"This is like if Hillstone and Mastro's had a baby."
That's how Tom Schreiber described Noble Ace, the speakeasy-style supper club he and his wife Elizabeth just opened in the Heisler Building at 400 South Coast Highway, the address that sat empty and watched by half the town since Bodega and Skyloft closed in early 2025. It's a good line, and it tells you something real about the room. But it only covers one building. If you've driven Coast Highway this summer and noticed a new sign every few weeks, you haven't been imagining it. Four of Laguna's most-watched vacant storefronts turned back on between March and July 2026, and a fifth quietly joined them. Read the five together and a pattern shows up that no single opening would reveal on its own.
The Building Everyone Watched
The Heisler Building had been dark for over a year before Noble Ace opened its doors on Monday, June 29, 2026. The concept comes from Chef Magellan Moore, who spent years at Mastro's Ocean Club, and the Schreibers, who had pitched him on the idea year after year until he finally said yes. The team runs deep for a single opening. General Manager Hillari Galindo arrives after two decades split between Mastro's Ocean Club and Red O in Newport Beach, and Assistant GM Danny Reyes started his Laguna career at Odessa before returning here. Designer Ralitsa Kombakis of Studio Rallou built the interior around the historic bones of the building rather than against them, landing somewhere between the character of an old Laguna landmark and a modern supper club. Hours run Sunday through Thursday from 4:30 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday until 11.
If you're weighing a reservation, know what you're booking. The bar with the piano is a walk-in evening. The upstairs and the chef's table are the reservation you plan around.
Two Miles South, A Completely Different Bet
Dizz's As Is closed on March 13, 2026, after the Pitz family ran it for nearly half a century, since Marcel Pitz founded it in 1977. Rack of lamb, surf and turf, raspberry duck. That kind of continental menu doesn't get replaced with more of the same anymore, and it wasn't here either.
Small's Smash Club took over 2794 South Pacific Coast Highway as its second location, following an original in San Clemente that opened in 2025. The brand was founded by professional snowboarder Jordan Small, and the Laguna location kept the ocean view along with Dizz's existing bar and liquor license, which is no small thing to inherit in a coastal building. The menu is a smash burger, tallow fries, onion rings, beer and cocktails. When it opened on a Friday in June, the fan line stretched through the entire weekend, which tells you exactly how strong demand runs for a casual concept in a room with a water view.
Same building. Same license. An entirely different economic bet than the one Dizz's made for 49 years.
One Team, Two Concepts, Bookending The Town
The Truly Pizza team, which opened its original location in Dana Point in 2023, is doing something no other operator in Laguna is doing right now: opening two concepts on the same stretch of highway at once. The full-service pizza restaurant takes over 320 North Coast Highway, the former home of "3." A South Laguna sibling is going into the long-shuttered Ti Amo building at 31727 Coast Highway, but it isn't pizza. Health department filings list it as Truly Bagels, with Donna Baldwin, co-owner of the Dana Point restaurant, as the registered agent.
If you live between Aliso and Three Arch, that's a walkable daytime bagel option in a spot that hasn't had one since Ti Amo went dark. It's also the clearest example on this list of an operator hedging two different bets under one roof of ownership: a sit-down dinner concept at one end of town, a counter-service daytime concept at the other.
The Slowest Reopening Finally Happened
The stilt building at 858 South Coast Highway, formerly San Shi Go, took the longest to come back. Amorelia's is now in soft open there after a process that stretched nearly two years and included a stall just two weeks before its originally planned launch, when the lead chef departed. Owner Gloria Seretti and her son Daniel Paniagua are behind the 185-seat restaurant, expanding their longstanding Costa Mesa restaurant's Mexican roots into a Mexico City-centric fine dining format, open daily from 5 to 10 p.m. with reservations through Resy.
Of everything that reopened this summer, Amorelia's is the one that most resembles what closed. Full service, reservations, an evening-only room built for a longer visit. That matters for what comes next.
The Fifth Space Nobody Was Watching
The building at 248 South Coast Highway, across from Main Beach, doesn't have the same name recognition as the Heisler Building or Dizz's, but it has its own history. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory first opened there in 1984, one of the company's earliest locations outside its home base in Durango, Colorado. That space is now home to Nulu Poke Tea & Boba, sitting next to Better Buzz Coffee.
Nobody staked out this storefront the way they watched the Heisler Building. But it belongs on the same list, because it's the fifth data point in the same trend.
Why This Isn't Random
Line up what actually reopened. Noble Ace and Amorelia's are full-service dinner destinations built around reservations and a longer evening. Truly Bagels, Small's, and Nulu Poke are faster, more casual, built around quicker turns and lower overhead, even when the room still has a water view and a full bar. Two bets on the long dinner shift. Three bets on getting people in and out faster.
That split isn't a coincidence specific to these five addresses. Local tracking of Laguna's restaurant scene counted 15 new food and beverage openings across 2025 against 7 closures, and found the newer wave skewing toward shorter daytime service and faster turns rather than the long full-service dinner shifts that defined the last generation of Coast Highway. Longtime owners cashing out reinforces the same read. Cary and Suzanne Redfearn, who ran the Slice pizza concept, sold the name and the food concept to new owners last year rather than keep operating it themselves.
Walk it and the pattern gets even more literal. The distance from Noble Ace at 400 South to Small's at 2794 South is roughly a mile and a half. That stroll is the entire summer's turnover in one line, a full-service supper club at one end and a casual burger counter with a view at the other, with a bagel shop, a pizza place, a Mexico City-inspired dining room, and a boba counter filling in the middle.
Timing A Visit Before The Season Wraps
If you're planning to catch any of Laguna's summer arts festivals before they close, the calendar is tight. The Pageant of the Masters runs nightly through September 4, 2026, the Festival of Arts closes September 3, 2026, and the Sawdust Art Festival along with Laguna Art-A-Fair both run through September 6, 2026. A Passport to the Arts still gets you one admission to all three daytime shows plus parking at the Act V lot and trolley access, which is the easiest way to avoid fighting for a spot on Laguna Canyon Road.
Pair the timing with the new dining map and the evening basically plans itself. Grab a bagel or a slice before wandering the Festival of Arts grounds, walk the Sawdust artist booths in the afternoon, and either settle into a reservation at Noble Ace or Amorelia's for something longer, or grab a smash burger at the old Dizz's spot if you'd rather watch the sunset over a beer than a wine list.
Coast Highway looked frozen for most of 2025. It isn't anymore, and the buildings that came back tell you exactly what kind of night out Laguna is betting on right now.
If you're curious what a year of storefront turnover like this tends to do to home values on the same stretch of coastline, that's the kind of question Jerry Del Mauro and the team at 1% Listing Broker track every day. Get your free 1% home valuation whenever you're ready to see what your Laguna Beach property could bring today.
