Summer 2026 In Westwood Village: What's New A Short Walk From Little Holmby

If you have lived off Comstock, Loring, or Wellworth for any stretch of time, you already know Westwood Village has been quiet for years. Storefronts turned over, kept the paper up for months, and reopened as another bank or another boba shop. That pattern broke sometime last winter. Six food tenants have signed for a two-block stretch of Broxton and Weyburn since February, and three more are lined up along Westwood Boulevard before fall. For a neighborhood whose weekend routine tends to drift toward Brentwood or Beverly Glen for anything other than Diddy Riese, that is a real change in walking distance.

Here is what has actually landed, what is about to, and how the Hammer's summer calendar fits into an afternoon you can start on foot from home.

The Broxton reset, in one place

Almost all of the recent activity is clustered on one block of Broxton Avenue between Weyburn and Le Conte. If you have not walked it since spring, the tenant mix looks different.

Seven concepts, seven cuisines, one walkable radius. That is the story to keep in mind while reading the rest of this.

What is already open

The clearest signal that something shifted came in late February, when a new burger joint slipped into the old Prince of Venice spot at 1091 Broxton, the brainchild of pro skateboarder Neen Williams and Michelin-starred chef Phillip Frankland Lee. NADC Burger, short for Not A Damn Chance, runs a tight menu. The format is 100% Wagyu burgers and beef tallow fries, and Food & Wine named the group's Chicago location one of its top burger spots in the US. It is the kind of tenant Westwood Village has not attracted in years, and it took the Prince of Venice space rather than sitting empty for another cycle.

A block south, the long-vacant BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse space at 939 Broxton is being taken over by Sana'a Cafe, a Yemeni coffee house. The San Francisco-based chain has eight locations along the California coast plus one in Tacoma, and the Westwood location will be its third in the Los Angeles area alongside Hollywood and Lake Forest. Expect espresso drinks alongside Yemeni specialties like Sana'ani coffee flavored with cardamom, qishr made from coffee bean husks with cinnamon and ginger, and pastries including rose milk cake and honeycomb. That is not a category the Village has had before.

What lands before Labor Day

Three of the incoming tenants matter most for anyone planning summer routines.

Raising Cane's is the closest to the finish line. The new location at Broxton and Weyburn is scheduled to open at 10 a.m. on July 13, 2026, and the opening includes a drawing that will award 20 customers free Raising Cane's for a year, with entries accepted from 8 to 9 a.m. on opening day. Opening festivities include a ribbon-cutting, live entertainment, and a $1,000 donation to Friends of Westwood Library. If you are reading this the day it publishes, it opened this morning.

Bread Head is the more interesting arrival for people who care about who is cooking. The sandwich shop was founded by chefs Alex Williams and Jordan Snyder, alums of the Michelin-starred Trois Mec, alongside Greg Willsey and Michael Pasternak, and grew out of a pop-up before the first permanent location opened on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica in June 2024. The team is aiming for a September opening at 1136 Westwood Blvd, with the exact date depending on final city and health permits, and the Westwood shop will closely resemble the Santa Monica original with plans to add a parklet for outdoor seating. A parklet on Westwood Boulevard is a small thing that changes how a block feels at 1 p.m. on a Saturday.

The wildcard is LARACLETTE. A recent ABC filing shows the restaurant is planning to debut at 1061 Broxton Ave. and, per its website, will serve Swiss comfort food with a modern, gourmet twist, though menu and opening timeline details remain unclear. Raclette in Westwood is not a thing anyone was asking for, which is often how the interesting places get their start. Watch for scaffolding at 1061 later this summer.

Two others round it out. Signs are up at 10965 Weyburn for Xibei Eatery, likely tied to Xibei Dumplings in Silverlake, which would mean shaomai and steamed dumplings from Inner Mongolia. And The Melt has window paper up at 913 Westwood Blvd promising its grilled cheese, mac and cheese, and chicken sandwiches, with a fall opening planned.

A reason to walk down Wilshire before August 23

The Hammer's summer program is worth planning around this year, not because it always is, but because two of the strongest shows both close in August. That is a hard deadline most residents miss.

Arthur Jafa's 30-minute experimental film, assembled from found and produced footage, examines how visual media can transmit the power, beauty, and alienation of Black music in American culture, and it runs through August 30. The group show upstairs, Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials, features 22 artists from North, Central, and South America exploring the relationship between living materials such as stones, avocado, cacao, achiote, cochineal, and clay and contemporary art, closing August 23. If you have been meaning to go, the runway is short.

Two things about the Hammer that residents forget or never learned:

• Admission is free. It has been free since 2014, but the reflex to check ticket prices before going is stubborn.
• Self-parking is available under the museum at $9 for the first three hours with museum validation and $3 for each additional 20 minutes with a $30 daily maximum, with a $9 flat rate after 5 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends. If you are walking from Little Holmby, none of that matters. If you are meeting friends driving in from the Westside, the weekend flat rate is the number to quote them.

The summer calendar has two other pieces worth flagging. The Hammer is showing the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup live on big screens in an indoor/outdoor setting where art and sport come together, which is a strange and specific pairing that will not repeat. And Flux brings the creative community together to celebrate short films and music videos from around the globe, with filmmaker presentations and performances followed by a courtyard party. If you have out-of-town guests in July or August, the Flux courtyard party is a better answer than another dinner reservation.

On-site, Lulu is the Hammer's restaurant from David Tanis and Alice Waters, which most Little Holmby residents already know but out-of-town guests do not.

How to actually use this

A workable afternoon from a house on Comstock or Warnall looks like this. Walk south on Hilgard, cross Wilshire, and cover the Broxton block first. Coffee at Sana'a. Loop through the Hammer for the Jafa film and Several Eternities before the August closings. Late lunch at NADC or, once it opens in September, Bread Head's parklet. That is a two-mile round trip that did not exist as a coherent route eighteen months ago.

The larger point is that the ground has moved. Westwood Village has had a decade of think pieces about its decline, and the tenant mix arriving between February and September is the first evidence in years that operators with real pedigree, from Trois Mec alums to Michelin-starred chefs to established regional chains, are betting on the block again. For anyone who owns a home five minutes north of Wilshire, the practical effect is that the reasons to leave the neighborhood for a casual dinner keep getting weaker.

If you are curious what any of this activity is doing to values on the streets just above Wilshire, or you want a read on how the Village turnover is showing up in buyer demand for Little Holmby specifically, Anton Ismailyan is happy to talk it through. Start with a home valuation or reach out directly through the contact page.