Walk down Manhattan Avenue on a Thursday around 4:30 and you'll find the apéro hour crowd already spilling out of Coucou's door onto the sidewalk, wine glasses in hand, waiting on a table that won't open up for twenty minutes. Keep walking two blocks toward Highland and you'll pass a storefront that's been dark for months, a construction permit taped inside the glass, no sign of what's coming next despite more than one local blog telling you a café was supposed to be open by now.
That gap between what's actually running and what's been announced is the real story of downtown Manhattan Beach this season. Some of these storefronts turned over in a matter of months. The Highland Avenue café has a reported incoming tenant, but no confirmed opening date.
Coucou Didn't Waste Any Time
The former Nando Trattoria space on Manhattan Avenue, the Vullo family's longtime Italian trattoria, sat empty for a stretch before Coucou took it over. What's there now is unrecognizable from the old room. Husband-and-wife owners Jesse and Hayley Feldman gutted the space and rebuilt it with burgundy leather banquettes, Calacatta marble, and hand-crafted signage, the same aesthetic that made their Venice and West Hollywood locations regulars' favorite bar stools. Chef Jacob Wetherington, a Bouchon alum, runs the kitchen, and the menu leans into the bistro's usual playbook: steak frites, oysters, bone marrow, a burger called the Américaine, and a soft serve sundae that shows up on every table by the second visit.
The daily apéro hour, four to five, is the reason locals keep coming back before dinner rush even starts. Order a cocktail with two snacks and you've got a routine that didn't exist on this block a year ago. This is Coucou's third location after Venice in 2023 and West Hollywood in 2024, and the speed of the buildout shows. A brand with two other rooms already running doesn't need to figure out what it's doing while the paint dries.
Bread Head Moved Just as Fast
A few doors down, the old Tacolicious space at 1116 Manhattan Avenue is now Bread Head, a focaccia sandwich shop layering high-quality meats and cheeses onto bread baked in house. It's a smaller footprint and a lower price point than Coucou, but the same pattern holds: a concept with a clear identity walked in, built out, and opened without a long stretch of limbo in between.
Between these two spots, downtown picked up two genuinely different reasons to walk over from home this fall, one for a sit-down dinner and one for a fast lunch. Neither took the better part of a year to materialize.
Gum Tree Had to Shrink to Stay
Not every move downtown has been an expansion. Gum Tree, the home and gift shop Lori and Will Ford opened in Manhattan Beach in 2016 as a second location to their original Hermosa Beach store, lost its lease on Manhattan Beach Boulevard earlier this year. Rather than leave the neighborhood, the owners found a smaller space about a block away and made the move in early April, according to Patch's coverage of the relocation. The new shop keeps the same curated mix of home decor and gifts the store has carried for close to a decade, just in a tighter room.
It's worth sitting with that contrast for a second. Coucou arrived with the backing of two other successful locations and built out a full room in a matter of months. Gum Tree, a small local business that's been part of this downtown for nearly ten years, had to downsize just to keep its address in the neighborhood at all. Both are still open. They didn't get there the same way.
The Highland Avenue Corner Is Still Waiting to Open
Here's the storefront that makes the point sharpest. At 1140 Highland Avenue, the corner café spot that spent years as Un Caffè Altamura, Alexa Altamura's European-inspired cafe and wine bar, has been closed for a while now. What's supposed to replace it depends entirely on which source you check. One local blog reported earlier this year that a concept called Peacock Café was moving in, a breakfast and lunch spot built for the meeting crowd. But MB News reported in July 2026 that the incoming tenant is actually named Parakeet Cafe, and that the opening is delayed with no date on the calendar.
Two names, no confirmed timeline, and a storefront that's sat quiet since the last cafe closed. If you've been checking that window every few weeks expecting something new, you're not imagining the wait. This is the slowest-moving spot on the block, and local reports have used different names for the incoming tenant.
Alfred Coffee Is Circling, But a Lease Isn't an Opening
One more change worth watching: Ocean View Cafe is closing, and Alfred Coffee has signed a lease to take over that space, per the same MB News report from July. Alfred Coffee runs multiple locations around Los Angeles, which puts it in the same category as Coucou in terms of operating experience. But a signed lease is not a finished buildout, and there's no opening date attached to this one yet either. Worth checking back on before you plan a coffee run around it.
What's Actually Running Right Now
| Location | What Was There | What's There Now | Status This Fall |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1131 Manhattan Ave | Nando Trattoria | Coucou | Open nightly, apéro hour 4 to 5 |
| 1116 Manhattan Ave | Tacolicious | Bread Head | Open |
| Near Manhattan Beach Blvd | Gum Tree (original) | Gum Tree (relocated) | Open in new, smaller space since April |
| 1140 Highland Ave | Un Caffè Altamura | Peacock Café or Parakeet Cafe, reports differ | Delayed, no opening date as of July 2026 |
| Former Ocean View Cafe space | Ocean View Cafe | Alfred Coffee | Lease signed, no opening date yet |
The storefronts are at different stages: Coucou and Bread Head are open, Gum Tree has relocated, and the Highland Avenue and Ocean View spaces are still awaiting their next openings.
If You Want a Say in What Comes Next
The city has actually been holding public input sessions on downtown changes through its Project Pulse meeting series, gathering resident feedback on what's happening to the block by block mix of shops and restaurants. If you've got an opinion about whether that Highland Avenue corner should be another counter service cafe or something else entirely, that's a real venue for saying so rather than just watching the window from across the street.
For now, the answer to "what's new downtown" is Coucou and Bread Head, with Gum Tree in its new location. The Highland Avenue café has no confirmed opening date, and Alfred Coffee has signed a lease but has no opening date yet.
If you're weighing a move to Manhattan Beach and want a read on how the neighborhood actually functions day to day, not just what the listing photos show, the Merritt & Sanderson Team has been walking these blocks long enough to tell you which corners are worth the wait.
