When Catalina Island Company unveiled Pier 24 on the Avalon waterfront in August 2024, the press release came with a quote from Hunter Rusack, the company's senior vice president of operations, promising something built to last. "With Pier 24, we aim to celebrate Catalina Island's rich history while providing a modern and welcoming dining experience," Rusack said. The restaurant sat on the site of the old Steamer Pier, the dock where William Wrigley's cross-channel ships once unloaded eager tourists, and the company called it a "top to bottom transformation."
Two years later, as of the most recent update to its own Yelp listing in early 2026, the restaurant lists hours of Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and marks itself "Temp. Closed" the other five days of the week. As of Tripadvisor's Avalon restaurant rankings updated in August 2026, Pier 24 sits at number 27 out of 43 restaurants in town with 19 reviews since opening. Bluewater Avalon has 1,545. The Lobster Trap has 1,509.
That gap is the actual story here, and it's worth understanding if you live in Avalon and want to know which businesses you can count on showing up when you're hungry, not which ones got the biggest send-off.
What "Newest" Bought You in 2024
Pier 24 wasn't a scrappy startup. It came from the same company that runs Hotel Atwater, Mt Ada, Banning House Lodge, and the Descanso Beach Club, and it opened with two outdoor patios facing the harbor, large picture windows over the water, vintage photos of the old steamer ships on the walls, and a menu built around salads, pizzas, burgers, and milkshakes aimed at "both locals and visitors," per the company's own dining page. It had the marketing budget, the maritime backstory, and the address. What it didn't have, two years in, was the operating hours to match.
None of this means the food is bad. Recent Tripadvisor reviews describe a family sharing pizza, a smashburger, and a poke bowl, and one visitor called it a well-spent summer night on the island. The issue isn't quality. It's reliability, and reliability is the thing you actually need from a restaurant in your own town.
The Places That Didn't Need a Press Release
A few blocks over, the businesses that have stayed open on a normal schedule are the ones nobody issued a statement about.
The Lobster Trap underwent a five-month renovation that more than doubled its dining room and added a sushi bar. It's owned by Caleb Lins, a commercial lobster fisherman who has run the place since 2008 and still brings in his own catch aboard a 40-foot boat called Money Matters. The clam chowder and the "daily catch" on the menu aren't marketing language there. They're literal.
Original Antonio's has changed hands after nearly fifty years serving Catalina Island residents and visitors. Owners Mike and Cinde Cassidy took over with a stated plan to keep the menu and daily operations close to what they've always been. No renovation announcement, no ribbon cutting, just a business that's been part of the town longer than most of its current customers have been alive, continuing now under new stewardship.
A few minutes up the hill, Topside by NDMK tells a similar story from a different angle. It opened above the Catalina Island Conservancy's Trailhead visitor center in 2023, run by Adam Thoricht, a fourth-generation islander whose family also owns NDMK Fish House around the corner on Clarissa Avenue. The menu leans on the same commercial fishing relationships the family has worked for years, and the restaurant is still serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner off a rooftop deck over the harbor three years after opening.
None of these three places needed a press tour or a corporate announcement to tell you they'd still be open next Tuesday. Their track records do that.
What Corporate Investment Actually Anchored
None of this is an argument that Catalina Island Company gets it wrong. The same company that runs Pier 24 also completed a full renovation of the Pavilion Hotel, the 1958 waterfront property that sits on the site of Avalon's old Dance Pavilion from the late 1800s. It reopened April 1, 2026, with refreshed guest rooms, a central courtyard with chaise lounges and a fire pit, wine dispensers in the lobby, and the Lanai, which hosts a daily continental breakfast and the hotel's Social Hour. "The Pavilion Hotel has always been more than just a hotel; it's part of Avalon's cultural fabric," Rusack said of that reopening.
The distinction matters. Pier 24 was a new restaurant competing for dinner traffic against 42 other options along the same stretch of waterfront. The Pavilion Hotel is a landmark with more than a century of social history behind it, reopened as the kind of gathering space that doesn't need to win you over from scratch. One had to build trust from zero. The other had it built in.
If you're trying to figure out which new openings in Avalon are worth building into your routine and which are worth waiting on, that's the filter: does this place have a history to lean on, or is it starting cold.
What Actually Changed in Daily Life
Restaurants come and go on their own schedules, but one piece of Avalon's daily infrastructure changed in a way that has nothing to do with dining. The City of Avalon rolled out COAST, an on-demand, point-to-point electric transit service that replaced the older fixed-route Garibaldi bus and dial-a-ride system. Fares start at $2 per rider, and the fleet runs on electric vehicles. For a town where most people get around on foot, bike, or golf cart, a redesigned public transit option matters more to daily life than any single restaurant opening, new or renovated.
On the Calendar This Month
A few things worth marking down if you're already living here. The Catalina Museum for Art & History is hosting a Paint and Sip Night with Fabi on August 13. Flx Biergarten, the island's only biergarten, is running OktoberFlx on September 12 and 13 with a special Oktoberfest menu. Neither requires a ferry reservation or a hotel booking. They're just what's happening in town this month.
The Actual Lesson
If you're weighing where to eat dinner tonight based on which Avalon business opened most recently, you're optimizing for the wrong signal. The newest addition to the waterfront is the one most likely to be closed when you show up. The restaurant that's been feeding this town since 2008, run by a guy who still catches the fish himself, closed for five months to double its dining room and add a sushi bar, and nobody had to wonder if it would come back. The restaurant that's been open for nearly fifty years changed owners without changing anything you'd notice. And the hotel that's been part of Avalon's social life since before Pier 24's building existed got a full renovation and reopened its courtyard to the same crowd that's been meeting there for decades.
Longevity isn't a marketing angle in Avalon. It's the actual predictor of whether the lights will be on.
Whether you've called this side of the channel home for years or you're still working out what year-round life on Catalina actually looks like, our team at E3 Realty works with buyers and sellers across California's coastal and inland communities alike. Reach out whenever you're ready to talk about what's next.
