"The street feels better than ever right now," chef Casey Lane said this month, talking about the return of Tasting Kitchen to 1633 Abbot Kinney Blvd three years after a fire closed the original. He's right, and if you live within walking distance of the boulevard you've probably already noticed. But the restaurant news is the easy story. The real gauge of how Abbot Kinney is doing this year isn't in any dining room. It's in a parking lot near Pacific Avenue at seven o'clock on a Friday morning, and on a calendar date in late September that almost didn't happen twice in a row.
The Wave Everyone's Writing About
Start with what's actually new, because there's a lot of it. Lane's Tasting Kitchen is expanding to daily service with late weekend hours this month, a calmer version of the restaurant he opened in 2009 when he was 25 and, by his own account, had no idea what Abbot Kinney was. A few doors down at 1305 Abbot Kinney, Travis Lett's izakaya RVR has become the block's hardest reservation. Lett spent years running the kitchen at Gjelina before a five-year break, and RVR's menu of chicken karaage, roasted sweet potato, hand rolls, and a Santa Barbara black cod that regulars keep reordering earned it a spot among LA Magazine's best new restaurants for 2026. Reservations run weeks out, which is worth knowing before you plan a Friday night around it.
Badmaash opened its third Los Angeles location at 1616 Abbot Kinney this spring, the Mahendro brothers' Indian restaurant group adding steak frites with Indian spices, lamb neck korma, and its first full cocktail program, led by beverage director Steve LaFountain. Later this year, Truly Pizza, the Orange County chain known for three-day fermented dough and thin, blistered crusts, takes over a 4,655-square-foot space at 1239 Abbot Kinney with room for around 130 diners inside and out, one of the larger sit-down footprints the street has seen in some time.
A block over on Washington, ¡Salud! opened at 417 Washington Blvd in late January with a ribbon-cutting hosted by the Venice Chamber of Commerce. By early March it was drawing crowds of roughly a hundred locals to a Chamber mixer there, a concept that runs coffee and Latin-inspired breakfast through the morning, churro waffles and horchata chai, then shifts into mezcal cocktails and tapas after dark.
Behind all of it, two boutique hotels are rising at opposite ends of the boulevard. Venice Place, a 78-room project designed by local architect David Hertz, is going up at the north end and is built to preserve the existing restaurant frontage rather than replace it. At the south end, near Main Street, a 43-room hotel is filling in the corner where Felix Trattoria, the restaurant Esquire once named best new restaurant in America, already anchors the block. Both were slated for completion in the 2025 to 2026 window.
That's the version of Abbot Kinney that shows up in every roundup this summer. It's accurate. It's also not the part that tells you whether the street is actually healthy, because storefronts turn over on every commercial corridor in Los Angeles. What doesn't turn over as easily is the stuff nobody has to pay to attend.
What Hasn't Moved
The Venice Farmers Market has been setting up in a small lot near Pacific Avenue, between North and South Venice Boulevards, since 1989, when it opened with a carrot-cutting ceremony that nobody bothers with anymore. Jim Murez has managed it since that first Friday, and the market still runs most Fridays of the year with the same rhythm it always has: vendors selling from around 7 a.m., service to anyone already in line cutting off at 11. No storefront on the boulevard has held its exact form for that long.
First Friday is younger but just as fixed. Next up is September 4, from 5 to 9:30 p.m., when the Abbot Kinney Merchant Association runs its monthly food truck night the same way it has for years: trucks vetted and invited by the Association, assigned specific spots, rotating in and out with an eye toward variety rather than novelty for its own sake. Cousin's Maine Lobster, Kogi BBQ, and Dogtown Dogs are regulars in that rotation. Portable restrooms go up on Palms Boulevard for the night. None of this needed a hotel to exist and none of it depends on which restaurant is having a moment.
| Coming up on Abbot Kinney | Date | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| First Friday food trucks | Fri, Sept 4, 5:00–9:30 p.m. | Merchant Association-run, rotating trucks along the boulevard |
| Venice Farmers Market | Every Friday, 7:00–11:00 a.m. | Small lot near Pacific Ave, running since 1989 |
| Abbot Kinney Festival | Sun, Sept 27 | First edition in three years, AKDA-organized |
Why the Festival Matters More Than Any Restaurant
The Abbot Kinney Festival was canceled two years running before organizers put it back on the calendar for September 27. That gap is the most useful data point in this whole story, more useful than any opening or any hotel groundbreaking, because the Festival isn't run by the city or by a developer. It's run by the Abbot Kinney Festival Association, a volunteer nonprofit that uses the event as its primary fundraiser to support youth programs, arts, and neighborhood beautification. When a chef or a hotel operator commits to Abbot Kinney, they're betting on the street. When the people who organize the Festival decide to bring it back, they're telling you the street has already recovered enough that a few hundred vendors and three stages of programming won't overwhelm it.
The Festival draws more than 100,000 people to the mile between Venice and Main, with three music stages, a youth court, a green area, and over 300 vendors selling original goods. That kind of crowd only works if the sidewalks, the parking arrangements, and the merchant relationships underneath it are already functioning. Two years of cancellation meant two years of uncertainty about whether they were. Getting it back on the calendar is the clearest sign yet that they are.
The Street You'll Actually Walk
Here's what all of this adds up to for someone who already lives here. The names on the awnings are changing faster than they have in years, and if you want a table at RVR you need to book it weeks ahead, not the night of. The two hotel projects mean ongoing construction at both ends of the boulevard as they finish out their 2025 to 2026 completion window, worth factoring in if you're timing a walk to Gjelina or the Farmers Market. But the actual weekly shape of life on Abbot Kinney hasn't shifted nearly as much as the headlines suggest. Friday morning still smells like whatever's in season at the market on Pacific. First Friday still means food trucks and a longer night out, same as it has for years. And come the last Sunday in September, the boulevard will fill with the same volunteer-run Festival that's been a Venice institution for 40 years, back this year because the people closest to the ground decided it was ready.
That's the version of Abbot Kinney worth knowing if you already live near it. The restaurants will keep turning over. The rituals are the part that tells you whether the street underneath them is actually solid.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of Venice is worth in a year when the boulevard is changing this fast, Kathy Marshall offers a private valuation and consultation for owners who want the answer read correctly the first time.
