift.
Look at the table again and the pattern is hard to miss. Three of the six are full-service rooms betting on the classic Coast Highway dinner shift. Three are counter-service or fast-casual concepts betting on shorter visits and faster tables. Nobody is opening a middle-of-the-road casual dinner restaurant this year. The bets are landing at the two ends.
What the return of a 185-seat room says
Amorelia's arrival at 858 South Coast Highway is worth a closer look because of how long it took to land. Owner Gloria Seretti, whose family has run a Costa Mesa restaurant specializing in Mexican cuisine for decades, planned to open a Mexico City-centric fine dining concept in the space back in the summer of 2025. An unexpected departure by the lead chef pushed the opening back for months, and the 185-seat room finally entered soft open earlier this year. Seretti told a local food writer she had wanted a Laguna location for years.
"I knew for years that I needed to be in Laguna Beach because I wanted to expand to more, and this is THE creative place you do that," she said. "It took a few years of looking for the perfect place, but I believe this place was meant to be for us. I knew it from the start."
A 185-seat build-out with a showpiece bar and a full wine program is not a bet anyone makes lightly, and the fact that it survived a months-long delay and still opened tells you the full-service model still has believers on this street, even as the counter-service side of the ledger keeps growing.
The numbers behind the turnover
Local restaurant tracker Diane Armitage of Best of Laguna Beach counted 15 new food and beverage openings against 7 closures across 2025, a ratio that argues against reading any of this as retreat. What is shifting is the shape of the openings, not the appetite for opening at all. Newer concepts are skewing toward shorter daytime service and faster turns rather than the long full-service dinner shifts that defined the last generation of Coast Highway restaurants. Even a longtime fixture like Slice changed hands this year, with founders Cary and Suzanne Redfearn selling the name and concept to new owners, another small data point in a year full of them.
None of this means Laguna is losing its dinner-house identity. It means the town is running two parallel bets on what a night, or an afternoon, on Coast Highway should look like, and this summer happened to be the season when five long-vacant addresses all answered that question at once.
How to use what is left of the summer
The Sawdust Art Festival runs through September 6 this year, which means Laguna Canyon Road and the Coast Highway spine near it stay busy on weekend evenings for a few more weeks. A few ways to use the stretch before it thins out:
- Book ahead for Noble Ace or Amorelia if you want a full sit-down dinner on a Friday or Saturday. Both are drawing crowds early in their runs.
- Walk into Small's Smash Club on a weeknight rather than a weekend if you want to skip the line that formed at its June opening.
- Grab a bagel from Truly Bagels before a Saturday morning at the tide pools rather than fighting for a downtown breakfast table.
- If you are heading to the art walk or the festivals, Nulu Poke Tea & Boba at 248 South Coast Highway, right across from Main Beach, is a fast stop that will not eat into your evening.
The walk from Noble Ace at 400 South to Small's Smash Club at 2794 South is roughly a mile and a half. Cover it once this month and you will see the entire turnover in a single stroll, full-service on one end, fast and casual on the other, and a town still deciding, restaurant by restaurant, which kind of night it wants to sell.
If you are weighing a move to a stretch of coastline where the local economy still supports both a 185-seat dinner house and a smash burger counter in the same summer, that is worth a conversation. Jeff Engstrom has been tracking these blocks long enough to tell you which side of Coast Highway fits how you actually want to live, not just how the postcard looks. Schedule a Free Tax-Smart Home Consultation to talk through it.
