For at least a decade, the recurring story about Abbot Kinney was that the street had lost the plot. GQ named it "the coolest block in America" in 2012, and within a few years that designation became the thing locals complained about most. The chains arrived. The rents rose. The story got tired.
Early 2026 is complicating that narrative. According to a December 2024 survey of the boulevard by FashionNetwork, fewer than 10 of the roughly 100 storefronts along the mile-long stretch sit vacant. That is near-full occupancy for a commercial corridor in Los Angeles, where retail vacancies have been a defining story for three consecutive years. What has been filling those gaps is a specific profile of operator: chefs with serious fine-dining résumés choosing Venice over more obvious alternatives, a Latin hospitality concept that within weeks of opening was hosting the Venice Chamber of Commerce, and two boutique hotels whose construction will reshape the northern and southern ends of the street. The Abbot Kinney Festival, canceled two years in a row, is back on the calendar for September 27, 2026.
The street is not staging a comeback. It never really left. But what it looks like right now is worth knowing if you live here.
A Restaurant Cluster That Skews Local
The most-discussed opening on this end of the Westside in late 2024 was not in Santa Monica or Brentwood. It was RVR, the new izakaya from Gjelina Group chef Travis Lett, which LA Magazine named among the best new restaurants in Los Angeles for 2026. Lett spent years running the Gjelina kitchen a few blocks away, took a five-year hiatus, and returned to Venice with a small space he initially used for the short-run MTN pop-up before opening RVR in October 2024. Reservations are required weeks out. The menu applies Japanese technique to California produce: chicken karaage, roasted sweet potato, hand rolls, and a Santa Barbara black cod that regulars keep ordering. A long row of vinyl records lines the wall as both décor and soundtrack.
Venice Steakhouse
A short walk from the boardwalk, Venice Steakhouse opened in November 2025 at 1715 Pacific Ave. in the former South End space. The kitchen belongs to Chef Sydney Hunter III, a Southern California native whose résumé runs through L'Orangerie, Bastide, and a six-year run opening and operating Petit Trois. The menu is built around dry-aged prime cuts with French-leaning sides: tallow fries with dijon jus, butter-bathed grilled cabbage. Wood paneling and low light make the room work whether you walk over from the canals on a Tuesday or drive in for a deliberate Saturday night.
¡Salud!
On Washington Boulevard between Dell and Clune, ¡Salud! opened at 417 Washington Blvd. in late January 2026, holding its ribbon-cutting with the Venice Chamber of Commerce on January 24. The concept runs a split shift: specialty coffee and Latin-inspired breakfast in the morning, then mezcal cocktails and tapas after dark. The daytime menu moves from a churro waffle with cajeta drizzle to an iced horchata chai latte. The lights drop at night and the bar program takes over with tequila-forward cocktails and elevated small plates. About 100 locals turned out for the Chamber mixer in early March 2026, a telling sign of how quickly the place has landed inside neighborhood life.
Truly Pizza
Later this year, Abbot Kinney will absorb its largest new dining footprint in some time. Truly Pizza, the Orange County chain known for its three-day fermented dough and thin, blistered-crust pies, has committed to a third location at 1239 Abbot Kinney Blvd. The 4,655-square-foot space will seat around 130 indoors and outdoors — a scale that makes it one of the larger sit-down operations on the corridor. The menu centers on 12-inch round pies and airy square grandma-style pizzas, ranging from a $19 classic cheese to a $30 Suprema. Co-founders Donna Baldwin and John Arena, a world-champion pizzaiolo, cited Venice's blend of committed locals and steady visitors as the deciding factor.
Two Hotels That Will Change the Street's Geometry
The most structurally significant development on Abbot Kinney is not a restaurant. It is the arrival of two boutique hotels that will bring overnight capacity to a neighborhood that currently has almost none.
The Venice Place project is a 78-room hotel being built into an existing block at the northern end of the boulevard, designed by local architect David Hertz. The design preserves existing restaurant frontage on Abbot Kinney while adding a landscaped courtyard with multiple pedestrian access points. Felix Trattoria anchors the food component; Esquire named Felix the best new restaurant in America when it opened in 2017, and it earned a James Beard Award finalist nomination in 2018.
At the southern end of the street, 881 Abbot Kinney is a 43-room hotel at the corner of Abbot Kinney and Main Street. Both hotels were slated for completion in the 2025-2026 window, per FashionNetwork's December 2024 review of the corridor.
The presence of two hotels matters beyond the buildings. Overnight guests sustain dinner restaurants at a density that day-trippers do not. A street that has functioned primarily as a daytime destination for much of the past decade will operate differently once visitors with nowhere to be at 6 a.m. are staying on the block. For reservation-driven rooms like RVR and Venice Steakhouse, which pull from across the Westside to fill their tables, that is a concrete shift.
The Festival Returns After Two Cancellations
The Abbot Kinney Festival was canceled in both 2024 and 2025. Organizers have confirmed it will return on September 27, 2026, citing the extra time as an opportunity to restructure the event and make it more focused. The festival historically gathered around 350 vendors, food trucks, music stages, and community programming along the full length of the boulevard. Its two-year absence removed the one annual moment that reliably drew the entire neighborhood together and gave newer residents a reason to walk the blocks they tend to skip.
Its return will coincide with a commercial landscape that looks meaningfully different from the last festival anyone attended. Salud will have been open for eight months. Venice Steakhouse will have a full year behind it. Truly Pizza may well be serving its first season. Both hotels could be welcoming guests. The September crowd will meet a street that has been quietly adding all of this while the festival was on pause.
What the Pattern Suggests
The Infatuation's January 2026 openings guide notes that a prominent OC pizzeria is expanding to Venice as part of a wider trend of operators choosing Los Angeles neighborhoods with strong residential cores over more tourist-dependent corridors. Venice fits that logic: the boardwalk pulls visitors, but Abbot Kinney draws people who actually live within a few miles and return on weeknights.
What makes this moment read as something more than a routine opening cycle is the combination of elements arriving together rather than separately. Near-full occupancy. Chef-driven independents choosing Venice over other options. Hotel infrastructure coming to the street for the first time. A community event resetting after two years off. Each of these has happened in isolation before. They have not converged at the same moment on this street in quite a while.
If you live in Venice and want to understand what this neighborhood's current momentum means for your property, Pence Hathorn Silver has been working this market long enough to tell the difference between a cycle and a shift. Schedule a free consultation with our team.
