For most of last year, four addresses on Coast Highway sat dark at the same time. The Heisler Building across from Main Beach. The stilt-house perch that used to be San Shi Go. The old Ti Amo space in South Laguna. And Dizz's As Is, the Pitz family's rack-of-lamb-and-raspberry-duck room that had been open since 1977. Any one of those going quiet for a season would have barely registered. All four dark at once, in a town this small, felt different. It felt like the street was holding its breath.
Between March and July of this year, every one of those spaces reopened, plus a fifth. What's interesting isn't that Laguna got a wave of new restaurants. It's that if you look at what actually moved into each address, the openings sort into two clearly different bets about how people want to eat here in 2026. One bet is happening downtown, near Main Beach, and it's about the reservation night. The other is happening at the two ends of town, and it's about the fast, casual, walk-in visit. Knowing which is which changes where you head on a Tuesday versus a Friday.
The Heisler Building bet: a room built for the long dinner
The most-watched vacancy in town belonged to 400 South Coast Highway, dark since Bodega and Skyloft closed in January 2025. What moved in isn't a replacement concept so much as a full production. Noble Ace, a Golden Age Hollywood-inspired speakeasy from Chef Magellan Moore and co-owners Elizabeth and Tom Schreiber, opened on Monday, June 29, 2026, with a staffing bench deeper than most independent restaurants pull together in one hiring cycle. Hillari Galindo came in as general manager after two decades between Mastro's Ocean Club and Red O in Newport Beach. Danny Reyes returned as assistant GM, having started his Laguna career at Odessa. The interior, designed by Ralitsa Kombakis of Studio Rallou, keeps the bones of the historic Heisler Building while building out something closer to a modern supper club, piano bar included.
The hours tell you who this room is for. Sunday through Thursday it runs 4:30 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday it stretches to 11. That's not a grab-a-burger schedule. It's a sit-down, order-a-second-round schedule, and the pricing spread, described by one of the owners as landing somewhere between Hillstone and Mastro's, backs that up. The piano bar downstairs is a walk-in evening. The chef's table upstairs is something you plan around.
Two miles south, the story reversed entirely. Dizz's As Is closed permanently on March 13, 2026, after more than 40 years under the Pitz family, who'd run the eclectic, ocean-view continental menu since Marcel Pitz opened it in 1977. What took over the 2794 South Pacific Coast Highway address wasn't another version of that room. Small's Smash Club, founded by professional snowboarder Jordan Small, took it as a second location after the original opened in San Clemente in 2025, keeping the existing bar and liquor license but swapping the menu entirely for smash burgers, tallow fries, and onion rings. Small's opened on a Friday in June 2026, and the line stretched through the entire weekend. Same ocean view Dizz's had for decades. Completely different economic bet on how to fill the room.
Bookending the town: pizza north, bagels south
If the Heisler-versus-Dizz's swap shows two different bets inside similar buildings, the Truly Pizza expansion shows the same split by design. The team behind Truly Pizza, which opened its original Dana Point location in 2023, picked two Laguna addresses on opposite ends of Coast Highway and is opening two different concepts at once. The north end gets full-service Truly Pizza at 320 North Coast Highway, in the space that used to be "3." The south end gets Truly Bagels, a daytime counter-service concept, in the long-shuttered Ti Amo building at 31727 Coast Highway. If you live between Aliso and Three Arch, that's a walkable bagel option that hasn't existed in that stretch of South Laguna since Ti Amo went dark. One operator, one summer, two completely different dining occasions built into the same expansion.
That north-south split matters more than it might look on paper. Laguna's dining geography has always leaned toward downtown density, everything clustered within a few blocks of Main Beach. Having a full-service concept anchor the north end and a grab-and-go concept anchor the south end means locals in either direction get a reason to stay local instead of driving toward the center of town for a coffee or a slice.
The stilt building's long, slow reopening
The fifth address, the old San Shi Go space perched on stilts south of downtown, took the longest road back. Amorelia, a 185-seat restaurant from longtime Costa Mesa restaurateur Gloria Seretti and her son Daniel Paniagua, is now in soft open after nearly two years of delays, including a stall just weeks before its original planned launch. The concept marks the family's first expansion beyond their decades-old Costa Mesa restaurant, and it moves the menu from straightforward Mexican fare toward a Mexico City-centric, finer-dining direction, with a showpiece bar and wine structure built into the entry level. Seretti has said she knew for years she needed to be in Laguna Beach specifically, calling it the right creative environment for the expansion. Combined with Noble Ace, Amorelia adds a second serious, reservation-worthy anchor to the north end of downtown, reinforcing that the elevated-dinner bet isn't a one-off. It's a pattern.
The smaller signals point the same direction
A couple of newer arrivals fill out the picture without changing it. El Matatan, a Latin cuisine concept from owner Oscar Garcia, moved from the City of Orange into Laguna this summer, bringing on Omar, previously of Carmelita's, as general manager, and opened with soft dinner service before working into a full lunch schedule. Downtown, Oto Sushi has brought Chef Connor Mathison, a Portland transplant, into the sushi space with a sustainability-focused menu, another downtown, sit-down addition rather than a quick-service one.
Line them all up and the geography does the explaining. Downtown and the immediate blocks around Main Beach are where the reservation-night restaurants are landing: Noble Ace, Amorelia, Oto Sushi. The two ends of town, north toward the "3" space and south past Aliso, are where the faster, more casual concepts are landing: Truly Pizza and Truly Bagels, Small's Smash Club. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's two different operators reading the same town and placing two different kinds of bets, both of them apparently confident enough to sign leases in the same six-month window.
What this actually means for a Tuesday night
If you've been putting off trying whatever replaced Dizz's because you assumed it would feel like grieving a 40-year institution, it won't. Small's kept the view and the liquor license and nothing else, so walk in expecting a burger, not a eulogy. If you want the kind of evening Dizz's used to represent, that instinct now points you toward the Heisler Building instead, where the piano bar takes walk-ins most nights but the upstairs chef's table wants a reservation. And if a bagel run has meant driving into downtown, that changes too, once Truly Bagels is fully open in the old Ti Amo space in South Laguna.
None of this required a single new building. It required five landlords willing to bet on five different tenants, and five operators willing to read the same three-mile stretch of Coast Highway and come to two different conclusions about what it's missing. Both bets can't be right forever, but for now, on a single walk from the north end of town to the south, you can get a full four-course evening or a smash burger and a bagel, and both of them are new since spring.
If you're a longtime homeowner curious what all this turnover on Coast Highway might mean for values in your part of town, or you're weighing a move within Laguna Beach and want a read on a specific block, LUXRE Realty knows this stretch of coastline as well as anyone working it. Contact us when you're ready to talk.
