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Address
23410 Civic Center Way C1
Malibu, CA 90265 -
Robert Edie | CA DRE# 01821992
Walk past 1198 Coast Village Road on a Thursday evening in July and the address finally reads as something other than a placeholder. For most of the last three years it has been a rotating identity, the storied Peabody's shell hosting one short-lived tenant after another. This summer, the lights stay on for a reason.
The reason has a name, and it points to a pattern. Montecito's summer 2026 isn't the usual maintenance-mode prestige season. Three of the village's most-watched addresses are being rewritten at the same time, mostly by outside operators bringing in-house farm programs, and the Music Academy's eight-week festival is arriving on the same theme of imported talent meeting local terroir. If you live here, this is the summer the calendar stopped repeating itself.
The Peabody's building has a longer restaurant obituary than most blocks do. Peabody's opened in 1982 with its antique Hawaiian dancing girl tiffany lamp on the back bar, closed and reopened with a new owner in 2018, then closed again in 2023. Oliver's and Bar Lou followed, both short visits.
The current tenant looks different. Monte's opened on Coast Village Road in Montecito as the first California project from Endwell Hospitality, centering its menu on produce grown at Rincon Hill Farm in Carpinteria along with seafood and meats sourced from the Central Coast. Opening day was March 18, 2026.
The chef is the real signal. Executive Chef Daniel Kim's résumé includes the MICHELIN 3 Green Star restaurant Providence on Melrose Avenue, the Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, a seasonal turn at Michelin Guide recognized Hibi in Koreatown, and the former Michelin star Le Cirque in Las Vegas. Endwell's parent restaurant in TriBeCa, One White Street, runs the same closed-loop model with its own upstate farm. Coast Village Road just got a version of that.
The menu runs prawn toast, maitake mushrooms, roasted cabbage, pork katsu, wagyu sirloin, and a smash burger, which reads less like a concept statement than a working kitchen with a Korean-American backbone. Kim's own framing is blunter:
"When you're involved with the farm from the beginning, it changes how you think about food. Seasonality and biodiversity shape everything we do."
If you have been reserving at San Ysidro Ranch or Bettina by reflex, Monte's is the reason to break the routine this summer.
The louder opening this year has been on the other end of the village. Little Mountain sits at 516 San Ysidro Road and runs Wednesday through Sunday, 5 to 9 p.m. Hospitality operators Eva and Bryan Schreier, who run two resorts in Punta Mita and Colorado, partnered with Graham Duncan, co-owner of East Rock Capital, to build the concept.
The kitchen is Diego Moya's. Born in Chile, Moya specializes in seasonal, vegetable-forward cooking, primed as a kid picking and preserving fruit on his family's property. The wine list is worth its own paragraph. The list was created under Hayden Felice, the winemaker behind Trippers and Askers Wine. If you have friends visiting in August who have already been to Bettina twice, this is where you take them.
The Upper Village isn't done. A new Italian restaurant named Ancora Osteria is coming to 1483 East Valley Road, the former home of Via Vai Trattoria & Pizzeria which closed in 2024, with sources saying they hope to open this year. The business is led by S.Y. Kitchen's Chef Luca Crestanelli and Sous Chef Francesco Crestanelli, along with Norman Borgatello, who has helped shape the character of Montecito's upper village business community for decades.
The through-line across all three: outside kitchens with their own supply chain, moving into addresses that had drifted. The village's restaurant map is more legible in July 2026 than it has been in five years.
| Address | Concept | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1198 Coast Village Rd | Monte's, farm-to-table with Korean influence | Open since March 2026 |
| 516 San Ysidro Rd | Little Mountain, vegetable-forward seasonal | Open Wed–Sun |
| 1483 East Valley Rd | Ancora Osteria, Italian by the S.Y. Kitchen team | Targeting 2026 |
The Music Academy of the West's 2026 Summer Music Festival & School is an eight-week program themed "American Mosaic," running June 17 to August 8 across the Music Academy's Montecito campus and historic venues throughout Santa Barbara, with more than 100 events, 150 fellows, and 60 teaching and guest artists.
For residents who normally catch one or two Granada nights and call it a summer, a few dates are worth pulling forward:
The pricing footnote most residents miss: $10 Community Access Tickets are available for the 2026 Summer Music Festival beginning June 12 at 10 a.m., subject to availability, in person at the Music Academy Carsey Ticket Office and online. That is a working structure for turning a random Tuesday into a Takács Quartet evening at the Lobero without a monthly-budget conversation.
You already know Butterfly Beach faces west and holds the sunset. What matters this summer is the choreography around it. The Montecito coastline runs from Fernald's Point past Miramar Beach and the Hammonds Point surf break to Butterfly Beach, where stand-up paddlers and surfers vie for waves, sailboats bob against their moorings, and dogs are permitted on-leash on the sand.
Hot Springs Canyon Trail is the same trail it has been, and that is the point. The trail is 2.6 miles out and back with 793 feet of elevation gain, leading to natural hot springs nestled in a canyon. The junction at mile 1.2 gives the option of heading right to explore the ruins of the Montecito Hot Springs Hotel, which burned down in the 1964 Coyote Fire and was never rebuilt.
Two logistical notes from residents who have watched the tourist load rise:
And on Coast Village Road itself, the community calendar has held its shape. Coast Village Week returns as an end-of-summer pup party with the Doggy Photo Booth themed around the beach, and Beyond the Canvas continues as an art walk celebrating fine artists, photographers, performing artists, musicians, stylists, fashion and jewelry designers. The village's texture between the new openings is the same one you moved here for.
If the last five summers in Montecito were about waiting for buildings to reopen, this one is about seeing who took them. Endwell in the Peabody's shell, the Schreier and Duncan partnership on San Ysidro, the S.Y. Kitchen team on East Valley, and a Music Academy festival with the largest guest-artist roster in years. Each is an outside operator arriving with their own supply chain, curriculum, or catalog, then attaching it to a Montecito address. That is a different kind of season than a reservation refresh at the usual four dining rooms.
For homeowners who spend summer here rather than out of it, the practical answer is to reorganize the weekly rotation. One Monte's dinner, one Little Mountain night, one Granada evening on a $10 Community Access ticket, one early Hot Springs hike before the parking fills, and one long slow Butterfly Beach sunset. That is the summer of 2026 in Montecito, actually used.
Whether you are settling deeper into your Montecito home, thinking through a second property along the coast, or quietly weighing what a move within the village might look like, Robert Edie is available for a discreet conversation about the market and the neighborhoods that shape it. Let's Connect.
Address
23410 Civic Center Way C1
Malibu, CA 90265
Robert Edie | CA DRE# 01821992