On September 8, servers at Driftwood Kitchen and The Deck cleared their last tables at 647 South Coast Highway. The two restaurants had shared that stretch of oceanfront for roughly a decade, hosting charity galas, collecting awards, and by one local count shucking close to a million oysters between them. Neither closed because business had gone soft. They closed because the parcel underneath them is now worth more as a hotel than as a dining room.
Pacific Edge Hotel's managing director, Chris Whitman, told the Orange County Register the closure was tied to the property's redevelopment plans, not its performance. The site was purchased in August 2024 for $80 million by Dune Drifter LLC, a firm co-founded by investor Cramer Williams and Chris Harrison, grandson of Marriott International's executive chairman. That group is now moving forward with a $125 million overhaul. Driftwood Kitchen had itself taken over a space long held by the Beach House restaurant before it, chef and partner Rainer Schwarz and business partner John Nye opening The Deck in 2012 and Driftwood the year after. A decade of goodwill and a full reservation book weren't the variables that mattered here. The land was.
A Different Kind of Turnover a Mile North
Coast Highway has seen this kind of churn before, just not this version of it. The Heisler Building at 400 South Coast Highway sat dark for most of 2025 after Bodega and Skyloft closed that January. Before Bodega, the same ground floor had cycled through Laguna Fish Company, and before that, Tommy Bahama, which departed in 2019. The upper level once belonged to Rock 'N Fish, running from 2011 through 2014 after a renovation that followed the Jolly Roger's closure in 2006.
That building changed hands again in 2023, when L.A.-based Pegasus Investments bought it from longtime Laguna resident Sam Goldstein for $16.5 million. This past summer, the ground floor reopened as Noble Ace, a supper club from former Mastro's Ocean Club chef Magellan Moore and co-owner Elizabeth Schreiber, who described the concept to What Now Orange County this way: "This is like if Hillstone and Mastro's had a baby." The lease was arranged by Newmark Pacific in a deal announced July 15, with the 6,654-square-foot space designed by Ralitsa Kombakis of Studio Rallou to fold the building's original character into what she called a modern supper club feel. Noble Ace opened Monday, June 29, staffed with a general manager who spent two decades at Mastro's and Red O in Newport Beach, and an assistant GM who got his start at Odessa, the Debbie Allen, Norm Nixon and Denzel Washington-backed supper club that ran there in the late 1990s.
The Heisler Building has turned over five times in fifteen years. But every one of those turnovers kept the address in the restaurant business. Driftwood Kitchen's parcel is leaving it. That's the distinction the July trade coverage hadn't caught yet, because it hadn't happened yet. Laguna's restaurant map isn't only splitting between downtown reservation rooms and casual bookend concepts, as the town's own food press first framed it this summer. A third force showed up in September: capital that doesn't want a restaurant on the site at all.
This Fall on Coast Highway
| What | Where | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Driftwood Kitchen & The Deck | 647 S. Coast Hwy | Closed Sept. 8, site slated for hotel redevelopment |
| Noble Ace | 400 S. Coast Hwy, Heisler Building | Opened June 29 |
| Bar ízi | Glenneyre & Thalia, former Evan's Gourmet/Cafe Zoolu | Aimed for a late-August or early-September debut |
| Wind & Sea | — | Closed with a Sept. 15 farewell |
| Frisby Cellars Winery | — | Closing Oct. 31 |
| Cocoa Bloom Café | — | Closing Oct. 31 |
| Splashes | — | Named to Tripadvisor's national fine-dining Best of the Best, Sept. 26 |
Bar ízi is the one worth watching closest, because owner Sam Rabon has been working toward this opening for months in a space with real history. The address has run as Evan's Gourmet, Cafe Zoolu, and ROUX Creole in past lives, and Rabon reportedly built the new interior around one specific, well-loved figure from Laguna's culinary past. The concept aimed for a late-August or early-September debut, which puts its opening any day now if it hasn't quietly happened already. Either way, it's a small-plates concept, and small is the operative word: nothing about this opening involves an $80 million land purchase.
The Bookends Are Playing a Different Game Entirely
Two miles south of the Heisler Building, the reshuffle looks nothing like a hotel buyout. Dizz's As Is closed March 13 after more than 40 years under the Pitz family, who had run it since Marcel Pitz founded the place in 1977. What replaced it wasn't another continental menu with rack of lamb. Small's Smash Club, founded by professional snowboarder Jordan Small, took over the space at 2794 South Pacific Coast Highway as its second location after a debut in San Clemente the year before, keeping the existing bar, liquor license, and ocean view intact. It opened on a Friday in June with a line that held through the weekend.
Truly Pizza opened its own second location in May at 320 North Coast Highway, in the space last known as restaurant "3" and, before that, Madison Square & Garden Café. The roughly 100-seat spot ranked No. 4 on the 2026 edition of 50 Top Pizza USA, and its Umami Mushroom pie was named that list's Pizza of the Year. A companion concept, Truly Bagels, is slated for the long-shuttered Ti Amo building in South Laguna, filling a breakfast gap that neighborhood has gone without for years. Down the coast, El Matatan brought its Cuban, Dominican and Mexico City menu over from the City of Orange in June, and Amorelia Cocina Artesanal soft-opened in the old San Shi Go stilt building at 858 South Coast Highway, run by the family that had spent decades operating a Mexican restaurant in Costa Mesa before expanding into a Mexico City-centric fine-dining concept with a raw bar and a serious wine program. Nearby, Nalu Poke, Tea & Boba moved into the space that Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory had occupied since 1984, next to Better Buzz Coffee across from Main Beach.
None of these openings required an institutional buyer. They took over leases that had already been sitting vacant, in buildings that weren't being eyed for anything bigger than their next tenant. That's precisely why they've been multiplying while the Heisler Building and the Driftwood parcel each drew multimillion-dollar capital before a single plate went out.
What the Reputation Still Rewards
None of this means the freestanding, full-service restaurant is finished in Laguna Beach. On September 26, Tripadvisor named Splashes to its Travelers' Choice "Best of the Best" fine-dining list, the only California restaurant among 19 nationally. Tripadvisor's write-up praised its "first-rate coastal views, fresh local seafood, and expert wine pairings," and credited a recent renovation for the room's light, breezy feel. It's proof that a restaurant built around execution, not just address value, can still climb to national recognition even as the built environment around it keeps shifting.
The lesson from this fall isn't that Laguna is losing restaurants wholesale. Local trade coverage already counted 15 new food and beverage concept openings against seven closures through 2025, a full turnover of the town's roster in a single year. What's new is the reason behind the biggest closure on the books. Driftwood Kitchen and The Deck didn't lose to a better restaurant. They lost to a $125 million hotel plan, and no amount of oyster shucking or charity gala goodwill was ever going to change that math.
If you're the kind of person who tracks which addresses hold value long after the tenant changes, that instinct extends well beyond Coast Highway's restaurant row. It's the same read Brendan Brown brings to residential and hospitality properties across the coast, where the building often outlasts whatever business or family is inside it at any given moment. If you'd like to talk through what that kind of long-view thinking looks like for a specific property, reach out to schedule a confidential consultation.
