Walk Manhattan Avenue this month and you'll pass at least four storefronts that had different names in January. Turn onto Highland into the Metlox courtyard and there's a fifth. Head east to the Sepulveda corridor and a sixth one is already pulling a lunch crowd. Six new places, all worth trying, all opened or announced within the same stretch of 2026.
But look at who actually owns each one, and the story stops being about six new restaurants. It becomes a story about one old one.
The Storefronts That Changed Hands This Year
Start at 1131 Manhattan Avenue, a block from the pier, where Nando Trattoria used to be. That space is now Coucou, a French bistro from husband-and-wife owners Jesse and Hayley Feldman. The room got a full redesign for the move: burgundy leather banquettes, Calacatta marble, hand-painted gold lettering on the windows. Chef Jacob Wetherington, a Bouchon alum, runs a menu built around a live-fire grill, with a daily apero hour that runs from 5 to 6 p.m.
A few blocks over on Manhattan Avenue, 1116 is no longer Tacolicious. It's Bread Head now, a focaccia sandwich shop layering house bread with high-quality meats and cheeses.
Head to the Metlox courtyard and the old Pitfire Pizza space at 3515 Highland Avenue belongs to Great White, an Aussie café known for grain bowls and fish tacos. Down at the corner of Sepulveda and Manhattan Beach Boulevard, Ike's Love & Sandwiches has planted a location, one of many the sandwich chain has opened across Southern California. A short drive east, inside Manhattan Village, Saint & Second opened its doors on July 21, a modern American restaurant with a kitchen that runs later than most spots in town, food service until midnight on weekends with brunch starting at 9 a.m.
And back downtown, the former Altamura Café is set to become Peacock Café, an approachable breakfast-and-lunch concept already running elsewhere.
Six storefronts. Six new names. All of it reads, on the surface, like a healthy season for the local restaurant scene.
What Every New Name Has in Common
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only track it one opening at a time: almost none of these are first-time restaurants. Coucou already has locations in Venice and West Hollywood, opened in 2023 and 2024, before this one. Great White started in Venice. Saint & Second comes from Hofman Hospitality Group, which already runs locations in Long Beach and Topanga. Peacock Café is a concept that was already operating in other markets before it picked Manhattan Beach. Ike's is a chain with a footprint that stretches across the region.
| New spot | Manhattan Beach address | Where it already existed | What it replaced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coucou | 1131 Manhattan Ave | Venice (2023), West Hollywood (2024) | Nando Trattoria |
| Great White | 3515 Highland Ave, Metlox | Venice | Pitfire Pizza |
| Saint & Second | 3160 N Sepulveda Blvd, Manhattan Village | Long Beach, Topanga | New build-out |
| Ike's Love & Sandwiches | Sepulveda Blvd & Manhattan Beach Blvd | Locations across Southern California | New build-out |
| Peacock Café | Former Altamura Café spot | Other markets | Altamura Café |
| Bread Head | 1116 Manhattan Ave | Not documented elsewhere | Tacolicious |
Of the six, only Bread Head doesn't have a clearly traceable prior location. Every other name on that list had already proven itself somewhere before signing a Manhattan Beach lease.
Why Proven Names Keep Choosing This Block
That pattern isn't an accident, and it isn't a knock on the food. Opening a second or third location is a different bet than opening a first one. A group like Hofman Hospitality already knows its costs, its staffing model, and its ceiling for a Tuesday night. Landlords on a block like Manhattan Avenue or inside Manhattan Village know it too, which is part of why these leases move fast once a proven operator shows interest.
Even the people running these import concepts talk about Manhattan Beach like it offered them something they couldn't manufacture. Hayley Feldman, co-owner of Coucou, put it simply when the Manhattan Beach location opened: "Manhattan Beach has always had a sense of community that's hard to find." She wasn't describing her own restaurant. She was describing the thing her restaurant moved in next to.
That's the quiet irony sitting underneath this whole cycle. The operators expanding into town are chasing a version of local character that they, by definition, didn't build here first.
The One Local Name Getting Squeezed
Which brings the story to Gum Tree, the boutique home goods and gifts shop that's occupied its Manhattan Beach retail space for years. Its lease is ending, and the spot is set to become a Beyond Yoga storefront, the national athleisure brand's first foothold in this stretch of downtown.
Gum Tree isn't closing. The owners have said they're relocating to a smaller space nearby and plan to keep the same mix of home goods, gifts, and lifestyle products that built the shop's following. But the direction of that swap says something the restaurant openings don't. On this block, in this cycle, the business with the longest local history is the one trading down in square footage, and the business moving in is a national brand with locations well beyond the South Bay.
Every other storefront on this list changed hands between two outside concepts. This is the one where a local name had to make room.
What This Means If You Already Call Manhattan Beach Home
None of this means the neighborhood is losing its character overnight, or that a chain taking over a lease is bad news for the block. A proven operator with locations in Venice or Topanga is more likely to survive a slow winter than a first-time concept testing an idea for the first time. For a resident, that can mean more consistency: a restaurant that already knows how to run a Tuesday, a sandwich counter that already knows its supply chain, a café that isn't figuring out its menu in real time.
What it does mean is that the texture of "new" downtown has shifted. A few years ago, a storefront turning over might have meant a first-time owner taking a swing. Right now, on this stretch of Manhattan Avenue and inside Metlox, turnover mostly means an established name from somewhere else deciding this block was worth the jump. That's a different kind of change to watch, and it's worth knowing which is which the next time a familiar storefront gets new signage. The name might be new to Manhattan Beach. It's rarely new to the business of running a restaurant.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks every lease sign on Manhattan Avenue the way some people track the surf report, you already know how fast this list can be out of date. If you're weighing what any of this means for your own next move in the South Bay, whether that's a change in your own home or advice for a friend thinking about the neighborhood, Rachel Ezra is happy to talk through what's actually changing on the ground here, restaurant leases included.
