Solana Beach's New Restaurants Moved Into Old Rooms. Here's What They're Doing With Them.

A wood-fired oven sits in the kitchen at Beachwalk, at 437 S. Highway 101. It belonged to California Pizza Kitchen, which ran a restaurant in that space for about 30 years. The oven is still there and still in use. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported this summer that Lana's executive chef, David McIntyre, called its "firepower" crucial for roasting meat and fish at volume. On one busy night, he had 11 pans of chicken roasting in it at the same time.

That oven describes most of the new dining in Solana Beach over the past year and a half. With one exception, the restaurants that opened on Highway 101, Cedros Avenue and Lomas Santa Fe Drive moved into rooms another restaurant had already used. Their first year has looked similar too. Each one opened, studied who came back, and then changed the menu for those customers.

Who is in which room

None of the reporting explains why Kai Ola or Pizza Nova left. It only names them as the previous tenants. The rest of this post covers what the new operators have done in those rooms.

What Lana kept, and what it cut

Lana's owners, Travis LeGrand and Mark Wheadon, made a choice that sets the direction for the rest of the restaurant. According to the Union-Tribune, they set out to build a steady neighborhood following of 250 to 300 guests a night instead of chasing Michelin attention. The paper reported that many regulars come twice a week, and that the best-selling dish is a roasted half-chicken with mashed potatoes and mushrooms, not a Wagyu steak.

The kitchen staff changed several times in the first year. McIntyre wrote the opening menu as a consultant while he was still based in London. Former Juniper & Ivy chef Anthony Wells ran it as executive chef for a while and then left for other projects. McIntyre came back as full-time executive chef in April 2026 and launched a summer menu on July 17. His background is a good fit for a former pizza kitchen. He spent seven years under Wolfgang Puck at Spago Beverly Hills, and later ran Puck's steakhouse Cut at 45 Park Lane in London from 2011 to 2020.

The changes he made since returning point in one direction. McIntyre told the Union-Tribune that a neighborhood restaurant has to stay affordable to get repeat business, so he cut prices at the top of the menu:

• A scallop dish was replaced with local California halibut.
• The Wagyu New York steak was replaced with a grilled bone-in Duroc pork chop. A Wagyu burger is still on the menu.
• The chorizo pizza became a prosciutto pizza, and crispy fingerling potatoes were added as a side.
• Most plated land and sea entrées now cost $38 to $46.

Happy hour at the bar includes $10 cocktails and $14 wood-fired pizzas. The chicken is Jidori, butchered in-house and air-dried for 24 hours so the skin crisps in the same oven CPK left behind. For fall, McIntyre said he hopes to add braised meats, more house-made pastas and a duck breast entrée, while promising that "nothing wild" will show up. Those are stated plans, not dishes on the menu yet. Lana is open 4 to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday.

Mia's and Colosseo are on the same timeline

Mia's opened on the north end of Highway 101 in the former Alce 101 space. It comes from the team behind Bluewater Grill and serves Baja-Mediterranean food. Eight months after opening, it launched the second phase of its menu with 14 new lunch and dinner dishes, as the Union-Tribune reported on Aug. 3. In a news release, Executive Chef Michael Padilla said the team had been "paying careful attention to what Solana Beach foodies want" and that it was time to roll out "the Mia's menu we always intended."

That timing follows the same pattern as Lana. The restaurant opened with a starting menu, watched what sold for most of a year, and then added more. The new dishes include a squash blossom quesadilla with Chihuahua and Oaxaca cheeses, a roasted beet salad with marinated feta, an ahi club, and a double-cut Heritage Pork Chop from Montana's Len-roc Farms, brined in apple juice and grilled.

Colosseo Cucina Italiana is on the east side of town, in the Pizza Nova space at Lomas Santa Fe Plaza. The Union-Tribune reported it was scheduled to open Dec. 18, 2025. Chef-owner Roberto Ciacciofera is from Sicily, and he runs the restaurant with his wife, Giuseppina Marrone. The Coast News described how they redid the room with oversized trompe l'oeil murals of the Colosseum and Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, plus booths and a full bar. The wine list is mostly Italian. It includes the Emperor Pour, a flight of 2-ounce pours of a 2016 Barolo Riserva, a 2019 Amarone della Valpolicella Classico and a 2019 Brunello di Montalcino. The signature dish is Pappardelle Colosseo, made with house-made pasta and short ribs braised in his nonna's sugo.

Colosseo's next step is planned but not yet in place. The Coast News reported in July that Sunday live music on the patio and monthly cooking classes were "planned for the near future." No start date has been announced for either.

Encore Sushi is at the start of that curve

The newest restaurant to take over an old room is at the entrance to the Cedros Design District. Encore Sushi is in the former Kai Ola space at 112 S. Cedros Ave., next to the Belly Up. Its website says it is already open Tuesday through Sunday. That comes from the restaurant itself, and no independent local news report has confirmed it yet.

The posted hours are 3 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and noon to 9 p.m. Sunday. It is closed Mondays, and happy hour runs 3 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The formal start is Friday, Oct. 23. San Diego Magazine's event listing describes a grand opening from 4 to 10 p.m., with a Solana Beach Chamber ribbon cutting at 4 p.m.

If Lana and Mia's are any guide, the opening menu at Encore is the first version, and the changes that come in the months after opening will say more about the restaurant.

The one building that had no previous tenant

The exception to the pattern is just north of Beachwalk. Sandbox Solana Beach is a new mixed-use building at 343 S. Highway 101. It first opened in early 2024, so its restaurants had empty spaces to build out instead of someone else's kitchen.

Its operators also came in with established businesses elsewhere. Rustic Root opened its second location there in February 2025, after a decade in the Gaslamp Quarter. In March 2025, The Coast News reported that most of its tables were reserved but some were held back for walk-ins from the neighborhood. That report is more than a year old, and the current walk-in policy hasn't been confirmed. The building's other restaurant is CTZN, a Basque tapas bar from the owners of La Clochette, a Pacific Beach bakery. CTZN was open and serving modern Basque tapas when The Coast News reviewed it in January 2026.

Cedros has a smaller example of the same thing. The Solana Beach Chamber scheduled a grand opening and ribbon cutting for WetStone Wine Bar at 346 S. Cedros Ave. on Nov. 7, 2025, which means its first full year is almost done.

The fall dates

The next few weeks include one firm date. Two other announcements are still waiting on dates:

1. Friday, Oct. 23. Encore Sushi's grand opening at 112 S. Cedros Ave., 4 to 10 p.m., with the Chamber ribbon cutting at 4 p.m.
2. Not yet dated. Lana's fall menu, which McIntyre has described as braised meats, more house-made pasta and a duck breast entrée.
3. Not yet dated. Colosseo's Sunday patio music and monthly cooking classes at Lomas Santa Fe Plaza.

Lana is in the Beachwalk space CPK held for about three decades, a short walk south of Sandbox. Mia's is north of Lomas Santa Fe on Highway 101, Colosseo is inland on Lomas Santa Fe Drive, and Encore is at the entrance to the Cedros Design District.

If you own property near one of these corridors and want to know how the turnover along 101 and Cedros affects what your home is worth, Patrick Brown offers a complimentary home valuation and a quiet conversation about the Solana Beach blocks you know best.