How South Laguna Restaurants on Coast Highway Are Changing

Drive the South Laguna stretch of Coast Highway this month and you will notice two things missing. Dizz's As Is, the Belgian-Canadian dinner house that held its corner for more than forty years, is gone. Down the highway, the building everyone still calls Ti Amo, even though nothing has served food there since 2020, finally has a use again.

Neither address got a new restaurant in the way most people mean that phrase. One became a burger counter. The other is becoming a bagel window sitting on top of an industrial kitchen. If you have lived here long enough to remember ordering the raspberry duck at Dizz's on a Friday night, that distinction is worth sitting with, because it says something about what this particular block of South Laguna is turning into that a simple opening-and-closing list would miss.

The Corner That Held Dizz's for Forty Years

Marcel Pitz opened Dizz's As Is at 2794 South Pacific Coast Highway in 1977. His family ran it for more than forty years, through eclectic decor, mismatched plates, and a continental menu that regulars kept ordering the same way for decades: rack of lamb, Steak Diane, Belgian chocolate sundae. It closed permanently on March 13, 2026.

The space did not stay empty long. Jordan Small, a professional snowboarder who started making smash burgers in his backyard during the pandemic, opened his first Small's Smash Club location in San Clemente in 2025. In June 2026 he opened his second at the old Dizz's address, keeping the same bar, the same liquor license, and the same ocean view that used to come with a reservation and a jacket. What used to require a table now takes a number.

That is not a criticism of the burgers. It is a description of what the format shift actually looks like on the ground: a dinner-house menu built around a two-hour meal replaced by a counter built around a fifteen-minute one, on the exact same patio.

What the City Was Waiting For at Ti Amo

The Ti Amo building at 31727 Coast Highway has a longer and stranger history than most people driving past it realize. It started as a private residence in 1929. It became a restaurant in the early 1980s, ran under a few different names including Monique's, and did not take the name Ti Amo until 1994. It closed in 2015, went through a remodel, and reopened in 2017 under Newport Beach chef Franco Barone as Ti Amo by Il Barone. The pandemic closed it again in May 2020, and this time it stayed shut.

Here is the part that explains why the building sat empty for six years. The City of Laguna Beach bought the property outright for $2.1 million in September 2021, reportedly with an eye toward putting a fire station there. That plan did not materialize, at least not yet, and the building sat as a landmark with no tenant while residents speculated about what might eventually move in.

The answer, as of this spring, is Truly Bagels. The team behind Truly Pizza, which opened in Dana Point in 2023 and added a North Laguna location earlier this year, filed plans to turn the downstairs of the old Ti Amo into a commissary kitchen that will produce dough, sauces, and gelato for both Truly Pizza locations, with a bagel and baked goods counter opening to the street on the level above. The building's most recent public update, from this spring, points to an opening before the end of summer 2026.

So the ninety-seven-year-old house that used to serve rack of lamb under white tablecloths is becoming, functionally, a food factory with a retail window. That is a different kind of tenant than the building has ever had.

The Pattern, If You Look at Both Together

Two of South Laguna's longest-running, full-service, reservation-worthy restaurants closed within about a year of each other. Neither was replaced by anything resembling what it had been. One became counter service. The other became a production kitchen that also happens to sell bagels.

That distinction matters if you are trying to understand what is actually happening to this stretch of the highway, because it is a different story than the one playing out a mile and a half north. Noble Ace, a full-service dinner concept from a chef with a Mastro's Ocean Club pedigree, is targeting a summer 2026 opening in the historic Heisler Building at 400 South Coast Highway, the corner most out-of-town guests photograph first when they think of downtown Laguna. That is a bet on evening destination dining in the village core.

South Laguna, a mile and a half south, is not getting that bet. It is getting daytime formats and back-of-house infrastructure. A neighborhood that used to have at least one dinner reservation worth planning around now has a smash burger counter and a bagel window that will not have table service at all.

A few names worth keeping straight if you are tracking the block:

• Dizz's As Is, 2794 S. Pacific Coast Highway, closed March 13, 2026 after more than 40 years under the Pitz family
• Small's Smash Club, same address, opened June 2026, second location after San Clemente
• Ti Amo, 31727 Coast Highway, vacant since May 2020, purchased by the city in 2021
• Truly Bagels, same building, commissary kitchen and bagel counter expected to open before the end of summer 2026

The Exception Worth Knowing About

Not everything on this stretch is trading white tablecloths for counter service. A few blocks off the highway, an omakase raw bar called Empire Oyster has moved into a former Thai restaurant space half a block from AHBA, the South Laguna spot that arrived in 2019, just months before the pandemic, and built its following through a takeout program during COVID before adding a hidden next-door speakeasy called Helen's. AHBA is now opening a third, seasonal location at the Sawdust Festival grounds this year, after a 2024 expansion into Costa Mesa's The Camp.

That detail is worth sitting with too. AHBA did not stay in South Laguna once it worked. It grew outward. Whatever is happening on this stretch right now looks less like a neighborhood building a permanent dining identity for itself and more like a place where formats get proven before they travel somewhere else, whether that somewhere else is Costa Mesa, a festival ground in Laguna Canyon, or a second Truly Pizza kitchen up the road.

The corner that used to require a reservation now takes a number. The building that used to serve dinner under white tablecloths is becoming a kitchen you will never sit inside.

What It Means If You Live Here

If you are the kind of South Laguna resident who used to walk to Dizz's for a birthday dinner, that specific option is gone, and nothing that has moved in since replaces it. The nearest comparable evening out now means driving into the village or over to Dana Point. What you gain instead is faster, cheaper, and more casual: a burger any night of the week, a bagel counter within walking distance once Truly opens, and a raw bar option that did not exist a year ago.

That is not a downgrade so much as a different kind of neighborhood. South Laguna is starting to function less like a place with its own destination dinner scene and more like a residential stretch with daytime conveniences, sitting a short drive from where the destination dining actually lives now.

If you have been wondering why the old Ti Amo building sat empty for six years, or what that smash burger place at the old Dizz's address actually is, that is the answer. Coast Highway keeps its addresses. What happens inside them is worth paying attention to.

If you are curious about how shifts like this one along Coast Highway tend to show up in what a South Laguna property is actually worth, or in how quickly the right home moves, that is exactly the kind of block-by-block context Kira Nimmer-Crabel tracks for this stretch of coastline. Schedule a consultation whenever you are ready to talk specifics about your own address.