Costa Mesa's Fall Dining Wave Is Really Two Different Stories

Walk from The CAMP to East 17th Street and you'll pass through two very different bets on what Costa Mesa wants to eat next. One street is importing something that didn't exist anywhere in Orange County until this month. The other is handing a forty-year-old family recipe the keys to a space that just closed. Both are happening within about a mile of each other, in the same six months, and if you've been keeping a mental list of "new places to try," you've probably lumped them together. You shouldn't. They tell you two different things about how this neighborhood grows.

What Just Opened at The CAMP

Maleza held its soft opening at The CAMP on September 12 and 13, with full lunch and dinner service starting September 16. The modern Mexican kitchen and mezcal bar started life inside Drift Palm Springs, and this is its first standalone location anywhere. Irvine-based TMC Hospitality is behind it, and for a company that operates across the country, opening in Costa Mesa is described as a return to its own backyard.

That detail matters more than it sounds like it should. Executive Chef Marco Arreguín's opening menu leans into produce-driven plates like grilled maitake with salsa macha and smoked trout roe, alongside larger dishes such as branzino Veracruzana and a ribeye finished with celery root mole. None of that existed in this county last month. The CAMP has spent years building its identity around eco-conscious, community-first retail and dining, and Maleza's arrival, alongside other 2026 newcomers to The CAMP and the neighboring Lab Anti-Mall, is the corridor doing what it's always done best: bringing in something genuinely new rather than a familiar name in a new location.

A Block Over, Something Older Is Reopening as Something Else

East 17th Street is telling a different story. Zov's, the Mediterranean restaurant that's been feeding Orange County for roughly forty years starting with its original Tustin flagship, is taking over the former Playa Mesa space at 428 E. 17th Street, with a target opening before the end of 2026. Zov's CEO Armen Karamardian put it simply:

"Everything we serve traces back to my mother's kitchen."

That's not a new concept arriving. That's a known quantity, already running locations in Irvine, Newport Coast, and San Clemente, moving into a building that used to be a restaurant and will keep being one. The address stays a restaurant. The name and the menu are what change.

Here's the split laid out plainly:

If you're deciding where to go this week, that difference is the actual useful information. SoBECA is where you go to try something that didn't exist until recently. East 17th is where you go for a version of a restaurant you can already trust, because it has three other locations proving it works.

The Independents Filling the Gaps

Not everything fits neatly into those two lanes. Diner Noche, at 120 Virginia Place, runs as a coffee shop by day and flips into a diner Wednesday through Saturday after 5 p.m., with owner Ryan Jimenez cooking everything, fries included, in beef tallow. It's a single operator's bet, not a chain expansion and not a corridor anchor tenant.

A few blocks away on Harbor Boulevard, Thyme to Eat opened as one of the city's newest bakeries, specializing in saj, the thin Lebanese flatbread cooked to order. Its za'atar pie has already become the thing regulars order without looking at the rest of the menu.

Then in March, Highball, a Japanese-style cocktail bar, and Naisho Omakase both debuted the same week, adding a more elevated, reservation-driven option to the city's after-dark options. None of these four are chasing SoBECA's brand-new-concept model or East 17th's proven-name-in-recycled-space model. They're independent operators picking a corner of the city and opening the doors.

Lions Park Isn't Playing Either Game

There's a third thing happening that isn't about restaurants competing for attention at all. Café Mesa, a roughly 1,100-square-foot coffee shop, is being built inside Lions Park, right next to the library and civic center. The city awarded the operating contract to local business Neat Coffee. It's not a private operator betting on foot traffic or brand recognition. It's a municipal decision to put a coffee counter at the center of the city's most civic-minded green space, which means its success gets measured less by Yelp reviews and more by whether it becomes the place where people linger before or after a library visit or a city council meeting.

That's a different kind of growth than either of the two restaurant corridors above. It's not competing with Maleza or Zov's for your dinner reservation. It's competing for your Tuesday morning coffee run.

What This Means for Your Next Night Out

If you want the newest thing Orange County has to offer, SoBECA is currently the place. Maleza just landed and The CAMP and The Lab have more coming behind it. If you want a name you already trust, in a space that's proven itself as a restaurant address before, East 17th Street is where that's playing out with Zov's. If you're after something smaller and more personal, Diner Noche and Thyme to Eat are worth the drive on their own. And if your Saturday morning already includes Lions Park, Café Mesa is about to make the errand better.

None of this is random. It's four different growth models running at once in a city small enough that you can hit all four in a single weekend. That's a fairly specific kind of neighborhood to live in, and it's worth noticing while it's still new.

If you're curious what any of this means for property values or timing a move in Costa Mesa, that's a longer conversation. For now, go try the branzino.

Want a broader look at what's shifting across coastal Orange County, from dining to market conditions? The team at Kent Martin Group tracks it neighborhood by neighborhood. Reach out anytime for a Free Home Valuation or just to talk through what's changing in your corner of the coast.