What's New On Montana Avenue This Summer, Block By Block

Walk Montana from 7th to 17th on a Saturday morning and the street looks the same as it did a year ago: jacaranda shade, strollers, a coffee line spilling onto the sidewalk. Look at the storefronts and it isn't the same street at all. A burger window sits where the pour-over bar used to be. An eyewear shop replaced a real estate office. A gelato counter is measuring for build-out next to a longtime Italian market. Montana Avenue is doing what it does every few years, which is quietly rewrite itself while pretending nothing has changed.

The interesting story on the Avenue right now isn't any single opening. It's the pattern. Fast-casual and walk-up concepts are moving into addresses that used to belong to sit-down cafes and boutique retail, and they are doing it inside the Avenue's existing 10-block, low-rise scale rather than pushing it toward something bigger. If you live here, the practical effect is that your weekday lunch options are broadening while the Saturday-stroll character stays intact. Here is what has changed, address by address, and what it says about where the street is headed.

The tenant-swap map

The clearest way to read the Avenue is to look at who moved out and who moved in. A few of this year's most-discussed openings are best understood as second acts inside familiar footprints.

A couple of these swaps are worth pausing on. The Win-Dow, an LA-born smash-burger chain, took over 930 Montana Ave. as a walk-up window with outdoor seating only, in a space that previously housed Go Get Em Tiger. That is a meaningful format change for the block. The address used to draw a laptop-and-cortado crowd that sat for an hour. It now draws a five-minute line for a double cheeseburger. The official grand opening was Tuesday, June 9, 2026, and regular hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Weekend hours matter here because the Montana location serves dipped cones and milkshakes and offers weekend breakfast, including breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwiches, and cheeseburgers with an egg on top. Translation for anyone who lives north of Wilshire: a legitimate 9 a.m. breakfast option now exists on the Avenue that doesn't require a table.

The walk-up model is intentionally affordable and geared toward grab-and-go traffic, which is a contrast to Montana Avenue's slower, boutique-oriented pace. That contrast is exactly the point. The Avenue has been sit-down-and-linger for a long time, and this is the first new tenant in a while that is betting on the opposite behavior.

What's coming to the north end

Two blocks north of The Win-Dow, the mix keeps shifting. A second Santa Monica location of the Italian gelato brand Bacio di Latte is coming to 1510 Montana Ave., next to Italian market Sogno Toscano. Pairing an Italian gelato counter with an existing Italian pantry store is the kind of clustering that makes a block work harder for residents. You can pick up a bottle of olive oil and hand a kid a cone on the same trip.

Warby Parker opened at 1311B Montana Ave. on Feb. 25, 2026, featuring a local artist collaboration and new collections. The arrival is a small signal on its own and a larger one in aggregate. Montana has long been a mix of independent boutiques and a handful of national names, and Warby Parker's model, which is neither fully independent nor a traditional chain, sits comfortably in that middle.

Not every change is a new opening. Longtime Montana watchers will recognize the pattern of the Avenue eating its own tail: a menswear shop replaces a home goods store, a plant-and-gift space fills in for a shuttered menswear shop, an eyewear shop replaces a former real estate office. If you have lived here for a while, you have learned to shop by memory rather than by signage, and this year is no exception.

Beyond Montana, a wider ring of openings

The Avenue is one corridor in a busier neighborhood. Several openings a short walk or drive from Montana are worth putting on the map this summer.

• PonTu, 3117 Ocean Park Blvd. A new Peruvian spot from Richie Lopez, opening in the previous home of the longstanding OP Cafe. The menu focuses on seasonal Peruvian cuisine with California coastal elements, including ceviches and tiraditos.
• Bower Santa Monica, Colorado Center. A surf-inspired, all-day restaurant and community hub of roughly 6,500 square feet is set to open this summer at the 15-acre Colorado Center office campus. The name comes from Fairy Bower, a surf break in the Cabbage Tree Bay of Manly Beach in Australia. Placing an all-day cafe inside an office campus is a bet that Santa Monica's midday foot traffic is finally coming back.
• La Diperie, 2441 Main St. The closure of Holey Grail Donuts has made way for La Diperie, a chain founded in Montreal in 2014 that specializes in dipped ice cream, cakes, donuts, and cookies with more than 20 toppings; the Santa Monica outpost marks the brand's first West Coast location.
• Sonia's Café and DOL Coffee House. Sonia's Café is working to open at 1260 15th St. at the corner of Arizona Avenue, while the vacant corner at 1231 Wilshire Blvd. will soon host Vietnamese coffee specialists DOL Coffee House.
• Raising Cane's, Third Street Promenade. Santa Monica welcomed two new restaurant openings in as many days in June 2026, with Raising Cane's cutting the ribbon on the Third Street Promenade and The Win-Dow debuting at 930 Montana Ave., adding more than 100 jobs. The Santa Monica outpost features disco ball surfboards on the ceiling crafted by a local artisan and a mural behind the counter that pays homage to the chain's very first location.
• Gott's Roadside. Gott's will open two LA locations in 2026, the first at the Original Farmers Market, then one in Downtown Santa Monica later this summer.
• Hyatt Centric Delfina. The hotel completed a $16 million renovation that updated all 315 guestrooms with a coastal color palette and introduced more than 15,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including the 4,526-square-foot Delfina Ballroom, Santa Monica's only rooftop ballroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The property also revamped Coastal Harvest Bar & Kitchen, an all-day restaurant serving California-inspired cuisine.

Two Westside dining rooms worth adding to a summer list even though they aren't brand new: Holy Basil Santa Monica, a bright, busy, boisterous Thai spot with communal tables and an open kitchen where flames from the wok fly high every few minutes, and Jade Rabbit, a fast-casual Chinese American restaurant from Bryant Ng and Kim Luu-Ng, the couple behind the now-closed Cassia, with combos starting at $13 and upgrades for premium proteins like garlic chili shrimp, a lomo saltado-inspired beef and broccoli, and Sichuan-flavored spicy minced lamb.

What still anchors the Avenue

Openings and closings are the noise. The signal is what stays. Montana Avenue sits at the city's northern edge, home to more than 150 restaurants and retailers; it is a short walk from Downtown Santa Monica but feels removed from the Promenade and Pier, drawing a steady stream of shoppers, A-list celebrities, out-of-towners, and parents with strollers who don't seem in a hurry to leave the juice bars, latte vendors, and outdoor cafes.

The event calendar does a lot of the anchoring. Montana Avenue hosts multiple annual events that attract thousands of Westsiders, including the Art Walk, the Holiday Market, the Wellness Walk, and Doggy Days. If you have lived on Montana for even one full year, you know these dates function as informal neighborhood holidays. They are also the reason the street can absorb a walk-up burger window without losing its character. The community events set the tone, and the tenants adapt to it.

One older institution deserves its own line. The Aero Theatre, opened in 1940 and restored by the nonprofit American Cinematheque, presents classic and contemporary independent films on a 188-foot-high, 38-foot-wide screen, often as themed double features with Q&As. A double feature at the Aero, dinner beforehand at any of the Avenue's sit-down rooms, and a walk home in the marine layer is still the most Santa Monica way to spend a Saturday.

A resident's short list for the summer

If you want to make one intentional pass through the neighborhood in the next few weeks, in rough geographic order:

1. Breakfast burrito at The Win-Dow, 930 Montana Ave., on a Saturday before 10 a.m. when the line is manageable.
2. Cone-and-pantry combo at Bacio di Latte and Sogno Toscano, 1510 Montana Ave., once the gelato counter opens.
3. Frames appointment at Warby Parker, 1311B Montana Ave., mid-week when the store is quiet.
4. Ceviche and a glass of something cold at PonTu, 3117 Ocean Park Blvd.
5. Weekday lunch at Bower inside Colorado Center once it opens, to see whether the campus concept actually pulls neighbors and not just employees.
6. A dipped cone at La Diperie, 2441 Main St., on the walk home from the beach.
7. A double feature at the Aero, because the Avenue only works if you keep showing up for what has always been there.

The through-line for all of this is a street that keeps expanding what it can be without expanding what it looks like. That balance is rarer than it sounds, and it is the thing residents tend to defend when developers or landlords test its limits.

If your address is already on one of these blocks, or if you have been circling the north-of-Montana map for a while and thinking about making a move within the neighborhood, Team Stacy White knows this stretch of Santa Monica block by block. Let's find your Westside home.