Long Beach Late Summer 2026: Where to Eat and Go Next

Ask a longtime resident to name the epicenter of Long Beach dining and they will still point to Belmont Shore, downtown, or the pier. That answer is a year behind the map. The retail complex at 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway has absorbed so many of the city's most talked-about openings and pending openings that the fall dining calendar effectively runs through that intersection.

The thesis of this post is simple. If you live here and want to spend the next eight weeks eating like someone who is paying attention, you plan around 2nd & PCH first and everything else second. Long Beach Food Scene Week gives you a cheap way to test that theory before the summer ends.

The Corner That Absorbed The Year's Openings

Brodard, the Fountain Valley Vietnamese institution known for its nem nuong cuon spring rolls, is opening at 6480 E. Pacific Coast Hwy inside the 2ND & PCH shopping center, taking the former Tocaya space. Founder Diane Dang's family has spent decades building the original into a Little Saigon landmark, and the Long Beach location is the newest addition to the Brodard Group of Restaurants, which also includes Brodard Chateau in Garden Grove and Bamboo Bistro in Newport Beach.

A few doors west of Trader Joe's in the same Marketplace complex, Sweetgreen has been building out its first Long Beach location. Signage went up earlier this year and construction has been visible for months. The chain is a familiar Southern California name, but its arrival in Long Beach specifically is what makes the corner feel like a magnet for concepts that had, until recently, treated the city as optional.

Across town, Bacari has added a tenth outpost in Long Beach with a small-plates menu and a bottomless brunch that will probably become the default weekend booking for anyone who has grown tired of the same three brunch rotations. It is not at 2nd & PCH, but it is the same phenomenon: multi-location operators finally treating Long Beach as a required stop rather than an experiment.

Food Scene Week Is A Cheap Way To Audit The Class Of 2026

Long Beach Food Scene Week runs Friday, July 31 through Sunday, August 9, 2026, with more than 100 restaurants, cafes, and pop-ups participating in the fourth annual edition. The event exists in part because August is traditionally one of the industry's slowest months, and the prix fixe menus and one-off collaborations are structured to give residents a reason to eat locally when the tourists thin out.

For someone who already lives here, the useful way to read the participant list is by looking at who is joining for the first time. The newcomers this year include:

• Appu's Turmeric Cafe
• Colossus
• Hey Brother Baker
• Viaje
• Steelhead Coffee
• Buen Provecho
• Seaside Creamery
• StormBurger, whose truck has been parked outside its buildout while construction wraps
• Massimo's, Dolores, The Second Owl, and Loquat Oysters

The more surprising additions are the legacy spaces participating for the first time. Naples Rib Company and Joe Jost's, the century-plus-old Pine Avenue institution, are both taking part, along with The Reef. If you have lived in the city for any length of time and never had a specific reason to sit down at Joe Jost's, a limited-run menu is that reason.

Two collaborations are worth flagging. Phnom Penh Noodle Shack and Battambong BBQ are running back 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 are both offering prix fixe menus that are effectively the cheapest way to get inside two of the city's higher-tier kitchens on the same weekend.

Ten days, roughly 100 kitchens, one calendar. Treat it as a survey course, not a marathon.

Belmont Shore's Slow Reshuffling

Belmont Shore is not standing still, but the changes there are subtler than the corner-shopping-center shakeups. Sorry Not Sorry Creamery, the ice cream brand that sources dairy from a century-old farm, took over the former Sweetfin space earlier this spring and opened in early April. It is a small footprint change, but the Shore has been quietly losing casual daytime tenants for a couple of years, and any operator willing to take a formerly turned-over space is worth paying attention to.

Nick's on 2nd remains the anchor everyone keeps circling back to. The menu has stayed largely unchanged since it opened nearly a decade ago, which in restaurant terms is a form of stability that gets undervalued during years when everything else is either arriving or closing. The fried deviled eggs and butter cake are still doing what they have always done.

The Pike Outlets Bet

At The Pike Outlets, the former T-Mobile space between Kalavera's and The Auld Dubliner is being taken over by Paris Baguette, the South Korea-based bakery chain that has expanded rapidly across the U.S. since opening its first stateside store in 2005. The company has said it expects to reach more than 1,000 U.S. locations by 2030, with the Long Beach shop targeted to open by the end of this year or in early 2026. For a downtown that has struggled to keep casual daytime foot traffic east of Pine Avenue, a bakery in that specific corridor matters more than the brand name alone suggests.

What's Already On The Fall Calendar

If you plan calendars in advance, here is what is already locked in for the next three months.

Long Beach New Blues Festival returns August 29 and 30 at Shoreline Aquatic Park, closing out the same week Food Scene Week wraps. It is a straightforward two-day sit-on-the-grass event with a lineup that skews classic and a location that makes it easy to walk in from downtown.

Holo Holo Long Beach lands at Marina Green Park on October 17. The traveling island-music festival has been building a reliable audience up and down the coast, and the Marina Green Park setting is one of the easier festival footprints in the city to get in and out of on foot or by bike.

The Long Beach Jazz Festival returns for its 36th year on the waterfront, continuing to occupy the grassy knoll and two-stage format it has used since the late 1980s. It remains the only Southern California jazz festival with that specific waterfront setup.

Downtown is also hosting a rolling series of smaller events tied to the World Cup group-stage activation earlier in the summer, including watch parties at The Ordinarie and The Breakfast Bar on Atlantic Avenue, plus lower-key nights like ceramic frame painting sessions with @clayonfirst that the Downtown Long Beach Alliance has been programming through the fall.

Reading The Map

Zoom out and the pattern is legible. The city's dining energy is shifting east along Pacific Coast Highway, with 2nd & PCH acting as the primary gravity well. Belmont Shore is stable and slowly reshuffling. The Pike is placing a bet on daytime foot traffic. Downtown is leaning on events rather than new full-service restaurants. Shoreline and Marina Green Park will do most of the outdoor-festival work between now and Halloween.

None of this is a reason to move anywhere new inside the city. It is a reason to update where you meet friends, where you take a visiting parent, and which weeknight you finally cross something off the list. For anyone who has lived in Long Beach long enough to remember when 2nd & PCH was just the Trader Joe's, this fall is worth paying attention to.

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