Where Long Beach’s New Restaurants Are Opening in 2026

Drive down Pacific Coast Highway past 2nd Street this summer and you'll notice the same thing regulars have been noticing for months: something is always under construction, a storefront always has butcher paper on the windows, a food truck is always parked where a permanent kitchen should be. If you've lived in Long Beach long enough to remember when this stretch was mostly a strip mall with a Trader Joe's, the pace of change here lately is hard to miss.

Here's what most people driving by don't realize: this isn't scattered activity happening to land near each other by coincidence. The city's most talked-about new restaurants this year are converging on one corridor, and the timing of when you should actually go try them runs opposite to what you'd assume.

The Corner Absorbing Long Beach's New Openings

Start with the 2nd & PCH retail complex itself. Brodard, the Vietnamese restaurant famous for its nem nuong cuon spring rolls and considered a Little Saigon landmark out of Fountain Valley, is opening its Long Beach location at 6480 E. Pacific Coast Highway in the former Tocaya space. This isn't a first-time restaurateur testing the market. Brodard is part of a small family group that includes Brodard Chateau in Garden Grove and Bamboo Bistro in Newport Beach, run by the founder's daughter. When a group with that kind of track record picks a location, it's a signal about where they think the customers already are.

A few doors down, Sweetgreen is opening its first Long Beach location in the Marketplace complex at the southeast corner of 2nd and PCH, just west of the Trader Joe's. Ground has already broken on the space, and signage has been up while the interior work continues.

Walk a few blocks into Belmont Shore and the pattern holds. Sorry Not Sorry Creamery, an ice cream brand built around dairy from a century-old farm, opened its first Long Beach location on April 2 in the former Sweetfin space on 2nd Street. That space had sat empty since Sweetfin closed, and multiple other brands reportedly toured it before Sorry Not Sorry signed on. Meanwhile StormBurger has had its truck parked outside its future storefront for months while construction continues, a familiar sight to anyone who walks that stretch regularly.

None of these are far apart. Belmont Shore's 2nd Street runs directly into the 2nd & PCH complex, which means a resident who wants to see what's actually new in Long Beach food right now doesn't need to plan a citywide tour. It's a single walkable stretch, and it's absorbing a disproportionate share of this year's most anticipated openings while other pockets of the city stay comparatively quiet.

Why August Is the Best Month to Actually Try Them

Here's the part that surprised me. August is traditionally one of the restaurant industry's slowest months, the stretch when kitchens brace for a lull between summer tourism and the fall rush. Long Beach's response to that seasonal dip wasn't to wait it out. It was to build an entire event around it.

Long Beach Food Scene Week ran July 31 through August 9 this year, bringing together more than 100 restaurants, cafes, and pop-ups specifically to keep foot traffic moving through what would otherwise be a dead stretch. It wasn't a soft promotional gesture. Phnom Penh Noodle Shack and Battambong BBQ revived their Cambodian Cowboy Dry Noodles, a smoked brisket noodle bowl that became one of last year's standout dishes. Sky Room, inside the Fairmont Breakers, and Ammatoli both ran special prix fixe menus for the week.

What made this year's lineup worth paying attention to was who showed up for the first time. Newcomers included Appu's Turmeric Cafe, Colossus, Hey Brother Baker, Viaje, Steelhead Coffee, Buen Provecho, and Seaside Creamery. At the same time, longtime neighborhood fixtures joined the event for the first time in its history, including Naples Rib Company and Joe Jost's, a name that's been part of Long Beach's food identity for generations.

That combination is the actual mechanism worth understanding. Food Scene Week isn't just a discount period. It's the one window each year where a brand-new opening like Brodard or Sorry Not Sorry Creamery sits on the same map, the same searchable list, as an institution like Joe Jost's that residents have been going to for decades. The 2026 run wrapped on August 9, but the same restaurants, new and decades-old alike, are still sitting a short walk from each other on the same stretch of 2nd Street and PCH, no calendar required.

Beyond the Plate: How the Neighborhood Actually Spends the Weekend

Food isn't the only thing clustering around this corridor. If you're trying to figure out what a normal weekend looks like for someone who already lives here, the rhythm holds together in a way that's easy to miss until you map it out.

Farmers markets run at both Bixby Park and the Alamitos Bay Marina, giving residents two different weekend options depending on which side of town they're starting from. Bixby Park also hosts free daily Yogalution sessions on the bluff, a low-key routine that's become part of the neighborhood's morning texture rather than a special event.

For evenings, 2ND & PCH's Beachside Beach Fest concert series has run through the summer, including a free family-friendly show at Seaport Way from Purple Generation, a Prince tribute band, complete with face painting and airbrush tattoos. A few miles down at Alamitos Bay's 66th Place, the Jazz on the Bay series has brought in performers like Niki Haris, Madonna's longtime vocalist, for a free concert right on the sand.

If you'd rather walk than sit, the Second Saturday Art Walk in the East Village Arts District is the closest thing Long Beach has to a monthly open house for its creative community, with galleries and pop-up vendors defining the pace of that neighborhood in a way that's distinct from the beach-facing energy down at Belmont Shore.

Line all of this up and a pattern emerges that goes beyond any single opening or event. The newest restaurants, the longest-running institutions, the free concerts, and the weekend markets aren't spread evenly across Long Beach. They're concentrating along a corridor that runs from Belmont Shore's 2nd Street through the 2nd & PCH complex, with Bixby Park and the East Village filling in the rest of a weekend that increasingly doesn't require leaving that stretch of the city at all.

That's worth knowing if you live here and have been wondering why this particular part of town feels like it's changing faster than the rest. It is. The restaurants confirm it, the timing of Food Scene Week is built around it, and the weekend calendar backs it up.

If you're weighing a move within Long Beach, curious what a specific block or corridor is actually like day to day, or just want a second opinion from someone who pays attention to this kind of detail for a living, Gina Oddo is happy to talk it through. Let's Connect.