What's New In Hollywood This Summer: A Resident's Field Guide
Walk east on Melrose past Highland this month and you will notice something quiet happening. The stretch that used to be a pass-through has a Michelin-alumnus tasting counter serving stuffed morels behind a plain storefront. A block north, on Cahuenga, a Jamaican-Chinese kitchen is turning out oxtail lo mein next door to a matcha bar with a kitten on the sign. Meanwhile, the parts of the neighborhood the tour buses actually stop for are, for the most part, doing what they have always done.
That contrast is the story of Hollywood in the summer of 2026. The new operators are not clustering around the Walk of Fame. They are opening two, three, and four blocks off the tourist axis, on streets where residents already park. For anyone who lives here, the practical effect is that the interesting places are now within walking distance of your building rather than a rideshare across town.
A pattern shows up when you plot this year's openings on a map. Almost none of them are on Hollywood Boulevard between La Brea and Vine. Instead they cluster in three quieter zones:
Each cluster has a different logic behind it, and each one changes how you might spend a Saturday.
The Jacaranda opening deserves more attention than it has received locally. Chef Daniel Patterson earned two Michelin stars at Coi in San Francisco before he stepped away from fine dining in 2016, and Jacaranda is his return. He runs it with music veteran Sarah Lewitinn, and the two of them spent 2025 developing the concept through a pop-up called Jaca Social Club before taking the 30-seat Melrose space.
The format is a 10-course tasting menu at $295 per person, vegetable-forward in a way that reads as a direct extension of Patterson's Coi years. Recent dishes have included an artichoke flower, stuffed morels with potato and spruce tips, and a pepper-crusted duck with blueberry sauce. Wine pairings run California and global; there is a non-alcoholic pairing for guests who prefer it.
For residents, the practical read is this. Melrose east of Highland has, for years, been the kind of block where you drove through on the way to somewhere else. A tasting-menu destination of this caliber changes the after-dinner walk, the reservation pattern, and, eventually, the ground-floor retail mix around it. If you live within ten minutes on foot, you now have a birthday-dinner option that does not require crossing Fairfax.
Cahuenga has been building slowly for a couple of years, and the summer roster makes it feel finished as a corridor.
ABL Hollywood opened in a former boba shop with red mood lighting and velvet banquettes. The kitchen belongs to ABEAUTIFULLIFE Jamaican, a Black-owned concept that blends Caribbean cooking with Chinese American comfort food. The menu reads the way that description promises: jerk chicken egg rolls, oxtail lo mein with hand-pulled noodles, curry fried rice, weekend brunch that includes an apple rum French toast. It is a small room built for a walk-in Tuesday, not a reservation Saturday.
Louis Coffee Bar is the daytime companion piece a block or two away. Two cousins opened it after realizing they were treating coffee shops as their standing family meeting. The signature is a matcha colada topped with coconut. There are pastel cups, a kitten logo, and pup cups for guests bringing dogs. The point of mentioning this in a real estate context is not the drinks. It is that a coffee shop like this on a residential-adjacent block is a leading indicator; it exists because there is enough weekday foot traffic to keep the lights on.
Monroe Place has expanded from Culver City into Hollywood with a second location, and it works as a lunch counter on the way home. The menu is short and specific: baguettes stuffed with burrata and confit tomato, chicken caesar focaccia, and a W.L.F. that layers turkey with pomegranate molasses and barberries. They will convert any sandwich into a salad on request.
Kavahana, the kava nectar bar that built its following at Smorgasburg and then at a Santa Monica flagship, held its grand opening in Hollywood on June 6. The beverage is cold-pressed from kava root, non-alcoholic, and has the calming quality that has made it the drink of choice for people who want a bar-adjacent evening without the wine. The location plans weekly community events, which is another way of saying it will function as a neighborhood living room.
Pawn Shop is the outlier in size. Developer Diego Torres-Palma has built a 7,800-square-foot sports bar and restaurant inside an actual former Hollywood pawn shop, with two levels, a 50-seat bar, 53 televisions, two video walls, and elevated bar food from James Beard-winner Tony Messina. Mark Cuban is an investor. It is the kind of room designed to hold a weekend crowd during a World Cup or NBA finals run, and it fills a gap on this side of the neighborhood.
Five openings on one corridor in one year is unusual. Whether it holds through 2027 will depend on whether the second-generation restaurant spaces around them get taken by comparable operators or by chains looking to buy foot traffic.
The east side of the strip is where the capital is going. Public West Hollywood, Ian Schrager's next hotel, is opening in June 2026 with 137 rooms, interiors by architect John Pawson, and a 16,000-square-foot rooftop terrace with skyline views. The design brief is minimalist and the ambition is a destination lobby scene. Whether or not you check in, a hotel of that footprint reshapes weekend traffic and evening reservations on the surrounding blocks.
A short walk from there, Round One, the Japanese entertainment company that most people know for its bowling and arcade concept, is opening a 20,000-square-foot food hall on Sunset. It will hold satellite locations from roughly eight acclaimed Japanese restaurants, several of them opening their first US outposts. Exact vendors have not been announced, but the trade press has floated names including Sushi Saito, Tempura Takiya, and Yakitori Goichi.
SushiSamba is returning to the United States after nearly a decade away, taking an 11,000-square-foot open-air space with a retractable roof and sight lines to the Hollywood Hills. The menu will hold to the Japanese, Brazilian, and Peruvian format the brand built its reputation on.
And in the historic Citizen News building, the Hong Kong-based Mott 32 is preparing to open its Hollywood location. The chain has nine locations globally, and the signature is a 42-day-aged, wood-roasted Peking duck that guests must order a day in advance.
If Cahuenga is where the neighborhood operators are drawing walk-in traffic, this side of the map is where the international brands are placing multi-year bets on Hollywood as a destination address. Both patterns can be true at once, and both matter for residents.
Here is the working shortlist for the season, sorted by what you might actually do with it:
| Occasion | Where to go |
|---|---|
| A birthday-caliber dinner within Hollywood | Jacaranda, 6623 Melrose Avenue |
| Sunday brunch that is not the same brunch | ABL Hollywood, Cahuenga |
| Weekday afternoon coffee | Louis Coffee Bar, Cahuenga |
| A quick lunch on the way home | Monroe Place, Hollywood location |
| An evening that does not involve wine | Kavahana, Cahuenga |
| A game with friends and a proper room to watch it in | Pawn Shop |
| An opening night to keep on the calendar | Public West Hollywood, June 2026; Mott 32, Citizen News building |
None of that requires a car if you already live on the east side of Highland. The best argument for Hollywood in 2026 is not that the neighborhood is changing. It is that the changes are landing in the parts of it residents already use.
New operators, hotel investment, and food-hall capital tend to reset how a neighborhood is priced over the following two to four years. If you own here and are weighing a move within the next cycle, or you are looking at Hollywood from another part of the West Valley, the practical questions are about which blocks the shift is actually reaching and which are on the periphery. That answer requires walking the corridors, not reading a map.
Larry Calemine advises sellers, buyers, and investors across Hollywood, Studio City, and the Calabasas-to-Westlake corridor with concierge-level attention and two decades of transaction experience. To discuss your property or a purchase in the neighborhood, schedule a private consultation.
With more than 20 years of experience in the greater Los Angeles Real Estate market, Larry Calemine has the experience and vision necessary to ensure the successful completion of your next Real Estate transaction. Larry’s vast knowledge of the current market and strong negotiation skills will assure anyone the best possible experience.