"The street feels better than ever right now," chef Casey Lane said this month, describing the boulevard he first showed up on in 2009 as a 25-year-old transplant from Portland who had no idea what he'd been handed. He was talking about Abbot Kinney, and about his own restaurant, which he reopened there in July, three years after a fire shut it down.
Here's the part that doesn't square with the headlines: the boulevard's signature annual event, the one thing most people assume measures whether Abbot Kinney is thriving or coasting, has not happened since September 2023. It was canceled in 2024. It was canceled again in 2025. It returns this year on September 27, after organizers cited a sponsorship slowdown that has hit community festivals across the region. If you judged the street by its calendar, you'd assume two quiet years. You'd be wrong, and the gap between those two facts is the actual story.
The Festival That Didn't Show Up Twice
The Abbot Kinney Festival is a 40-plus-year tradition, the single biggest fundraiser for the nonprofit Abbot Kinney Festival Association, and historically the kind of event that pulls more than 100,000 people onto a mile of pavement for one Sunday. Since 1984, festival proceeds have funneled over $300,000 into Venice-based youth and arts programs through the association's community grants. The last one, held September 24, 2023, featured live music across multiple stages, food ranging from Thai to Korean to Vietnamese, and artwork from Venice-based artist Tom Everhart, whose pieces have shown at the L.A. County Museum of Natural History.
Then it stopped. Twice. The board's own explanation pointed to sponsorship dollars drying up, a problem hitting community-run events well beyond Venice. For two Septembers, the boulevard's biggest annual gathering simply didn't happen.
What Actually Filled the Gap
While the festival sat out, the street's private economy did the opposite of retreating.
The Tasting Kitchen at 1633 Abbot Kinney reopened July 16, under Casey Lane, the same chef who built its original reputation on handwritten menus that changed nightly, a dining room built around a mature olive tree, and a tasting-format approach to seasonal cooking. The reopened version keeps that ingredient-driven core but adds a beverage program led by Blake Antrobus, who most recently worked at Monsieur Dior by Dominique Crenn. Lane describes the current version as calmer than the original, less frantic, built to last rather than to prove something.
That reopening didn't happen in isolation. RVR, the izakaya from former Gjelina chef Travis Lett, opened at 1305 Abbot Kinney in October 2024, squarely inside the festival's first canceled year. Lett had stepped away from restaurant life for five years before testing the space with a short-run pop-up, then committing to RVR full time. The menu leans on Japanese technique applied to California ingredients, chicken karaage, roasted sweet potato, hand rolls, and a Santa Barbara black cod that regulars keep reordering. Reservations routinely book out weeks in advance.
So the timeline actually looks like this:
- September 2023: Last Abbot Kinney Festival held before the hiatus
- 2024: Festival canceled for the first time
- October 2024: RVR opens inside that same canceled year
- 2025: Festival canceled a second time
- July 2026: The Tasting Kitchen reopens after a three-year, fire-related closure
- September 27, 2026: Festival returns
Two of the boulevard's most talked-about restaurant moments landed during the exact stretch when its flagship public event went dark. The street didn't need the festival to keep generating reasons to show up.
The Construction You Walk Past Without Noticing
The most significant change on Abbot Kinney right now isn't a restaurant at all. It's two hotels, and together they represent a kind of overnight capacity this boulevard hasn't had in years.
Venice Place, at the north end of the boulevard, is a 78-room project designed by local architect David Hertz. The plan keeps existing restaurant storefronts facing Abbot Kinney while building a landscaped courtyard with multiple pedestrian entry points behind them, plus an automated underground parking system and a ground-floor bike-sharing center. Felix Trattoria anchors its food component, a restaurant Esquire once named the best new restaurant in America and that earned a James Beard Award finalist nomination in 2018.
At the southern end, near the corner of Abbot Kinney and Main Street, a second, smaller hotel is adding 43 more rooms.
Combined, that's roughly 120 new hotel rooms on a strip that has functioned for a decade with almost no overnight capacity of its own. Day-trippers have always filled Abbot Kinney's sidewalks. What the street has lacked is people who stay through dinner because they're already sleeping four blocks away. That's a different kind of customer for a restaurant, and it's arriving at the same time as the newest wave of kitchens.
Who's Actually Opening Right Now
Beyond the two headline reopenings, the boulevard's retail and dining mix keeps turning over.
Truly Pizza, a Dana Point pizzeria known for three-day fermented dough and airy, micro-blistered crusts, is opening its third location at 1239 Abbot Kinney, with a debut slated for late 2026. The space will mirror the original's greenery-filled design and seat close to 130 guests, a scale most of the boulevard's existing restaurants don't attempt. Chef Enrique Olvera's hospitality group has also brought San Damian to the corridor, a dining concept built around Mexican mariscos. On the retail side, German heritage basics brand Merz b. Schwanen and Barcelona footwear label Alohas have both taken new storefronts on the boulevard, Hoka relocated its original Abbot Kinney shop slightly closer to the ocean, and Montreal furniture brand Cozey set up a limited-time pop-up where locals can test sectionals and outdoor pieces in person.
| What | Where | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The Tasting Kitchen | 1633 Abbot Kinney | Reopened July 16, 2026 |
| RVR | 1305 Abbot Kinney | Open since October 2024 |
| San Damian | Abbot Kinney corridor | New, chef Enrique Olvera |
| Truly Pizza | 1239 Abbot Kinney | Third location, opening late 2026 |
| Venice Place | North end of the boulevard | 78-room hotel under construction |
| Second hotel project | Corner of Abbot Kinney and Main | 43 rooms under construction |
| Abbot Kinney Festival | Full length of the boulevard | Returns September 27, 2026 |
"Abbot Kinney originally was literally where art meets crime," Lane says of the street's early years, "and everyone was asking where the art is."
What the Festival's Return Actually Signals
When the Abbot Kinney Festival draws its crowd on September 27, it will be returning to a boulevard that looks structurally different from the one it left in 2023. Back then, there was no RVR. The Tasting Kitchen was still shuttered from fire damage. Neither hotel existed as more than a plan on paper. The festival isn't reviving a street that went quiet in its absence. It's arriving on top of a street that used the quiet to rebuild itself, restaurant by restaurant, block by block, without waiting for permission from a calendar date.
That's worth knowing if you live within walking distance of any of it, because the texture of an ordinary Tuesday night on Abbot Kinney has changed more in the last two years than the festival's own absence would suggest. The street's public identity took a two-year pause. Its actual character kept moving.
If you're a Venice homeowner curious what shifts like these mean for your own property, The Dutchover Team tracks this corridor block by block and is happy to talk through what you're seeing. Get a Free Home Valuation to start the conversation.
