48 Hours in Manhattan Beach

Yes, you are on vacation, but in this rare instance, let us gently suggest an un-vacation-like thing to do. Get up early. Because if you want to see Manhattan Beach in its most native state, you’ll want to head down to the pier as early as you are able — 7ish is ideal, or at most an hour or so later, to achieve what is locally known as “getting your stoke.”

One of the specific quirks you’ll notice as you pass through the early waking hours of any true beach town is the curious behavior of that species of ocean-going mammals known as surfers. Heads pop out of windows and tousle-haired barefoot dudes run out onto the walk streets — the neighborhoods surrounding downtown have no streets, just sidewalks and back alleys — anxiously looking out towards the ocean with a single urgent question: Are there waves?

If so, as you walk out onto the pier, you’ll have one of the best vantage points on the entire coast to watch the joyful process of surfers paddling into and catching waves. And as you look down the long, beautiful beaches for which the town is named, you’ll behold another, somewhat superhuman species: beach volleyball players. Many of the best players in the world either live locally or train here, including several Team USA Olympic beach volleyball teams, and they’ll be diving and leaping on the courts just below.

After you take in the scene on the waves and on the beach, another perfect introduction to life at the beach awaits at the Roundhouse Aquarium. This small, but state-of-the-art marine wildlife facility at the end of the pier lovingly houses many local species, touch tanks, and a knowledgeable staff that will give you an introduction to the local ecosystem. Be sure to check out the octopuses on the second floor.

And then it’s time to do breakfast, old school Manhattan Beach-style, which can only mean Uncle Bill’s Pancake House.

Uncle Bill’s has been a Manhattan Beach institution since 1961, which means it has outlasted trends, recessions, and the complete transformation of the downtown around it. The menu has evolved just enough to stay current, with additions like the Santa Fe omelette, for example, with chipotle sauce and avocado, but the signatures endure. The Expo ’73 omelette — ham, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, onion and American cheese, topped with meat sauce and sour cream — has been on the menu since the year the VanAmburgh family bought the place, and if you order it, you will not need lunch. There will be a line on weekends because Uncle Bill’s is worth the wait.

With breakfast handled, you have a full day of Downtown Manhattan Beach ahead of you, and the best way to experience it is on foot. The downtown grid is compact enough to walk end to end in ten minutes, but plan on spending considerably more time than that.

Before you set out, coffee: goodboybob Coffee on Highland Avenue has quietly built an international reputation. The owner, Erich Joiner, is a commercial film director and production company head — he was in charge of the camera work on F1: The Movie — who became obsessed with the absence of a decent coffee shop near his Santa Monica office, so he eventually opened one himself. It was wildly successful, so Erich expanded to Manhattan Beach, half-expecting it to struggle in a much smaller town. It hasn’t. With impeccably sourced single-origin beans and espresso drinks expertly crafted by award-winning baristas, the line that appears at 9 a.m. every morning is for a good reason.

One note for those who packed a laptop: the Manhattan Beach Public Library right next door on Highland Avenue is a genuinely beautiful place to get something done, and Enclave, a co-working space just a few blocks from downtown, offers drop-in options if you need a proper desk. Productive mornings have been built on worse foundations.

If you are a reader, {pages} a bookstore on Manhattan Avenue, is a warm little bastion of happy bookishness. The store is expertly curated, staffed by kind and avid readers, with a recommendations section that is genuinely helpful. And while you’re in the neighborhood, step into Bo Bridges Gallery on Manhattan Avenue. Bridges has photographed everything from Tom Cruise on Mission: Impossible to the X Games, but what people really want from his work isn’t the celebrities and athletes — it’s the playing fields. The waves without surfers. The mountains without skiers. What Bridges calls “mind surfing” photos — images so vivid and transporting that you feel yourself inside them. The gallery also has cool merchandise if you are looking for gifts or local mementos.

A few doors down, Tabula Rasa Essentials has been a downtown anchor since 2000, when owner Maureen McBride — an 18-year fashion industry executive — walked past a vacant storefront, fell in love with the neighborhood, and never looked back. Equal parts modern apothecary, lifestyle boutique, and sensory experience, it is the kind of shop where you will stay longer than you planned.

If your sweet tooth is calling, two of the South Bay’s most beloved institutions are within easy reach. Becker’s Bakery and Deli has been a family operation since 1942 — Harry Becker’s great granddaughter Kit now runs the place. The bakery’s cinnamon, maple and bacon cupcake once made it to the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars. The cake decorators here treat buttercream frosting as a sculptural medium, and the results are worth seeing. Only a block from the beach, Manhattan Beach Creamery hand-makes its ice cream in small batches daily, rotating flavors that run from straight-ahead classics to things like Bananas Foster and Maple Bacon Crunch. The Cream’wich, a scoop between two made-from-scratch cookies, has become a local mainstay.

By early-to-mid afternoon, the natural landing place is Simmzy’s — an open-air spot just above the pier with a great burger, a well-curated beer list, and the kind of unpretentious ease that Manhattan Beach does better than almost anywhere.

After lunch, make your way to Culture Brewing Co., and you will understand immediately why it has become a downtown MB social hub. Enjoy its open air, local artists on the walls, and great craft beer — 30 taps, including the popular Mosaic IPA and their Great American Beer Festival-winning Blonde Ale.

When evening arrives, you are in the heart of what has recently evolved into one of the better dining destinations in Los Angeles County. Downtown Manhattan Beach has always had good restaurants; over the last two decades it got great ones.

Mike Zislis was there first. A master brewer by the time he graduated from USC, he opened one of California’s first craft breweries in Manhattan Beach in the late 1980s. When the restaurant next door became available, he opened Rock ’N Fish — drawing inspiration from Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, the big bar culture of Chicago, the art deco warmth of New York — and the town was ready for it. “We were busy the day we opened,” Zislis recalled. A quarter century later it still is, the blue cheese wedge and the Kapalua ribeye as beloved as ever, the legendary Navy Grog rum cocktail still the most requested drink at the bar. The restaurant overlooks the pier. Next door is brewco, which two decades ago was Zislis’s ahead-of-the-curve craft beer spot, but has since evolved to include sophisticated dining.

Into that already-strong foundation came the Simms family — third-generation restaurateurs Mike and Chris Simms, grandsons of Arthur J., who opened Simmzy’s in 2009 and Tin Roof Bistro three months later. In 2011 they brought in chef David LeFevre as a partner, and the three restaurants they built together — MB Post, Fishing With Dynamite, and The Arthur J. steakhouse — elevated the ambitions of the entire downtown.

Chef David Slay has since added his own mini-empire: Slay Steak + Fish House, Slay Italian Kitchen, and Fête Bistro, his French-Mediterranean room, all within a few blocks of each other on Manhattan Avenue. Love & Salt brings modern Italian with a California sensibility to the boulevard, and Hook & Plow, with its farm-to-table California comfort food, rounds out a downtown dining scene that now routinely draws people from well outside the South Bay.

The flagship of the LeFevre restaurants is MB Post, where the strategy is to order several small plates and share. The bacon cheddar buttermilk biscuits are famous for a good reason: sinfully delicious, oddly comforting. The cocktail program is equally serious. If you find yourself unable to leave, that is normal.

If the evening calls for something different — a proper martini in a room that feels like it has been there forever — Mangiamo’s is your answer.

And then there is the matter of closing out Day One the right way.

Almost everything changed in Downtown Manhattan Beach over the last couple of decades. Shellback Tavern abides, as it has for more than 50 years, perched just above the pier. It has become less a local institution and more a bastion of the resistance, a place where you can still find the ramshackle old soul of Manhattan Beach. Owner Bob Beverly quips, “people say that coming into Shellback to get a beer and sit back and look at the pier — it could be the ’40s, the ’50s, or the ’60s, because that view has not changed.” Another MB merch suggestion: get a Shellback trucker hat.

A short walk away, Ercole’s has been the town’s unofficial epicenter since 1927, and features a pool table and perhaps the most locally beloved hamburger, sourced from Manhattan Market next door. Two burgers for the price of one on Wednesdays. Free Cheetos and pretzels on the bar. Cold beer and strong drinks. Gary Moore took over the place in 1972, and it is now run by his niece, Staci Clark.

And if the night is still young, there is one more stop. The Kettle has been open since 1973 — the first 24-hour restaurant in Manhattan Beach and, as the L.A. Conservancy will tell you, a culturally significant historic site. Arthur J. Simms, who had run the commissary at MGM Studios and operated Ben Frank’s coffee shops on the Sunset Strip, took over in 1975 and started what would become one of the most influential restaurant dynasties in the South Bay: Simmzy’s, Tin Roof Bistro, and Lazy Dog Restaurants all trace their lineage back here, to the corner of Highland and Manhattan Beach Boulevard, where a giant kettle still sits on the roof. Three generations of Simms family later, everything is still made from scratch, the muffins are still “locally world famous.” It is open until midnight on weeknights, and around the clock on weekends. NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana was sitting in a Kettle booth when he got the call to join the 49ers, so the least you can do is order a late-night stack.

Get some sleep. Day Two starts early.

Day Two

On your second day we’ll take a sojourn to the outer realms of MB — if a four-square-mile town can have outer realms. We’ll begin in a legendary part of town, once known as El Porto, now better known as North Manhattan Beach. It’s only about ten blocks that run parallel to the Pacific Ocean along Highland Avenue, but this is a richly storied stretch. Back in the ’60s, everything north of Rosecrans was still unincorporated, and it was a wild heyday of sorts. Due to its proximity to LAX, El Porto was home to a lot of airline pilots and, in the day, “stewardesses.” Due to its superior waves, it was home to a lot of surfers. And due to the combination thereof, it was a party.

North MB has changed, but its left coast sense of fun is completely intact, and its surf vibe is immaculate. If you are game, let’s go surfing.

Pack Landfair at El Porto Surf Shop handles both lessons and board rentals. He and his instructors will get you into the waves with surprising ease. Don’t worry about looking foolish. Everyone does, until they don’t.

North MB is also, perhaps not coincidentally, a great breakfast neighborhood. Sloopy’s Beach Cafe is like a Californian idyll, with wood tables and — on chilly mornings — a fire pit amid a small forest of plants and streaming sunlight, and, most crucially, a healthy menu that includes breakfast burritos built for a post-surf session. But you have choices. Across the street is North End Caffe. The Huevos Divorciados — eggs over easy on sausage, bacon, and grilled corn tortillas, half covered in red salsa, half in green — deserve their own moment of silence, but the entire menu is a chef-edged delight.

One more stop before you leave the neighborhood: Bakery by the Yard, opened by Sherry Yard, the former head pastry chef at Spago and a veteran of the Food Network, operates out of a small storefront on Rosecrans and deserves to be far better known than it is. Look her up before you go; it will recalibrate your expectations for what a neighborhood bakery can be.

Then rent a Strand Cruiser at Beachside Bikes and ride south. The Strand is the long, flat bike and pedestrian path that runs the entire length of Manhattan Beach’s coastline: 2.1 miles of oceanfront. A morning ride on it, with the ocean to your right and the procession of beach houses to your left, is one of the simple, free pleasures that makes this town what it is. Manhattan Beach maintains a Public Art Story Map at manhattanbeach.gov that guides visitors to dozens of sculptures, murals, and mosaics scattered throughout the city. The utility boxes alone are worth a look.

Once back on solid ground, head inland to Manhattan Village. This shopping center has transformed itself in recent years from a conventional mall into something genuinely worth a detour: an open outdoor space with water and Adirondack chairs where people congregate and relax and enjoy a cluster of restaurants that has become one of the better dining destinations in the city.

Saint and Second anchors the complex with an indoor-outdoor U-shaped bar — half the seats inside, half out. Sushi Roku is another anchor: upscale without being stuffy, creative omakase alongside solid cooked dishes, the kind of place that works equally well for a business dinner or a proper night out. BOA Steakhouse brings big, modern steakhouse energy to a neighborhood that didn’t previously have it. Tin Roof, a California wine country bistro with a Santa Barbara mission-style interior, has been a Village institution for years. Dan Modern Chinese is the sleeper hit of the whole complex: soup dumplings, elevated noodle dishes, the kind of place you’d drive to from elsewhere once you knew about it.

Around the corner, it’s well worth a stop on Rosecrans. If you have not yet heard of Erewhon, you will. The organic grocery and prepared food phenomenon — beloved by influencers, or by anyone who has ever tried the smoothies — opened its Manhattan Beach location to lines that started forming at 4 a.m. and snaked around the back of the Trader Joe’s parking lot. It is their busiest location. The $18 smoothie is not a rumor and neither is the crowd. They are there for a reason; this is an experience.

As the afternoon softens into evening, the wine country begins. MB Wine Company is a hidden gem tucked away in the northwest corner of Manhattan Village — a place where you can enjoy flights or bottles, and settle into a room that has both indoor and outdoor seating with occasional live music.

Or head down the street, to Barsha Wines and Spirits. Owners Adnen and Lenora Marouani built a destination wine and artisanal spirits shop on Sepulveda, which also features an array of small plates and salads. Or a little further down the way, on Artesia, if you want something to take back to the hotel room, Manhattan Fine Wines is the kind of place where the staff will learn your palate in a single visit and find you something outstanding at any price point. In that same plaza, The Butchery is worth a stop: a small, beautiful market with a meat counter, seafood counter, deli, and a gourmet food section that one local described as “Erewhon, but for people who actually cook.”

Or if you find yourself back downtown as the sun drops toward the water, Uncorked on Manhattan Avenue is another great wine shop, with a cozy tasting room, a little outdoor patio, warm and knowledgeable staff, and a great selection of wines.

You have options for ending your second night. You could return to where your day started, because North MB has one more card to play, and it is a wild one. Pancho’s, the graceful hacienda-style Mexican restaurant at the corner of Highland and Rosecrans, is worth a visit any night of the week. Their traditional Mexican food is the real thing, the margaritas are legendary, and the restaurant itself is a two-story architectural universe, with full-grown trees growing inside.

But if your 48 hours happen to include a Monday night, rearrange your schedule. Monday is comedy night, hosted by comedian Danno Carter, and the secret is this: comedians need stage time to stay sharp, so they show up. Ali Wong has been there. People who go on to do Netflix specials and late-night sets show up at Pancho’s on a Monday to try out new material, in a bar adorned with large mounted taxidermic fish, for free. Former Lakers coach Phil Jackson used to come so reliably that comedians started requesting “the Phil Jackson spot.”

Day Two ends where every good day in Manhattan Beach ends — at the beach. Specifically, at The Strand House, which Michael Zislis opened in 2011 as the crown jewel of his culinary empire. It has the best view of any restaurant in town, a menu that matches its setting, and the good sense to put the ocean and the pier right in front of you while you eat. Order something you’ll remember. Watch the sun go down. You started at the pier two days ago, and now here you are again, right where you belong.

Manhattan Beach will do that to you.