Walk up Hillhurst on a Wednesday in late June. The line outside Vandell, the new cocktail bar on Hillhurst from co-owner Michael Francesconi, is already forming at seven. Half a block up, someone with a picnic blanket and a folded low chair is walking north, past the library, toward the shuttle lot on Crystal Springs. They are going to see Coriolanus. Both of these things are new this year.
Los Feliz has spent a decade being a walkable neighborhood that happened to sit next to a large park. Summer 2026 is the first season in a while where the park's programming and the commercial strip actually pull on each other in a single evening. The pieces that were missing on Hillhurst, a proper cocktail room and a real all-day restaurant, showed up between last summer and this one. And Independent Shakespeare Co. is temporarily performing in a smaller, more intimate part of the Old Zoo, which changes how the pre-show walk works.
The thesis, in one paragraph
If you already live here, the useful frame for this summer is not what opened on Hillhurst and, separately, what is on at the Greek. It is that a resident can now string a Hillhurst dinner, a free Shakespeare performance at the dell, and a nightcap into a single foot-based evening without doubling back for the car. That was harder to do last summer for reasons this post walks through.
What Hillhurst added between last summer and this one
Four openings are worth knowing by name.
Vandell took the space of the departed Nossa Caipirinha at the end of 2025. It comes from Francesconi and Matthew Glaser of Park Hospitality, the same team behind Donna's in Echo Park, working with Republique cocktail alums Vay Su and Shawn Lickliter. The team was open about why they picked this block: Los Feliz, a neighborhood they valued for its walkability and sense of community. It is a small bar with East Coast neighborhood-bar energy, and it has been running lines since opening.
Wilde's is preparing to open at 1850 Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz, moving into the former home of Thai on Hillhurst, according to a recent liquor license application. Owners Tatiana Ettensberger and Natasha Price are running it as an all-day room, coffee and pastries in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, and intimate dinners in the evening. That format is what the block was missing. Hillhurst has had breakfast places, dinner places, and coffee shops, but few kitchens that carry a resident from 9am to 9pm at the same table.
Satellite opened a few blocks up as a hybrid store and community space. It is a collaboration between Usal's Michael Washington and Dani Noguera, the designer behind up-and-coming east side sportswear brand Grin27, and the fit-out is genuinely local — Gino Woulard designed the display racks, Jesse Lang crafted the hanging racks, Grady Borte designed the checkout counter, Lauren Kim did the changing room, and Mambo Jambo built the bookshelf. Hours are Thursday through Sunday, noon to six.
Philz Coffee is moving into the space once occupied by gourmet butcher McCall's. Whether the neighborhood needs it is genuinely contested. LAist walked the block and counted seven coffee joints within a roughly 10-minute walk once Philz opens, including Starbucks Reserve, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Blue Bottle, Cafe Los Feliz, Alcove, and Maru. One decade-long resident put it plainly to LAist: "Yes, absolutely. I mean, we got Starbucks across from a Coffee Bean. There's a new one coming in over here..."
That saturation is not a knock. It is the reason a Hillhurst pre-show plan works now. You can pick coffee at 5pm, dinner at 6, a play at 7, and a drink at 10 inside a fifteen-minute walking radius. Two years ago that stack was theoretically possible but the dinner and drink links were thinner.
Why the festival being at the dell matters this summer
Independent Shakespeare Co. is running its 2026 Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival from June 24 at the dell above the Old Zoo. The program is two shows:
- Coriolanus, directed by David Melville, June 24 through July 26
- The Comedy of Errors, directed by Melissa Chalsma, August 5 through September 6
Performances run Wednesday–Sunday evenings at 7pm, with no performance on July 4. Admission is free, but this year there is a real reason to RSVP: the company is not on the main lawn. It is at the dell while construction continues on the new Griffith Park Stage, and the dell at the Old Zoo can accommodate 800 people at each performance. That is a smaller footprint than the main lawn, which is why registration is requested to manage crowds at this smaller location.
For residents, the practical translation is this: the dell is tighter, quieter, and closer to the road than the main lawn was. It rewards arriving on foot from the south end of Hillhurst rather than driving in and looking for parking. This is the first summer in years where walking from a Hillhurst dinner to the show is the obvious move rather than a slightly ambitious one. Managing Director David Melville framed the moment well when talking about audiences passing the future stage on their way in: "a powerful reminder that something long dreamed of is finally becoming real".
If you have not been in a while
Two things have changed since the pre-pandemic seasons. First, seating is now zoned. The area closest to the stage is reserved for blankets only, while a little farther back, guests can bring low-seat beach chairs. Second, a $60 donation gets a reserved seat in a special elevated section with a great view of the stage. Neither is required. Both are worth knowing.
The Greek's August, from a resident's angle
The Greek Theatre sits inside Griffith Park at 2700 N. Vermont Ave., which is why residents already know to expect a slower-than-usual left onto Los Feliz Boulevard on show nights. August 2026 is unusually dense. The month runs, in order:
- Aug 1: La La Land in Concert
- Aug 2–3: Death Cab for Cutie with Nation of Language
- Aug 4: Sarah McLachlan with Allison Russell
- Aug 7: Nicolas Reyes
- Aug 8: O.A.R. with Gavin DeGraw and Lisa Loeb
- Aug 14: Goose
- Aug 18: NEEDTOBREATHE
- Aug 19: The Guess Who with Don Felder
- Aug 20–21: Mt. Joy — 10-Year Celebration at Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, August 20–21, 2026 (two-night run)
- Aug 23: Tucker Wetmore
- Aug 24: Train with Barenaked Ladies and Matt Nathanson
- Aug 25: Tori Amos
- Aug 27–28: Undertale — The Determination Symphony
- Aug 30: Lost 80's Live
The through-line, if you live south of Los Feliz Boulevard, is that Wednesday and Thursday shows are the ones to plan pre-dinner reservations around, because those are the nights that overlap with peak Shakespeare weeknight demand at the dell. Sunday and Monday Greek shows are the easier drive-in nights.
The Vista Theatre, the third leg of the walk
The Vista is not new. What is new, or new-ish, is its dual identity. The Vista officially reopened on November 17, 2023, and under Tarantino's ownership incorporated a new 70mm film projection system and new sound system, and screens only on film, rather than digital, with an emphasis on first-run releases and occasional classics. Last year it added something rare in the world: a 35mm VistaVision projector installed for the presentation of the 2025 film One Battle After Another, making it one of only four cinemas in the world currently capable of screening VistaVision.
The reason this matters for a summer weekend is Pam's Coffy, the theater's cafe named after Pam Grier's 1973 film Coffy. It gives the block a daytime anchor that is not another espresso window. On a Saturday when the dell is dark or you are not in the mood for the Greek, the Sunset/Hollywood corner functions as a self-contained afternoon: coffee at Pam's, a first-run film on actual film stock, then walk south for dinner.
A walkable evening, in the order you would actually do it
For a Wednesday in July, before Coriolanus closes:
- 5:30pm — Coffee or an early bite at All Time, which one Hillhurst resident described in LAist as his go-to place for a nice cup of black despite technically being a restaurant.
- 6:15pm — Early dinner at Wilde's or Little Dom's. Wilde's is easier to walk in, Little Dom's takes reservations.
- 7:00pm — Coriolanus at the dell. If you did not RSVP, arrive by 6:30. If you did, 6:50 is fine. Blanket zone is up front, chair zone is behind it.
- 9:15pm — Curtain down, walk back south on Hillhurst. Vandell for a drink. If Vandell is a wall of people, Bar Flores territory nearby is the fallback.
Swap the Wednesday for a Saturday and the play for a film at the Vista and the walk still works. Swap the Hillhurst dinner for a Greek show and you lose the on-foot element but keep the neighborhood-as-single-evening logic.
The through-line
For most of the last decade, Los Feliz functioned as two adjacent lifestyles: the Hillhurst walkers and the Griffith Park regulars, with only limited overlap on any given night. Summer 2026 is the first season those two grids line up on a Wednesday. The park is tighter and closer this year while its permanent stage rises. The commercial strip has finally added the two categories, real cocktail room and real all-day restaurant, that make a pre-show and post-show plan possible without a car.
If you own here, the practical upshot is that the block just became more legible to visitors, buyers, and the extended family who ask what there is to do in August. You can now answer that question with a specific evening.
Let's Connect
If a summer in Los Feliz has you thinking about what your home might be worth in the current market, or what a move to another Southern California neighborhood would look like from here, Chris Lechner and the team at GlobalPoint work across Los Angeles, Orange County, and the surrounding markets. We are happy to talk through pricing, timing, and options without pressure.
