Walk the three blocks between Ocean Park Boulevard and Hollister on a Tuesday evening this month and you'll pass a hand-painted sign that wasn't lit two summers ago. Circle Bar, the round-bar dive that anchored Main Street for the better part of eight decades, went dark for three years. It's back now, under the same ownership group that runs Hinano Cafe down the block, with the original sign and namesake circular bar kept intact. Everyone walking past assumes it's part of the same wave as the newcomers. It isn't. It's the opposite story, and it's the more interesting one.

This summer's Main Street has two kinds of business news, and they get told as if they're the same thing. One kind is genuinely new: outside operators discovering the street for the first time. The other kind is people who already had a stake here doubling down on it. The second group is smaller, quieter, and tells you more about where this corridor is actually headed.

The Newcomers

The most-talked-about arrival is Met Her at a Bar, the sixth restaurant from husband-and-wife operators Mindy and Vinny Kinne, whose family has run hospitality businesses since Vinny's relatives owned Russo's Bar & Grill in upstate New York for more than a century. This is their first Santa Monica location, an all-day café that moves from brunch into handmade pasta, Neapolitan pizza, and a cocktail program, with a hidden patio behind the dining room built around a fireplace and water feature that seats 50 to 60 guests. Vinny Kinne put it plainly when the restaurant opened: "We didn't come to Santa Monica just to open another restaurant." They came because, in his words, they believe in Main Street.

A few doors down, La Diperie is set to open at 2441 Main Street before the end of summer, taking the storefront that used to house Holey Grail Donuts. It's a Montreal-founded chain built around dipped soft-serve, custom toppings, and a growing menu of donuts and shakes, and this location will be its first on the West Coast. Neither of these businesses had any prior connection to Santa Monica. They picked Main Street the way a chain picks any promising commercial strip: because the foot traffic and the economics finally penciled out.

The Ones Who Never Left

Compare that to Bar Fortuna, opening this fall at 2917 Main Street in the space that used to be Vamos Vamos. It's the second restaurant from chef Brian Bornemann, a Santa Monica native who opened his seafood spot Crudo e Nudo one block away in 2021. His longtime sous chef, Jose Morales, is expected to run the kitchen as chef de cuisine. This isn't a chef expanding into a new city or chasing a bigger footprint across Los Angeles. It's a chef who already has a restaurant on this exact stretch choosing to open a second one within easy walking distance of the first.

Circle Bar's return follows the same logic. A three-year closure could have ended with the space becoming anything, a juice bar, a boutique, a vacant storefront waiting on a developer. Instead the people who already run Hinano Cafe took it over, kept the sign, kept the round bar that gave the place its name, and reopened it as Circle Bar. That's not a bet on Main Street as an untapped opportunity. That's a bet made by people who already knew exactly what they had and weren't ready to let it disappear.

Why the Timing Isn't a Coincidence

Part of why so much has moved on Main Street in the same few months traces back to a city decision from earlier this year. In March, Santa Monica eliminated its portion of the wastewater capacity fee for new restaurant projects, a change that had been charging roughly $1,000 per seat. For a 50-seat restaurant, that's $50,000 in city fees gone before a single plate goes out the kitchen door. It's not the reason any one operator chose this street over another, but it's part of why this has been an unusually active year for restaurant buildout along corridors like this one.

The Thing That Didn't Change

None of this touches the Sunday Main Street Farmers Market, which still runs the 2600 block between Ocean Park Boulevard and Hill Street every week, rain or shine, new restaurants or not. It's the one fixture on this street that isn't part of anyone's opening or reopening story, because it was never at risk of closing in the first place. If you're trying to figure out which businesses on Main Street are chasing this year's momentum and which ones are just part of how the neighborhood runs, the market is a useful baseline. It doesn't need a grand reopening because it never had a quiet period.

The city tried something a little more temporary last month. For the State of the City event on July 23, Main Street activated an entertainment zone that let people carry drinks purchased from participating businesses, Ashland Hill, Circle Bar, Edgemar, Jameson's Pub, JuneShine, La Vecchia Cucina, Library Alehouse, Lula Cocina Mexicana, Manchego, Tavern on Main, The Galley, and The Victorian, along the sidewalks between Hollister and Ocean Park. Main Street Business Improvement Association executive director Hunter Hall called it a chance to showcase everything Main Street has to offer while pulling residents and visitors alike toward the same handful of doors. It was a one-night activation, not a new standing policy, but the list of participating businesses is itself worth reading. Most of them have been on this street for years.

What's Actually Coming Up

If you're building out the rest of your summer around this corridor, the next fixed date is October 17, when Main Street closes to cars again for the Block Party with Day of the Dog, complete with live music, vendors, and a beer and wine garden. Between now and then, the loop worth walking looks something like this:

• Sunday mornings at the farmers market on the 2600 block
• An early dinner at Crudo e Nudo or, once it opens this fall, Bar Fortuna one block over
• A stop at Circle Bar for the first time in three years, or the first time ever if you're new to the street
• Dessert at La Diperie once its doors open before summer ends
• A weeknight at Met Her at a Bar for the secret patio you won't find unless someone shows you

The honest read on Main Street this August isn't that it's suddenly full of new energy. It's that the people who already had something here are the ones putting real money behind staying, right alongside the newcomers testing the water. That's a different kind of story than "look what's opening," and it's the one worth paying attention to if you actually live close enough to walk it.

If you're watching this corridor for reasons that go beyond dinner plans, whether you're weighing a move within Santa Monica or just curious what a street like this does to property values over time, Davis + Burns Group spends as much time walking these blocks as writing about them. We're always glad to talk through what we're seeing on the ground.