For years the honest answer to "what do you actually do in Riviera Village on a summer Saturday?" has been a shrug and a list of three restaurants. That answer changed this spring, and most residents haven't caught up to how much it changed.
The shift isn't one thing. It's three separate decisions stacking on top of each other inside a six-block grid, and the quietest of them is doing the heaviest lifting.
The parklet decision nobody's talking about
Start with the least glamorous piece, because it's the one that makes the rest work. In May, the Redondo Beach City Council decided this month to extend the outdoor dining deck program in the Riviera Village for the next five years. Hermosa and Manhattan Beach have largely rolled their pandemic-era parklets back. Redondo did the opposite and locked them in through 2031.
That's the reason The Riviera doesn't feel like a strip of restaurants anymore. It feels like a room. Sidewalks are narrower, curb lines are softer, and the whole tree-lined stretch of Catalina reads as pedestrian-first instead of parking-first. New operators have noticed. Hilary Condren, co-owner of Martha's, told What Now LA that the parklet extension was part of what drew him across the county line, calling the downtown "a vibrant village. Their downtown, their heartbeat is on fire."
Martha's fills the space Gabi James left
The most visible change on the ground: longstanding Hermosa Beach restaurant Martha's is expanding this summer. It will open at 1810 S. Catalina Ave. in the Riviera Village in Redondo Beach. The space was last home to Spanish-French restaurant Gabi James, which closed its doors in late April after an eight-year run.
If you're a South Redondo resident, the geography here matters more than the menu. Nestled between Fringe and Redondo Beach Brew, Martha's Redondo Beach will take over a 5,000-square-foot building, with square footage split across two floors. That's a full corner of the Village activated by an operator with forty years of neighborhood memory attached to the name. Condren and his team became the owners of Martha's, which opened in Hermosa Beach in 1984, about a decade ago. The upstairs is being built out for private events, which fills a real gap between Riviera House's dining room and the beach itself.
Read it against the room around it. Salt & Pearl and Il Posto anchor the north end. The Craftsman and Rebel Republic hold the middle. Turquoise, Vida, The Hook & Plow, and BeachLife Grotto spread out toward the beach. HiFi and Cafe Bonaparte cover the morning shift. Martha's slots into the last real hole on the map.
BeachLife Grotto, one summer in
BeachLife Grotto is worth recalibrating on now that it's had a full year to settle. A former Riviera Village liquor store has been transformed into BeachLife Grotto restaurant, to open July 24, the latest project from BeachLife Festival co-founder Allen Sanford and partners. Architect Miles Pritzkat, whose office is also in Riviera Village, designed the two story-white wood building, with open beams on the top-floor deck. The liquor store's walls were kept and its slanted roof torn out. Sanford worked with Pritzkat to emulate two bygone favorites, the Admiral Risty in Palos Verdes and Millie Riera's Seafood Grotto that used to sit at Avenue I and the Esplanade.
The kitchen is run by chef Jacob Ramos, BeachLife Festival culinary director, with suppliers byway of restaurant partner Jeff Jones of Quality Seafood. There's a small retail piece inside too, selling snacks, retro bluetooth speakers, and pickleball paddles. Sanford calls it a "BeachLife version of a general store," which is a more honest description than most restaurant marketing.
Thursday and Saturday, six p.m., west end of the pier
Then there's the free concert calendar, which quietly runs eighteen nights this summer and is the piece that gets residents out of the Village and onto the water without a car.
The 2026 Summer Concerts on the Pier series returns to Fisherman's Wharf at Redondo Beach Pier, running every Thursday and Saturday from July 2 through August 29. Presented by the Redondo Pier Association, concerts start at 6 p.m. and wrap up at 8 p.m. — no tickets, no cover charge. Thursdays lean tribute, Saturdays lean local.
A partial July and August lineup, per the Redondo Pier Association calendar:
- Thu, July 16 — Say It Ain't Weezer
- Sat, July 18 — Sligo Rags (Irish)
- Thu, July 23 — Marvin Gaye Soul Serenade
- Thu, July 30 — Grateful to the Core
- Thu, Aug 6 — Hot Lava (B-52s tribute)
- Sat, Aug 8 — Alarmaz (Reggae)
- Thu, Aug 20 — Supersonic-LA (Oasis tribute)
The full lineup is on redondopier.com. If you've got kids or dogs, the practical detail worth knowing is that there's no formal seating, so bring a blanket or a low beach chair if you want to settle in.
A Saturday you can actually walk
Here's what stacks up now that didn't a year ago. Start morning at Cafe Bonaparte or HiFi on Catalina. Both do real breakfast, both keep outdoor seats under the parklet cover, and both are inside the same three-block box. Walk south on Catalina and you're at the Esplanade in eight minutes. That gets you a Strand loop, either toward Torrance Beach or north toward the Pier, without a car in the equation.
Come back into the Village for lunch. Vida for tacos, Rebel Republic for something louder, The Craftsman if you want a beer and a burger without a scene. Fringe and the smaller retail along Catalina fills the mid-afternoon dead hour that used to send everyone home.
By 5 p.m. on a Thursday or Saturday, the choice bifurcates. Stay in the Village and eat early at Salt & Pearl, Il Posto, Riviera House, or the new Martha's once it's open. Or walk the Strand north the roughly three miles to the Pier for the 6 p.m. concert. Riviera Village is 3 miles south of King Harbor in Redondo Beach, California, which is a real walk but a doable one along the water with the marine layer pulling back. Uber is the backup, not the plan.
Late dinner back at BeachLife Grotto or The Rockefeller closes the loop. Neither exists in the same form two summers ago.
What actually changed
The generic version of this post is a list of restaurant openings. The real story is what those openings signal about a room that's been undersupplied for a decade.
South Redondo's identity has always been "the affordable one" relative to Hermosa and Manhattan. Nothing about the parklet vote or the Martha's lease changes home prices this quarter. What they do change is the honest answer to a question buyers ask on tour: what's there to walk to? A year ago that answer was three restaurants and a coffee shop. This summer it's a room dense enough that a Friday evening, a Saturday afternoon, and a Sunday morning each look different from each other.
That's the piece that shows up in resale two, three, five years out. Not the number of restaurants but the fact that the room reads finished. Operators like Condren are voting on that with their leases. "We're excited to give people something that doesn't exist in the Riviera," Sanford said of the Grotto. "I love the Riviera Village. I think it's the last bastion of the South Bay."
The City Council's five-year parklet extension is the piece that makes it stick. Anyone signing a ten-year lease on Catalina right now is signing knowing the sidewalk stays wider than the curb.
Use it before Labor Day
The concert series ends August 29. Martha's is opening into an already-full summer. If you've been living in South Redondo and defaulting to the same three spots on a Saturday, the argument for actually walking the Village end-to-end has never been shorter. Six blocks, an eighteen-night concert calendar, and a room that finally reads full.
If you're weighing a move within the South Bay, or thinking about what your current place looks like against a Riviera Village that isn't the same neighborhood it was in 2023, Colin Aita is the person to walk it with. Contact Colin for a private, no-pressure consultation.
