Manhattan Beach Now Has Two Restaurant Rows, Not One
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
Every "what's new in Manhattan Beach" post making the rounds this month lists the same six names: Coucou, Saint & Second, Great White, Bread Head, Peacock Café, Gum Tree. A few of those posts still describe Coucou as "coming soon." It isn't. The French bistro has been serving dinner nightly at 1131 Manhattan Avenue, in the space that used to be Nando Trattoria, long enough to have a settled daily Apero Hour and a real customer base leaving reviews.
That correction matters less on its own than what it points to. Line up this summer's openings on an actual map of the city and a pattern shows up that a list of restaurant names can't: downtown is trading one closed storefront for one new tenant, block for block, while the east side just picked up an anchor it never had before. If you eat in this town regularly, that split changes where your Tuesday night options actually are, not just what's on the menu.
Coucou took over the former Nando Trattoria space one block from the pier, and it's the third location for husband-and-wife owners Jesse and Hayley Feldman, following outposts in Venice (2023) and West Hollywood (2024). The kitchen is run by Jacob Wetherington, a Bouchon alum, and the menu carries over favorites from the earlier locations, including the L'Haute Dog and the Burger Américaine, alongside newer dishes like bone marrow, tuna tartare, and lobster spaghetti. There's a daily Apero Hour built around the French tradition of early evening drinks and small plates.
Hayley Feldman has talked about why Manhattan Beach specifically, pointing to a sense of community she says is rare, describing it as a place with "neighbors who actually know each other." Given how many restaurant openings lean on generic language about coastal charm, that's a specific enough claim to note. It's also worth knowing the space itself changed hands for a reason beyond a lease expiring: Nando Trattoria, a Sicilian-rooted trattoria that had built a following since 2020, closed, and Coucou moved in fast enough that the sign changes are still recent in a lot of locals' memory.
The more consequential opening this summer didn't happen downtown at all. Saint & Second, a modern American restaurant from Hofman Hospitality Group, opened its new location in Manhattan Village on July 21, marking the group's first restaurant in the South Bay after existing locations in Long Beach and Topanga. The address, 3160 N Sepulveda Blvd, puts it in walking range for a large stretch of east Manhattan Beach that has never had a comparable sit-down destination of its own.
That matters because the east side already had one thing downtown has always had: a reliable weekly reason to leave the house. Concerts in the Park runs every Sunday from 5 to 7pm at the Polliwog Park Amphitheater, July 5 through September 6 this year, free and open to anyone with a blanket and a low chair. This season's lineup includes:
What the east side didn't have, until three weeks ago, was a weeknight equivalent. One Sunday draw plus one new nightly anchor is a different neighborhood than one Sunday draw and nothing else, and that's the actual shift worth knowing about if you live north or east of Sepulveda.
Everything happening downtown this summer is turnover, not expansion. Bread Head moved into the former Tacolicious space at 1116 Manhattan Avenue, building its name on focaccia sandwiches layered with high-quality meats and cheeses. Great White, the all-day café chain out of Venice, is preparing to open in the former Pitfire Pizza space at Metlox, its sixth location overall, confirmed through a liquor license filing. Gum Tree, the longtime home goods and gift boutique, lost its previous lease and is relocating to a smaller space nearby, with owners saying the new location will keep the same curated mix that made it a local fixture.
None of that adds square footage to downtown's dining and retail footprint. It recycles the same handful of storefronts that have always turned over on Manhattan Avenue and Manhattan Beach Boulevard. Compare that to Saint & Second's arrival at an address that had no comparable restaurant before it, and the difference between "downtown got a new restaurant" and "east side got a restaurant, period" becomes the more useful distinction for anyone deciding where to actually go this month.
New arrivals get measured against fixed points, and Manhattan Beach's haven't changed. Fishing with Dynamite, the oyster bar and coastal seafood spot at 1148 Manhattan Avenue that chef David LeFevre built into a local institution, remains the most consistently reviewed restaurant in town, with a listing in the 2025 Michelin Guide USA and multiple appearances on OpenTable's 100 Best Restaurants in America. The Arthur J at 903 Manhattan Avenue still cooks every steak over a live wood fire using white oak embers, in a mid-century modern room built around a serious martini program. Love & Salt at 317 Manhattan Beach Boulevard, a decade-old anchor for American-Italian pizza and pasta near the pier, just brought Chris Feldmeier back into the kitchen, a chef known from his time at Nancy Silverton's Osteria Mozza in Hollywood.
These three aren't news. They're the reference points that make the news legible. When a new opening gets compared to Fishing with Dynamite's reputation or The Arthur J's price point, that comparison only works because both have held steady for years.
Underneath the restaurant openings, the weekly rhythm that actually organizes a local's calendar hasn't shifted at all. The Manhattan Beach Certified Farmers' Market runs every Tuesday from 11am to 3pm at Civic Center Plaza, a tradition the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professional Association has run since 2006. More than 60 vendors show up weekly, including B.A. Mamas Empanadas, Del Cid Coffee sourcing beans from their family farm in Guatemala, and Deisy's Pupusas. It's the one fixture in this whole roundup that nobody is renaming or relocating.
That's the frame worth holding onto. The market on Tuesday and the concerts on Sunday haven't moved in years and won't move because of a new bistro or sandwich shop. What's actually changed this summer is what fills the five nights in between, and for the first time in a while, that answer depends on which side of Sepulveda you're standing on.
If you're weighing what any of this means for buying, selling, or renting property in a neighborhood whose everyday texture keeps shifting street by street, Gauss Real Estate Group has been reading Manhattan Beach at this level of detail for a long time. Let's start the conversation today.
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