Three Corners of Long Beach That Quietly Reset Your Summer

If you live in Long Beach, the summer news reads like a scattered list: an old restaurant back, a new pizzeria in a former diner, a Vietnamese landmark leaving Fountain Valley, a food week that keeps growing. Read separately, each is a headline. Read together, they cluster in three specific corners of the city, and that clustering is what changes a resident's default routes.

The thesis is small but useful. This summer is not really about menus. It is about three neighborhoods inside Long Beach quietly regaining a center of gravity: the downtown waterfront, the 2nd & PCH block in Belmont Shore, and the Cherry Avenue corridor running north through East Long Beach. Once you see the map, the calendar makes sense.

The waterfront is back on the weeknight list

For six years the stretch between the Queen Mary and the Maya Hotel has been a place you drove past. The Reef shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, and while the space opened up again for private events when allowed, the dining room has remained closed for the past six years. That is a long time for a piece of shoreline this visible to sit dark.

The Reef, 880 Harbor Scenic Drive, is open Thursday through Sunday from 11:30 a.m. The reopening is tied to a specific piece of infrastructure next door. Owner John Tallichet, David's son who took over the business after David's death in 2007, said they were waiting for the right time. The opening of Long Beach's new waterfront amphitheater, practically next door, was the perfect opportunity.

That pairing matters more than either building alone. An amphitheater without a nearby full-service dining room is a parking exercise. A restaurant on Harbor Scenic Drive without a reliable evening draw is a Sunday brunch spot. Together they turn the south edge of downtown into a working weeknight destination for the first time since 2020, which is roughly when a lot of current Long Beach residents moved in and stopped thinking of that shoreline as an option.

2nd & PCH stops being a shopping errand

The retail complex at Second and Pacific Coast Highway has spent most of its life as a place you go for a specific store. That is shifting. Brodard Restaurant is set for a 2026 opening at 6480 E. Pacific Coast Hwy. in the 2ND & PCH shopping center. The address is worth memorizing because it explains the strategy: Brodard Long Beach will be located at 6480 E. Pacific Coast Hwy. #100 in the former Tocaya space.

Brodard is not a random arrival. Brodard stands as one of Little Saigon's most enduring culinary landmarks. And it's a restaurant whose influence extends far beyond its Fountain Valley address. Opened in 1996 by Diane Dang and her daughters, Brodard helped define what Vietnamese dining could look like. A restaurant that has spent thirty years being the reason people from Long Beach drive south on the 405 is now moving into the block that already anchors the east end of the city.

A few doors down, Bacari has opened its Long Beach outpost in the same complex. Now with ten locations, Bacari has brought its usual formula to Long Beach. This mini-chain's LBC outpost has a vaguely Mediterranean patio with a retractable roof, a small plates menu with everything from lamb kebab to mac and cheese, and a bottomless mimosa brunch on weekends. Combined with Nick's a few blocks west, the block has quietly become a food destination in its own right.

The practical effect for a resident: the mental model of "we can pick up something at 2nd & PCH on the way home" replaces the older model of "we should plan a trip to Little Saigon this weekend."

Cherry Avenue picks up two weeknight anchors

The Cherry Avenue corridor is the third corner, and the one that changes the most for people who live outside the tourist zones. Two openings have landed within a few miles of each other.

The first is on Wardlow. Mooney's Pizza Tavern, following soft previews, will open on Friday, Feb. 27 at 4PM. Hal Mooney's pizza journey has been a wild one: For those captivated by his refurbishing of an old Huff's at 8105 E. Wardlow Rd. on Instagram, his work is finally reaching its full fruition. Stylized in a 1960s manner, complete with cushioned seating and pendant lights, the space will focus on midwest tavern-style pizza and a few Detroit-style pies, all using their own house starter culture, dubbed "Ruzu," for its dough. Add some beer and wine and you have yourselves a fine East Long Beach destination.

The second is south of there, in a very specific building. Storm Burger Long Beach is coming to Cherry and South, drive-thru lovers. The much-hyped, Inglewood-born, Black-owned chain, which opened its first location in an abandoned Church's drive-thru on La Brea, is looking to repeat its strategy. It will be opening its first Long Beach location inside a former Church's drive-thru. The space at 5801 Cherry Ave. saw Church's shutter in December of 2024, the very month Storm Burger opened its doors in Inglewood. The Storm Burger truck is operating outside the location while construction continues.

Two openings on the same north-south line do more for a neighborhood than five scattered ones, because they establish a corridor rather than a stop. This is the part of the city that has needed better weeknight options the longest.

The eleven-day window that connects everything

The three corners come together in one window on the calendar. Long Beach Food Scene Week 2026 will kick off Friday, July 31, through Sunday, Aug. 10. And, for the first time ever, over 100 spaces have confirmed their participation for the fourth iteration of the annual celebration.

What makes this year worth planning around is not the count but who is joining for the first time. Homareya. Colossus. Nick's. Stormburger. Hey Brother Baker. Viaje. Massimo's. Proudly Serving. Brother's Keeper. Steelhead Coffee. Anna's Pizza Joint. OBRA Hand Bakery. Second Owl. Appu's Cafe. Cyclops Coffee. Buen Provecho. Let's Yolk About It. Lima Cebechería Peruana. Waldo's Pizza. Seaside Creamery. Royal Indian Curry House. SALA. Bubu's Restaurant. The Modern. We even have multiple legacy restaurants participating for the first time, including Joe Jost's and Naples Rib Company.

Joe Jost's is the tell. A place that has been pouring beer since 1924 does not typically sign up for a restaurant week. When it does, the event stops being for tourists and starts being an audit tool for people who already know the city.

The framing is not about deals. This isn't about discounts or deals, though some may be offered at places, but chefs and restaurateurs flexing their culinary muscles. During Long Beach Food Scene Week, diners will have the opportunity to experience our city's top restaurants in ways they aren't able to on the regular. For a resident, the eleven days are a scheduled excuse to visit the three corners in one stretch: waterfront one night, 2nd & PCH the next, Cherry Avenue the weekend after.

What actually changes for someone who already lives here

The instinctive read of any restaurant list is to pick the one that sounds best and try it. That misses the point of what is happening this summer. The corners are the story. A resident who visits Mooney's once is a customer. A resident who realizes the Cherry corridor now supports two weeknight stops is someone whose default takeout radius has expanded by a mile.

The same applies at the waterfront. The Reef by itself is a reopening. The Reef plus the amphitheater is a schedule change. And 2nd & PCH is worth watching over the next twelve months, because a Brodard opening in a former Tocaya space at #100 tends to pull a specific kind of tenant into the neighboring vacancies.

For anyone thinking about the property side of the same map, corner-forming activity like this tends to show up in leasing patterns before it shows up in sale prices. That is the part of the summer worth watching quietly.

If you own a home in Long Beach and are weighing whether to keep it as a rental, refresh it for a new tenant, or take it to market as these blocks reset, Jambi Property Management offers appraisal-informed guidance and boutique, full-service leasing across the South Bay and Westside. Request a free rental analysis to see what your property looks like against the current market.