Pier Avenue's Three New Restaurants Aren't Actually Three New Restaurants

"We hope Tiki Kai can be a place where locals walk in to find friends waiting to greet them," co-owner Brian Eldridge said when the tiki bar opened at Pier Plaza. That part is true and easy to verify. Walk past 73 Pier Ave any evening after 4 p.m. and the room is there, doors open, a 14-foot hand-carved tiki mask marking the entrance.

The rest of what's circulating about Pier Avenue's restaurant lineup this month is less reliable. If you've seen a post naming three simultaneous new arrivals on this block, one of the three details in it is out of date and one is ahead of itself. For a street that residents actually walk, not just read about, the difference matters more than it sounds like it should.

The Corner Everyone Has Wrong

The claim that's been repeated across a few local write-ups this year is that Sushi | Bar, the reservation-only omakase concept, is taking over the former Slay Hermosa space. It isn't. Sushi | Bar is currently running as an evening residency inside Martha's, the longtime breakfast and brunch spot at 25 22nd Street on the corner of Hermosa Avenue. The Slay Hermosa location, the one with the rooftop dining and the farm-to-beach menu, sits separately, and nothing has confirmed Sushi | Bar taking that address.

What's actually happening at Martha's is a tightly run second life for the same building. During the day it's still the Martha's regulars have known since 1984, the one with the breakfast burrito and the champagne brunch. From Wednesday through Sunday evening, the dining room converts into a 12-seat counter experience: a rotating omakase menu built around seasonal seafood, priced at $185 per person with a 22 percent service charge built into the check. Reservations go through Sushi | Bar's own booking page, not Martha's.

That's a meaningfully different plan than "a new restaurant opened where Slay used to be." If you're trying to book a Friday night based on a blog post that has the address wrong, you'll end up standing outside a closed storefront a block from where the food actually is.

Here's the shorthand version of what's been reported versus what's confirmed:

The Storefront Still Waiting on Its Sign

Kasamar is the second correction worth making. Co-founder Stephanie De Los Santos told a restaurant trade outlet earlier this year that the seaside tavern concept, moving into the old Playa Hermosa Fish & Oyster Co. spot on Pier Avenue, was targeting an August 2026 debut. Check the restaurant's own website now and it still reads "coming soon," with a hiring notice posted alongside it. Whatever the original target was, the doors haven't opened as of this month.

That's not unusual for a build-out on a block with this much foot traffic and this little available square footage. It does mean anyone planning a night out around Kasamar right now is planning around a building, not a restaurant. Playa Hermosa's straightforward oyster house format is gone from that address. What replaces it is still behind a papered window.

The One That's Actually Finished

Of the three names getting passed around, Tiki Kai is the one you can walk into tonight. It comes from the hospitality group behind The Hula Hula Room, Eat at Joe's, Paddy O'Brien's Irish Pub, and The Bounty Room, a roster familiar to anyone who has spent a weekend on this stretch of the South Bay. The room itself was designed by Davis Ink, built around that carved tiki mask entrance from Asmar Studios, with a partially covered lounge and a "lava island" feature inside.

Hours run daily starting at 4 p.m., closing at 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 10 p.m. on Sunday, with lunch and brunch service still to come. It's the most straightforward addition of the three because it's the only one where what's been reported and what's on the ground match.

The Real News Wasn't a New Opening at All

Here's what the rumor mill around Pier Avenue's three storefronts has been quietly burying: the most significant restaurant news on this block this year belongs to a place that's been open since November 2024. Vin Folk, the 22-table spot run by chefs Kevin De Los Santos and Katya Shastova, earned a Bib Gourmand designation in the 2026 Michelin Guide USA, the guide's category for strong cooking at a fair price.

That's a different kind of validation than a storefront opening. A Bib Gourmand doesn't reward a splashy debut. It rewards a kitchen that's been consistent long enough for an inspector to come back more than once. Vin Folk's menu, built around dishes like a mussels tart with flaky pastry and a chili crab risotto, has had almost two years to find its footing before this recognition arrived. Compare that to a still-unopened Kasamar or a residency quietly running inside an existing restaurant, and the pattern on Pier Avenue looks less like a wave of new arrivals and more like a street where the businesses that stick around get noticed eventually, while the announced ones take longer than expected to materialize.

The same pattern holds a block over on Hermosa Avenue. James Beard semifinalist chef David LeFevre and chef Alice Mai opened AttaGirl at 1238 Hermosa Ave after building their reputation with a first restaurant in Manhattan Beach nearly fifteen years earlier. Next door at 1220, RYLA has built its own following under chefs Ray Hayashi and Cynthia Hetlinger. Baran's 2239, tucked into a nearby center under executive chef Tyler Gugliotta, has done the same with a wine list running past 100 bottles. None of these required a rumor to establish themselves. They just kept showing up.

What Else Actually Changed This Month

Restaurants aren't the only reason your commute down Pier Avenue or your walk to the beach has looked different lately. A few things worth knowing if you live here:

• The Wedbush-presented Hermosa Beach Open, the third annual professional beach volleyball tournament, ran its qualifiers and main draw September 10 through 13 on the sand near the pier. If you noticed extra foot traffic and out-of-state plates that week, that's why.
• The Hermosa Beach Concert Series wraps its 2026 run this Sunday, September 20, with the final free show starting at 3 p.m. south of the pier. Free parking is easiest if you arrive early, since the closest streets tend to fill by early afternoon on show days.
• A playground equipment replacement project is underway at three city parks, Valley Park, Seaview Parkette, and South Park, running from August 24 through September 25. Expect fencing and reduced access if any of these are on your regular route.
• A sewer rehabilitation project between Hermosa Avenue and Manhattan Avenue, run by the LA County Sanitation District, is scheduled from August 10 through October 2, with daytime work hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• The Hermosa Beach City School District held a community meeting on September 14 to share draft renderings for the Hermosa Valley Modernization project, the kind of long-range campus planning that's worth tracking if you have kids in the district or are weighing how school facilities factor into a home search here.

None of these are dramatic on their own. Together they explain why this particular September on this particular block feels busier and more under-construction than a typical late summer, without any of it adding up to the kind of wholesale transformation a scanning headline might suggest.

The Practical Read

If you're deciding where to spend a Friday night this month, reserve ahead at Vin Folk or book the counter at Sushi | Bar inside Martha's. Walk into Tiki Kai whenever you want. And give Kasamar another month or two before you build a plan around it. The street isn't moving as fast as the rumors suggest, but the parts of it that are real, a Michelin nod for a two-year-old kitchen and a tiki bar with its doors actually open, say more about where Hermosa's dining scene is headed than any premature announcement does.

If you own property near this stretch of Pier Avenue and you're weighing what any of this means for a rental, Jambi Property Management has been tracking the South Bay rental market from Manhattan Beach since 2012. Request a free rental analysis to see what a well-managed property in this neighborhood is actually worth right now.