If you have lived in Costa Mesa for more than a couple of years, you already know the rhythm. A restaurant opens on 17th Street, another one closes near Harbor, a brewery quietly changes its taproom hours. The map stays roughly the same. What is happening in 2026 is different, and it is worth pausing on before the summer gets away from you.
The city's new openings this year are not scattered evenly. They are stacking, deliberately, at three specific nodes: the SoBECA district along South Bristol, The Met complex on Anton Boulevard, and the civic center area around Lions Park. If you have been treating 17th Street as the default answer to "where should we go tonight," the gravity is shifting west and south, and the reason is mostly that a few property owners and the city are spending real money in the same 12 months.
The Bristol Corridor Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
The single biggest story of the year is at The LAB Anti-Mall. More than 20 new small businesses are set to join the LAB's portfolio in 2026, bringing more than 20 new businesses across 50,000 square feet, the LAB's biggest growth to date. For context, that is essentially a second LAB folded into the existing one, in a single calendar year.
The district around it, the South on Bristol Entertainment, Culture and Arts District known as SoBECA, is home to The LAB Anti-Mall, The CAMP, CAMPOUT, The SOLO Building and PLANT, all within a short walk. If you have not been down there since before the pandemic, the practical implication is that the mix of tenants you remember is about to look meaningfully different by the end of summer. It is worth a slow afternoon rather than a quick errand.
A few Bristol-adjacent openings you can already visit:
- Earlybird Breakfast Burritos, 2930 Bristol Street. Earlybird Breakfast Burritos officially held its Costa Mesa grand opening on January 17, 2026, at 2930 Bristol Street, with regular hours beginning the next day.
- Highball and Naisho Omakase. Highball, a Japanese-style cocktail bar, and Naisho Omakase were set to debut in Costa Mesa on March 23, 2026. If you have been driving to Newport for omakase, that trip is now optional.
- Westwood Coast, if you have not been. This country-inspired restaurant offers a mix of high-end dining with dishes like Short Rib Agnolotti and premium char-broiled steaks, paired with entertainment including line dancing, live music, and a fun mechanical bull. They even have a bourbon lover's dream bar with over 100 bottles to choose from. Whether that reads as your scene or not, it is the kind of concept that generally lands in Nashville, not Costa Mesa.
- Cowboys & Poodles, still one of the more interesting rooms in the district. Cowboys & Poodles is hidden behind The CAMP. Look for the discreet entrance for a true speakeasy experience.
The older anchors are still doing what they do. Green Cheek Beer Co. is Costa Mesa's newest production brewery. It claims 10,000 square feet of tasting room, brewing, aging and bottling space. The tasting room also has a full kitchen, making it a one-stop shop for a beer and bites. Salty Bear Brewing is a laid-back, California-inspired microbrewery offering a rotating lineup of creative craft beers. Its cozy indoor-outdoor patio is dog- and family-friendly, often hosting live music and community events.
The Met Becomes a Second Dining Anchor
The second node is easier to miss because most residents think of The Met as offices and residences rather than a dining destination. That is changing.
Pacific Pearl Cafe, the fresh, flavor-driven cafe in San Juan Capistrano from Orange County chef Michael Campbell, opened its second Southern California location at The Met in Costa Mesa on Monday, January 26, 2026. The address is 575 Anton Boulevard, and if the San Juan Capistrano original is any indication, breakfast and lunch are the play. Chef Campbell also recently opened White Rooster in Dana Point, offering California coastal cuisine shaped by the flavors, surf culture and south of the border roadside stops that define sun-soaked, salt-kissed journeys from Santa Barbara to Ensenada.
The reason this matters more than a single opening: Anton Boulevard now gives you a real weekday-lunch option that is neither South Coast Plaza nor a drive to Newport. If your work-from-home routine has been pulling you toward the same three places, the useful radius just expanded.
A Reference List You Can Actually Use
Here is the compact version of the openings, with the parts that matter for planning a weekend:
| Spot | Where | When | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earlybird Breakfast Burritos | 2930 Bristol St. | Opened Jan 17, 2026 | Quick breakfast |
| Pacific Pearl Cafe | The Met, 575 Anton Blvd. | Opened Jan 26, 2026 | Coastal breakfast and lunch |
| Highball | Costa Mesa | Opened Mar 23, 2026 | Japanese-style cocktail bar |
| Naisho Omakase | Costa Mesa | Opened Mar 23, 2026 | Omakase |
| Diner Noche | 120 Virginia Place | Recently opened | Late-night diner inside Hola Adios |
| Westwood Coast | Costa Mesa | Now open | Country-inspired restaurant, live music |
| Café Mesa (by Neat Coffee) | Lions Park | Coming | 1,100 sq ft city-owned café |
A note on Diner Noche, because it is the kind of place that gets missed if you only read the front-page write-ups. Hola Adios serves craft coffee by day and, as of recently, transforms into a cozy diner by night. Wednesday through Saturday after 5 p.m., you'll find indulgent classics such as smash burgers and fried chicken sandos, along with sides like fried pickles and cheese fries. New Jersey-style disco fries come with toppings from chorizo to carnitas. Owner Ryan Jimenez notes that everything at Diner Noche is cooked in beef tallow, including the crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside french fries.
The Civic Center Gets a Coffee Shop, on Purpose
The third node is quieter and more interesting. The city is building a café into Lions Park, and the tenant is not a chain.
Café Mesa at Lions Park is one of the more exciting projects coming to Costa Mesa. According to the Daily Pilot, local business Neat Coffee was awarded the contract to operate the new 1,100-square-foot café in the city-owned park. It is a project designed to create more community gathering space around the library and civic center area.
Whether or not you personally drink coffee is beside the point. A functional café at the library changes how people use that block. You get parents doing storytime with somewhere to sit afterward, a walkable lunch spot for the civic-center workers, and a legitimate reason to end a weekday errand at Lions Park instead of leaving the moment the library visit is done. It is the kind of small infrastructure choice that quietly raises the value of that whole corridor for people who live nearby.
Parks Are Being Rebuilt in Parallel
Two park projects are running through the same window as the openings, which is worth knowing if you are planning a summer routine.
The City of Costa Mesa says Ketchum-Libolt Park improvements began the week of January 5, 2026, with completion expected in late summer 2026. If Ketchum-Libolt is your dog-walk park, budget an alternate through the summer.
TeWinkle Park is also seeing a major lake repair and rehabilitation project, with improvements including a new liner, water quality upgrades, landscaping enhancements, and shoreline rebuilding. The city lists the project end date as summer 2026. The lake at TeWinkle has needed this work for a long time, and the timing means the finish will roughly overlap with the LAB expansion opening its full slate of new tenants. By September, both the largest retail node and the largest park in that part of the city should be presenting a meaningfully different version of themselves.
One Long-Horizon Note on the Arts
For anyone who has held Segerstrom season tickets over the years, there is a leadership change worth marking on the calendar. Costa Mesa is welcoming Alexander Shelley as the new Artistic and Music Director of Pacific Symphony. With his international background and interest in connecting communities through music, Shelley steps into the role in the 2026-27 season. That is a fall-and-beyond story, but the programming choices for next season are being made now.
How to Route a Weekend Around This
If you have out-of-town guests coming in July or August and you want to show them something that is not the standard 17th Street loop, one credible sequence: breakfast at Pacific Pearl Cafe at The Met, midday walk through The LAB and The CAMP with a stop at Artime Barro or CANVASWORKER, a pour at Green Cheek or Salty Bear, dinner at Diner Noche or Westwood Coast, and a nightcap at Cowboys & Poodles or Highball. You will not touch 17th Street once. That is the shift.
None of this changes what you already like about Eastside, and 17th Street is still full of Instagram-worthy bites and longtime local favorites like Hi-Time Wine Cellars and Sidecar Doughnuts. It does mean that the honest answer to "what is new in Costa Mesa right now" points south and west of where it usually has.
If you have been thinking about what your own block looks like against this backdrop, or you own a home nearby and want a considered read on how these district-level shifts affect value, the Teicheira Team is available for a home valuation or auction consultation. We work these corridors closely and would rather have the conversation over coffee at one of the new places than over a form.
