"The vision was very old school chowder house, but the best version that we can make," chef Sara Woods told The Tribune this summer, describing Westerly Shell Beach. That sentence fits the whole year in Pismo Beach. The rooms that opened in 2026 are smaller and run by their chefs. Several of them went straight back to the town's oldest dish. The largest bluff-top dining room in town closed in September. And on October 17 and 18, the Clam Festival turns 80 in a year when the Pismo clam itself is back on the beach.
Put together, the openings, the closure and the festival show a town rebuilding its food identity around something older than any of its current restaurants.
The Spyglass Space Became a Chowder House Again
The Spyglass Inn Restaurant closed on Nov. 1, 2024. In April 2026 the big wooden sign out front changed to read Westerly, and the restaurant opened its dark blue doors at 2703 Spyglass Drive in mid-May. Westerly serves breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. The menu is built on elevated classics: fish and chips, steak frites, a late-night rib-eye, and a clam chowder Woods calls "not-your-usual."
The fish and chips is the most interesting detail. It was a favorite at Spyglass too, and Woods says plainly that she isn't trying to copy the old version. "I don't know what Spyglass' fish and chips were, so I can't recreate it," she said, "but I can do my very best to give you the best fish and chips I can make." She also described guests who remember Spyglass from the '80s and '90s coming in to reminisce. So the landmark wasn't replaced with something unrelated. It was reworked around the same coastal basics, with blue stripes, ship ropes and a full craft cocktail bar.
Pomeroy Avenue Picked Up Three Openings in Four Months
Westerly is a landmark reborn. Most of the year's other openings happened on one short street. Pomeroy Avenue, which runs down to the pier, added three new businesses between April and August:
| Opened | Business | Address | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 23 | Swell Sandwich Shop | 231 B Pomeroy Ave. | Sandwiches, daily 11 a.m.–4 p.m. |
| May 13 | Dulci Coffee | 172 Pomeroy Ave. | Coffee, open until 8 p.m. Sunday–Thursday and 9 p.m. Friday–Saturday |
| Aug. 21 | Bare Bones | Pomeroy Ave. | Small plates, rotating menu, local beer and wine |
The hours matter more than they seem to. Dulci stays open until 8 or 9 p.m. A coffee shop open that late gives the street something to do after dinner. Swell covers the midday hours.
Bare Bones is where the year's story gets sharpest. Chef Jared Hurst and his wife Rachel, the restaurant's sommelier, opened it after a year of construction. It's their first restaurant of their own, after Jared spent 15 years in Central Coast kitchens, including Oyster Loft and Steamers of Pismo. They soft-opened Aug. 21, closed the following week to "iron out some kinks," and reopened a week later. "Everyone came back," Rachel Hurst said.
Jared Hurst describes the menu in terms of the day's catch and the farmers market. "We're just like, what fish can we get today? What proteins can we get? We build it off that," he told The Tribune. The menu changes every few days, and a few favorites stay put. Prices give a sense of the range. The "PB&J" toast costs $18. It's a chicken liver pâté with caramelized onions standing in for the jelly, and no peanut butter at all. A shareable ribeye with fried potatoes costs $86. Between those, the menu has a Caesar with shishito pepper emulsion, pastrami bao buns and house oysters. The open kitchen faces a seven-seat bar.
"We want people to come in and feel like they can afford to eat here, even though it's really nice food," Rachel Hurst said. That's a different pitch from a destination dining room with a view. It's a chef-owned room built for coming back on a weeknight.
Star Bar Grew, and Kept Its Bar Small
Even the resort project followed the same pattern. On Sept. 4, Vespera Resort relaunched Star Bar at 147 Stimson Ave. as a casual after-dark spot meant for hotel guests and locals alike. The renovation grew the old poolside hut to about 400 square feet, nearly triple its old size. It added fire pits and boardwalk seating and kept seven seats at the bar. The new space went to the outdoor seating, and the bar stayed the size it was.
The ingredients are local. Some cocktails use Avila Valley Barn olallieberries and sea beans from the Pismo shoreline. The frozen solstice is a hibiscus-lime margarita, and the cosmic coast pairs watermelon, vodka and lime. The food menu includes guacamole, tuna tartare and a poblano clam chowder. That makes three 2026 menus putting their own spin on the town's namesake soup. Star Bar is open daily from noon to 9:30 p.m.
The new calendar is worth marking down. Vespera plans monthly new-moon Stargazer Socials with Cal Poly's Astronomy Club and a touch-screen telescope, plus events around the summer and winter solstices.
The Bluff-Top Room That Went Dark
Not every change this year was an opening. Ventana Grill at 2575 Price St., a restaurant and wedding venue, closed Sept. 12 after a SLO County Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction in a lease dispute. The dispute is between the restaurant's operator, The Old Custom House Inc., and the property owner. The two sides disagree on the facts. The property owner cites engineers' concerns about the building and the bluff beneath it. The restaurant group says the building is safe and argues the safety concern is a way to end its long-term lease.
According to The Tribune on Sept. 9, 82 Ventana workers received layoff notices. The notice anticipated a temporary closure of at least 14 months, and it wasn't clear what would have to happen for the building to reopen as a restaurant. The next hearing in the case is set for Oct. 22 at 9 a.m., four days after the Clam Festival ends. Nothing about the building's future has been decided in the reporting so far.
The resort next door is also still in progress. Pacific Point Resort, which combines the former Shore Cliff Hotel and Pismo Lighthouse Suites, soft-opened this summer. Its official opening has moved to February 2027. The resort's site lists Daybreak Kitchen, Pacific Market and a seasonal Perch Pantry. None of them is presented as a public restaurant. For now, the stretch of Price Street that had Ventana's dining room has no restaurant to replace it.
Eighty Years In, the Clam Is Back for the Party
That leaves the festival, which ties all of this together better than any one restaurant does. The city was incorporated in April 1946, and the first Clam Festival was held later that same year. The city and the festival share a birthday.
For most of the festival's recent history, the clam was absent. Here's how Experience Pismo Beach lays out the arc:
- 1949: about 5,000 diggers a day during open season, and more than two million clams harvested in 75 days
- 1970s–1980s: sea otters expand south, clam numbers fall sharply, and the Clam Chowder Cook-Off is added
- 1993: the last legal-sized Pismo clam is recorded at the beach
- 2020: Cal Poly's Ruttenberg Lab documents thousands of juvenile Pismo clams back on the shoreline
In other words, the cook-off was added just as the clams were disappearing. For nearly three decades the chowder carried the festival on its own. In 2026, a festival built around a dish arrives in a year when three new menus took on that dish and the clam itself is recovering.
Here's the weekend as the festival has announced it:
- Saturday, Oct. 17, 10 a.m.: the Clam Festival Parade on Price Street, with floats, community groups, schools and local businesses. The festival suggests bringing a chair.
- The Clam Chowder Cook-Off: local restaurants compete for Best Local Clam Chowder, and guests vote for the People's Choice Award. Tickets went on sale Sept. 1 through 805tix, and the festival says they traditionally sell out.
- Sunday, Oct. 18, 11 a.m.: the Kids Clam Rescue, followed by live music.
Admission to the festival is free, and the grounds are at the Pier and Plaza. SeaVenture Restaurant has confirmed its culinary team will compete in the cook-off. The full list of entrants hasn't been published, so it isn't yet known whether any of the year's new chowders will be in the contest. Either way, a weekend that starts with the parade on Price Street can end at a seven-seat bar on Pomeroy or by the fire pits at Star Bar on Stimson.
When a block gains a coffee shop open until 9 p.m. and a chef-owned restaurant like Bare Bones, the homes a short walk away often get a new selling point, and good presentation can put it front and center. If you'd like to know how Pismo Beach's changing streets show up in your home's value, Darsie and John Cole are glad to walk through it with you over coffee. Get a Free Home Valuation, and we'll talk about it whenever the chowder lines settle.
