What's New in Riviera Village Redondo Beach Right Now

Every South Bay downtown put out folding tables and string lights during the pandemic and called it outdoor dining. Most of them took the tables back in once things went back to normal. Redondo Beach did the opposite. This spring, the City Council voted to extend the outdoor dining deck program in Riviera Village for five more years, at the exact moment other beach cities were quietly dismantling theirs.

A few months later, that decision has a name attached to it. Martha's, the Hermosa Beach restaurant that opened its doors in 1984, is taking over the former Gabi James space at 1810 S. Catalina Avenue. That is not a small move for a restaurant that has spent four decades in one location. If you live in South Redondo and have wondered why the sidewalks in front of your favorite dinner spot still have that pandemic-era patio setup, the answer just walked in the door with a five-year lease and a new executive chef.

The bet nobody else made

Outdoor dining decks were supposed to be temporary. They were a workaround, a way to keep restaurants breathing when indoor capacity was capped, and in most cities they got pulled the moment the emergency ended. Redondo Beach kept them in Riviera Village, and this year the council went further and locked the program in through 2031.

That is a five-year commitment to a specific look and feel: sidewalk seating, streetside energy, restaurants that spill out past their own front doors. It is also a subsidy of sorts for foot traffic. A restaurant that can seat twenty more covers on the sidewalk without pulling a building permit has a real cost advantage over one that cannot, and that advantage compounds every night the patio is full.

Why a Hermosa Beach institution cared enough to move

Martha's did not need a second location. The restaurant has run one address in Hermosa Beach for over four decades, weathered the pandemic, and only recently reached the point where owner Hilary Condren felt ready to expand. When he went looking for the right neighborhood, he did not pick somewhere untested. He picked the Village, and he was specific about why.

"Their downtown, their heartbeat is on fire."

That is not marketing copy. It is a restaurant owner explaining, in his own words, why he is moving capital across city lines. The new space is a five thousand square foot building split across two floors, positioned between Fringe and Redondo Beach Brew, with room upstairs for the private events Martha's has wanted to offer for years. The team brought in Johnny De Vivo, previously the executive chef at Rolling Hills Country Club, to run the kitchen. Condren has told local outlets he is eyeing three more locations over the next three years, stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Riviera Village is the first stop on that list, not an afterthought.

The Village was already building toward this

Martha's is the biggest name to move in, but it is not the first sign that Riviera Village has been quietly reinvesting in itself. Two years ago, BeachLife Festival co-founder Allen Sanford took a shuttered liquor store on Catalina and turned it into BeachLife Grotto, working with architect Miles Pritzkat, whose own office is also in the Village, to design a two-story building with open beams on the top-floor deck. The project was an adaptive reuse of a building that Sanford said had stopped contributing much to the block. It is now a full seafood restaurant and retail concept built to evoke Palos Verdes' old Admiral Risty and the seafood houses Sanford grew up visiting.

Riviera House, opened in 2019 by four brothers with a beachy cocktail bar concept, has become the kind of year-round anchor that other restaurants get compared to. Its heated outdoor patio runs through winter, which matters more than it sounds like it should in a city where most restaurants treat outdoor seating as a summer-only feature.

None of these are chain expansions testing a new market. They are locally rooted operators betting on one specific stretch of Catalina Avenue, one restaurant at a time, over several years. The dining floor now includes Salt & Pearl, Turquoise, Il Posto, The Hook & Plow, and The Craftsman, alongside longer-running spots like Redondo Beach Brew. Martha's arrival is the moment that pattern became visible enough to notice from outside the neighborhood.

The rhythm that makes the sidewalks worth using

None of this works if the Village empties out between events. It doesn't, because the calendar is built to keep bringing people back on a schedule residents already know by heart.

The Summer Concerts series, presented by the Redondo Pier Association at Fisherman's Wharf, just closed out its 2026 run two days ago. That leaves a gap in the calendar between now and the Holiday Stroll, and it is exactly the kind of gap a new restaurant with a two-story building and private event space is built to fill. Martha's is not opening into a slow season. It is opening into the part of the year when the Village needs a reason for people to come back on a Tuesday night, not just a concert night.

What this actually means if you live here

If you already call South Redondo home, the practical takeaway is simple: treat the sidewalk seats as the default, not the overflow. The city just spent political capital keeping them there for five more years, and the restaurants moving in are building around that decision rather than around it being temporary. Reservations at Martha's will likely be tight for the first few months, the way any new opening from an established name tends to run. If you want to see what the fuss is about without competing for a table on opening week, the existing anchors along Catalina, Salt & Pearl, Turquoise, Riviera House, are still running the same solid programs they always have, and none of them are going anywhere.

The bigger shift is less about any single restaurant and more about what the Village has decided to be. It is not importing outside concepts the way some neighboring downtowns have. It is doing something narrower and, based on who keeps choosing to invest here, more durable: giving established South Bay names a second address and betting the sidewalk infrastructure keeps them there.

If you are watching this neighborhood for any reason, whether you are a longtime resident, thinking about a rental, or just trying to figure out where to eat this weekend, this is the detail worth remembering. The Village did not get lucky. It made a specific policy choice, and a forty-year-old restaurant just proved the choice was worth making.

For more on what is changing across South Redondo, Torrance, and the rest of the South Bay coast, Billings Beach Homes keeps a close eye on the neighborhoods we call home. If you have questions about what any of this means for your own plans, reach out any time.