Walk halfway down the Huntington Beach Pier and you will pass a boarded storefront that used to sell bait and tackle. It sits in what is probably the single best location for a restaurant in Orange County: glass on three sides, waves underneath, sunset built into the lease. It has been vacant, in one form or another, since the city closed the old Let's Go Fishing stand years ago. In that time, at least six other restaurants have opened within a mile of it.
That gap between the town's most valuable seat and everything that has filled in around it while that seat sat empty is the real story of Huntington Beach's food and lifestyle scene this year. Not one headline opening. The stuff that happened while everyone was still waiting on the headline.
Five Years, One Empty Storefront
The project at 21 Main Street is called Huntington's on the Pier, and it has been in motion since 2021, when a previous city council passed over a staff recommendation to hand the old fishing stand to Ruby's Diner and instead invited former mayor Keith Bohr to build something new there with architect Jeff Bergsma. The plan called for a 250-square-foot kitchen, two outdoor patios totaling 630 square feet, an expanded restroom, and interior seating for roughly 50 guests with open-air windows facing the surf. It already holds an ABC 41 beer and wine license. Construction was supposed to start in March 2025 and wrap by the end of that year.
It didn't. By January 2026, Hoodline reported the city had finally cleared the permitting logjam, a process Bohr says required sign-off from three state agencies plus the OC Health Department on top of the usual city departments. But the following month, Voice of OC covered a council meeting where the celebration wasn't universal. Councilman Chad Williams pointed out that Bohr had been given 15 months of rent abatement and still hadn't broken ground, and questioned whether the contract was technically in default. Councilman Don Kennedy put it more bluntly, warning the council against setting a precedent where "deadlines are kind of here for whatever they may be."
The financial detail that got the most attention in that meeting: since 2021, the city has collected about $6,500 in total revenue from what Williams called some of the most valuable real estate it owns. The lease going forward pays the city $5,500 a month unless the restaurant clears $2 million in annual revenue, and it can run for nearly 50 years if Bohr exercises every renewal option. Whether construction has actually started as of this writing is something even the council seemed unsure of in February.
What Opened While It Waited
Meanwhile, the rest of Huntington Beach's dining scene did not wait for anyone's permit review. Rocoto Pesca Bar brought contemporary Peruvian seafood to town in July 2025. Ry's Poke opened a fast-casual spot the following month. Sticks & Stones Clubhouse landed inside Pacific City in October 2025 with golf simulators and ocean-view bar seating. This year alone added PCH Tacos, a beachside taco and margarita counter on the boardwalk that opened May 16, and Little Sister, which arrived in Pacific City on May 22 after evolving out of a speakeasy concept into its own Vietnamese and Southeast Asian dining room. Champagnes Kitchen opened a second location on Main Street. Parlor Donuts announced in January that it would open downtown this summer, and The Kickstand Soda Shop is still listed as coming to Main Street later this year with a dirty-soda menu.
None of those required a city council vote on a 50-year lease. They just opened.
That contrast matters if you have ever wondered, walking the pier on a Tuesday night, why the best spot in town is the last one to get a menu. It isn't that Huntington Beach can't support new restaurants. It clearly can, at a pace of roughly one every couple of months across Pacific City and Main Street alone. It's that the properties the city controls directly move at the speed of a city council agenda, while the ones that don't move at the speed of a lease signature and a soft opening.
Bella Terra Stops Being Just A Mall
The same shift toward smaller, faster openings is showing up at Bella Terra, the open-air center off Edinger Avenue that opened back in 1966 as Huntington Center, Orange County's first enclosed mall. This year it added Bacio di Latte, a Milan-founded gelato shop making its first Huntington Beach appearance next to Philz Coffee, which opened in late July. In October, The NOW Massage takes a 2,195-square-foot space next to Madison Reed for Swedish-inspired and deep-tissue treatments.
Neither of those is a department store anchor. Both are the kind of small-footprint, linger-a-while tenant that a decades-old mall adds when it's trying to give people a reason to stay past the parking lot, not just pass through it.
The Surf Museum Finally Has Room To Tell Its Whole Story
Not every notable opening this year involves food. The International Surfing Museum relocated to the Main Street Library and used the move to unveil WSL50, an exhibit marking 50 years of the World Surf League with wall panels, boards, trophies and event artwork drawn from the sport's history. It opened July 23, timed deliberately to lead into the 2026 US Open of Surfing, which kicked off two days later on July 25.
The pier itself got a smaller but visible upgrade this year too. Visit Huntington Beach funded a new lighting system installed in May, giving the pier the ability to change colors for holidays and community moments instead of running on the same fixed white lights it had for years.
The Next Six Weekends
If you're mapping out the rest of the season, two things are worth putting on the calendar now.
Huntington Main Street runs Market on Main Street on the third Friday of every month from April through October, 3 to 7 p.m., with food trucks, street performers and a different theme each time. The next two are dated:
- September 19: Fiesta in the Street, a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration with music, food and color
- October 17: Oktoberfest, with seasonal vendors and the market's own take on a Bavarian celebration
Both nights extend into an adults-only After Hours segment from 7 to 9 p.m. with drinks from local restaurants and bars.
The bigger date on the calendar is the Pacific Airshow, returning October 2 through 4 for its 10th anniversary year. The main viewing area sits along Pacific Coast Highway across from The Waterfront Beach Resort, with general admission tickets starting around $10 and premium hospitality packages like the Garden Bar and Beach Club starting near $170. Parking is first-come, first-served at the Pier Plaza and Main Promenade structures, and Surf City USA is bringing back its free Bike Valet at The Strand for anyone riding in instead of driving.
Ten years in, it's still the one weekend a year when the whole coastline turns into a single grandstand, and it's a good bet the pier's newest restaurant, whenever it actually opens, will have one of the best seats for it.
That's the pattern worth remembering as you watch this town keep filling in around its own slowest project: Huntington Beach doesn't wait for its best real estate to catch up. Pacific City, Main Street and Bella Terra keep adding rooms while the pier's premier address works through its permits. If you're the kind of person who notices things like that, who wants a market read from someone actually tracking which storefronts open, which stall, and what that says about a neighborhood's momentum, Loucks Real Estate keeps that kind of watch on Huntington Beach and the rest of coastal Orange County year round.
