Gott's, the Napa Burger Stand, Opens Near the Santa Monica Pier Friday

The James Beard Award winner's first coastal spot pours Napa wine, serves Straus soft serve and opens daily at 11 a.m.

Gott's Roadside, which began as a Napa Valley roadside stand in 1999, opens a short walk from the Santa Monica Pier on Friday, Oct. 2.

The Santa Monica Daily Press reported the opening date. It's the chain's second Southern California restaurant and its first by the ocean.

The first one landed at the Original Farmers Market earlier this year. This one is aimed squarely west. The outlet reported that Gott's expects to draw from Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Venice and Marina del Rey. If you're the one hauling kids and a sandy cooler back from the beach, you're the customer it was built for.

And it's big. There's 6,600 square feet inside and a 2,200-square-foot patio out back, strung with festival lights and kept livable with fans and heaters.

Clay Walker, the company's president, told the paper the room was designed with "plenty of room for families, sports teams, neighbors, and beachgoers alike." The floor plan backs him up: more than a dozen community tables that each seat up to 20, aisles wide enough for strollers, bike parking, and a dining room with 14-foot windows running floor to ceiling. There's also a 5-foot-tall EAT sign, in case you forget why you came.

The menu covers the roadside basics, burgers and chicken tenders, then stretches into seafood, salads and seasonal specials. Vegetarian, flexitarian and gluten-free-friendly options are on it too. The meat comes from Cream Co. Meats and the chicken from Red Bird Farms, with fish from Pacific Fresh Fish Co. and bread from Larder Baking Co., according to the Daily Press.

Here's where I'd point a first-timer. Start at the soft-serve counter.

It's the part of Gott's that feels most like a beach-day stop, and it's more than a cone. The counter pours Straus organic soft serve and Nounos frozen yogurt, builds sundaes, and sells cookies that are baked on-site every day. For a table with kids, that's dessert settled before anyone orders a burger.

Then there's the wine list, which is where Gott's stops pretending to be a stand. It leans on Napa names, including Joel Gott Wines, Rombauer, Turley, Caymus and Opus One. That's a burger joint with Opus One on the list, a sentence I didn't expect to write this week.

If you'd rather keep it light, the bar makes low-alcohol margarita and paloma spritzes, plus the house Frosé. The draft taps rotate among Tarantula Hill, Beachwood and Golden Road, and there's nonalcoholic beer from Athletic Brewing and Best Day Brewing. The bar stretches from one end of the dining room to the other, and anyone 21 or over can sit down for full bar service, the Daily Press reported.

Families get one more small courtesy: the self-order kiosk in the dining room sits low enough for a kid to reach. Whether that's a gift or a threat depends on your kid.

Gott's Santa Monica opens Friday, Oct. 2, and will run daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. for dine-in and takeout. The menu and updates are at gotts.com and on the @gottsroadside accounts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Source: smdp.com, retrieved September 29, 2026.