On June 11, Mayor Caroline Torosis stood outside a new Raising Cane's on the Third Street Promenade and called the chicken chain's arrival a milestone for downtown. A crowd that had lined up since 8 p.m. the night before got their fingers, more than 100 new jobs came with it, and the city's revitalization campaign notched its highest-profile win of the year.
If you asked people who actually live here where the real food news was that week, most would point somewhere else. A few blocks south on Main Street, chef Dave Beran was fielding calls about the James Beard Award his tasting-menu restaurant Seline had just won for Best Chef California, a recognition that arrived less than two years after the restaurant opened. No mayor, no ribbon, no city press release.
That gap is the story. Santa Monica's restaurant scene is genuinely having a moment this summer, but the moment is not distributed evenly, and it is not being driven by the corridor getting the public money and the headlines. If you live here and you're trying to figure out where to actually eat this month, it helps to know which street is which.
The Street the City Is Subsidizing
The Third Street Promenade has a vacancy problem that depends on who's counting. Downtown Santa Monica Inc. put ground-floor commercial occupancy at 76% as of April 1, 2026, which works out to roughly a quarter of storefronts empty. A Wall Street Journal investigation, as reported by Santa Monica Wave in July, put retail and restaurant vacancy on the Promenade and surrounding blocks closer to 20%, and noted the flagship mall on the corridor had defaulted on a $300 million loan. Other reporting has put the figure as high as 30% after a fresh wave of closures. The exact number moves depending on the month and the method, but the direction has been consistent for a while: Doc Martens, It's Sugar, Old Navy, Gap, H&M and AMC have all left, and Anthropologie followed them out this summer, closing its Promenade store in June and reopening in Marina del Rey in July.
The city's response has been a real, well-funded push. In April, the City Council approved a $3 million economic revitalization strategy that eliminates the $1,000-per-seat wastewater capacity fee that used to cost a new 50-seat restaurant nearly $70,000 before it served a single meal, expands the open-container entertainment zone from the Promenade to the whole downtown core, the Pier, Main Street and Montana Avenue, and offers 90 minutes of parking for a dollar. Part of the bet was on tourism: city leaders pointed to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which brought a five-week fan festival to the Pier this June and July, as a way to jump-start foot traffic, with a Goldenvoice music festival on the beach still ahead in September and further hopes pinned on the 2028 Olympics.
What's actually filling the empty storefronts, for now, is chains. Taco Bell Cantina is converting former office space at 318 Santa Monica Blvd. into a bar with a mezzanine, and Raising Cane's has already opened at 1401 Third Street Promenade. Not everyone on the street is celebrating the mix. "Any investment is better than nothing," longtime bookstore owner Richard Lang told the Santa Monica Observer, before adding that filling the Promenade with fast food chains risks solving one problem by creating another.
Two Blocks Away, a Different Kind of Comeback
Main Street didn't need a $3 million plan or a fee waiver. Beran's Seline, on Main Street in the Ocean Park end of the neighborhood, opened in December 2024, landed a Michelin star within months, and in June 2026 won its chef the James Beard Award for Best Chef California, a distinction that now has tables booked three to four weeks out for its fourteen-to-eighteen-course tasting menu. His sister restaurant Pasjoli, a few doors down, has held a Michelin star since 2021 and built its reputation on a single dish: pressed duck prepared tableside in the traditional style.
Main Street is changing in smaller ways too. The Montreal dessert chain La Diperie is moving into the space at 2441 Main St. left vacant by Holey Grail Donuts, marking the brand's first West Coast location. None of this required a city incentive package. It required a chef with a following and a landlord willing to bet on him, which is a different kind of investment than a wastewater fee waiver.
The Family That Never Left
Ocean Avenue told its own version of the story on June 26, when Greg and Yunnie Morena opened the West Side Oyster Club at 1355 Ocean Ave., in the space vacated by Blue Plate Oysterette after a 16-year run. The Morenas aren't outside operators chasing a market opportunity. Yunnie's parents founded SM Pier Seafood in 1977, the business that eventually became The Albright, the restaurant that still sits at the top of the Santa Monica Pier. "Santa Monica raised us, and we've been giving it back for nearly 50 years," Greg told LAmag at the opening.
That's the pattern worth noticing. The most talked-about new restaurant on Ocean Avenue this summer came from a family with half a century of local history, not from a chain filling a hole in a corridor the city is trying to save.
Montana Avenue Never Needed Saving
North of Wilshire, Montana Avenue has kept doing what it's always done, quietly and without a revitalization fund. The Win-Dow, the smashburger walk-up that started as a $3.95 window attached to the Rose Avenue steakhouse American Beauty back in March 2019, opened its seventh Los Angeles-area location at 930 Montana Ave. on June 10, taking over the former Go Get Em Tiger coffee shop, a day ahead of the Raising Cane's ribbon cutting downtown. A few blocks up, a second Santa Monica location of the Italian gelato brand Bacio di Latte is moving into 1510 Montana Ave., next to the Italian market Sogno Toscano.
Montana's pace has always been slower and more boutique than the Promenade's, and nothing about this summer's additions changes that. The corridor isn't recovering from anything. It's just adding to what was already working.
The Office Park Making Its Own Bet
The most interesting gamble might be happening somewhere that isn't a commercial street at all. Restaurateur Dave Harper, known for Bondi Harvest, Amigo Roasters and El Chucho, is opening Bower Santa Monica inside Colorado Center, the 15-acre office campus on the east side of the city. The 6,500-square-foot space is designed as an all-day hub with an espresso bar in the morning and shareable plates and cocktails at night, backed by the campus's owner, BXP, and New School Hospitality. Early announcements in April pointed to a summer opening; hiring notices circulating in recent weeks have pushed that to September. Either way, it's a private developer betting that thousands of office workers and nearby residents want a real gathering place, not another building amenity.
Where the Investment Is Actually Landing
Corridor | What's opening | Who's behind it |
|---|---|---|
Third Street Promenade | Taco Bell Cantina, Raising Cane's | City incentives: $3M fund, waived fees, expanded entertainment zone |
Main Street | Seline (2026 James Beard winner), Pasjoli, La Diperie | Chef reputation and private capital |
Ocean Avenue | West Side Oyster Club | A Santa Monica family, four generations deep in local seafood |
Montana Avenue | The Win-Dow, Bacio di Latte | Independent operators expanding on their own terms |
Colorado Center | Bower Santa Monica | Private developer bet on office-district foot traffic |
Laid out this way, the pattern is hard to miss. The street getting the public money is filling with chains. The streets building genuine reputations, the ones winning James Beard Awards and reopening under third-generation ownership, are doing it without a dollar of city incentive.
What This Means for Your Next Free Evening
If you're deciding where to spend a Saturday night this month, the choice isn't really about which street is "back." It's about what you're in the mood for. A few ways to test the map yourself:
- Book Seline or Pasjoli on Main Street a few weeks out. Both are hard tables to get right now for good reason.
- Walk into West Side Oyster Club on Ocean Avenue for a seafood tower and a view that doesn't require the Pier crowds.
- Grab a smashburger at The Win-Dow on Montana before 10 a.m. on a weekend, while the line is still short.
- Watch for Bower's opening at Colorado Center this fall if you work or live on the east side of the city.
- If you do end up on the Promenade, know what you're walking into: a corridor mid-transformation, propped up by public money, with more change likely before it settles.
None of these places needed a ribbon cutting to matter. They just needed someone with a reputation, a family history, or a following willing to bet on this city without being asked.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing a move in Santa Monica, that's a longer conversation, and one where local context like this actually matters. The Salazar | Bunnell Group has been tracking these shifts block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk specifics, or browse our Santa Monica neighborhood guide for more on the area.
