For decades, the shorthand for a Brentwood Saturday started at the same address. You parked at the Country Mart at 225 26th Street, walked the courtyard, ate Reddi Chick or Farmshop under the fire pit, and treated San Vicente as the road that carried you home. That map still works. It is no longer the only one.
Between April and July, a run of openings and confirmed pipeline announcements repositioned the boulevard itself as a daytime destination, with the Mart increasingly acting as the anchor of a longer walk rather than the entire outing.
The Thesis, Stated Plainly
The interesting move in Brentwood this summer is not that a big-name operator arrived. It is that two of them arrived on the same corridor within a fifteen-month window, and both chose San Vicente addresses that sit walkable to the Country Mart rather than inside it. That decision, made independently by different hospitality groups, is the story.
What Neighborly Actually Changed
Neighborly opened its San Vicente location on Saturday, April 11, 2026, at 11 a.m., a Westlake Village transplant bringing a multi-restaurant kitchen and marketplace format to the Westside. The lineup pairs Gaby's from cookbook author Gaby Dalkin, Mini Kabob from chef Armen Martirosyan and his family, and Mixtape, the gluten-free and seed-oil-free burger and chicken concept from Grammy winner Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, alongside Frank Pinello's Palermo Pizza Club.
Four kitchens under one roof is a format Brentwood did not previously have. What it changes on the ground is timing. A Country Mart lunch is a commitment to one counter. A Neighborly lunch is a group of four ordering from four different concepts and meeting at a table, which is why early reviews describe it as a Westside location that draws groups splitting orders across menus.
The second arrival is quieter but louder in what it implies. Savta, the handroll concept from the Original Farmers Market, opened a more spacious second location in Brentwood with the same handrolls, including tuna with truffle and jalapeño, red snapper with yuzu kosho and cilantro, and one with uni, caviar, and toro, plus a weekday lunch special of an appetizer and three handrolls for $32. Handroll bars are a Sawtelle format. They do not typically travel north of Wilshire. This one did.
A Weekend, Mapped by the Hour
The practical result for a resident is that the Saturday and Sunday circuits now have two anchor points instead of one, and they connect on foot. Below is the walking order most useful this summer, working east from the Mart.
| Time | Stop | Why now |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 a.m. Sun | Brentwood Farmers Market, 741 Gretna Green Way | Sunday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., year-round |
| 11:00 a.m. Wed | Country Mart courtyard | Cassidy Preschool story time in the courtyard on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. all summer |
| 12:00 p.m. | Neighborly, San Vicente | Four counters, one table |
| 3:00 p.m. | Diesel, A Bookstore | Author events including Jessica Knoll discussing and signing Helpless on Thursday, July 9 at 7 p.m. |
| 6:00 p.m. | Savta Brentwood | Handrolls, walk-in |
| 8:00 p.m. | Country Mart fire pit | Outdoor dining around the large courtyard fire pit |
Two of those six stops did not exist in Brentwood a year ago. That is the shift.
The Country Mart Is Doing Something Different Now
The Mart is not standing still. Its programming this summer reads less like a shopping center calendar and more like a small cultural venue. A Wimbledon afternoon in the courtyard with rosé, strawberries and cream, timed to the opening of Varley at the Mart, ran alongside a courtyard big-screen viewing of Team USA versus Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday, July 1 at 5 p.m. The Diesel calendar carried three author events in a single week in mid-June, including Jonathan Jakubowicz on Thursday, June 18 at 6:30 p.m. in conversation with actor Edgar Ramirez, discussing The Adventures of Juan Planchard.
None of that is retail in the traditional sense. It is the Mart competing for attention in the same window that Neighborly is now competing for, which explains why the courtyard is being programmed harder than in prior summers. For a resident, that competition is the benefit. Wednesday morning has story time. Wednesday evening has soccer on a big screen. Sunday has fried chicken from Farmshop that was offered for pre-order on Sunday, June 21 from noon to 2 p.m. as part of a Father's Day root beer float and fried chicken pairing, with a complimentary float for dads.
The Signal in Montana's Address
The most telling piece of news this spring was not a menu. It was a lease. The h.wood Group, the company behind Delilah and The Nice Guy, announced Montana's, an intimate clubhouse concept, slated for an early 2027 opening at 11920 San Vicente Blvd. with a speakeasy-inspired lounge and restaurant. Co-founder Brian Toll framed the location choice as deliberate, saying the group put thought into these locations and wanted L.A. neighborhoods where locals were looking for elevated dining concepts.
Read the address, not the branding. 11920 San Vicente sits on the corridor, not inside the Mart. That is the second consecutive high-profile operator to make that call in a fifteen-month window. Neighborly's San Vicente choice could be read as one group's read on the boulevard. Montana's confirms the pattern.
For a resident, the practical takeaway is scheduling. The stretch of San Vicente between roughly 26th Street and Bundy is now dense enough to plan an evening around without moving the car. That was not true in summer 2024.
What Has Not Changed, and Why That Matters
The infrastructure that makes any of this walkable is the coral tree median. Los Angeles Council District 11's page identifies San Vicente as one of the neighborhood's main commercial corridors and highlights the coral tree median as one of the area's defining visual features, and the Brentwood-Pacific Palisades Community Plan includes a San Vicente Scenic Corridor specific plan that governs the corridor's landscaped and controlled appearance. That framework is why the sidewalks are wide, the trees are mature, and a new restaurant can plausibly assume foot traffic between blocks.
The Sunday market at Gretna Green is the other constant. Every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., the market runs at the corner of San Vicente and Gretna Green Way, adjacent to the Brentwood Country Club, which places it a short walk from both the Mart and the new San Vicente arrivals. That geographic accident is now doing work it did not have to do two years ago.
One Sunday, Start to Finish
Start at Gretna Green at nine for stone fruit and flowers. Walk west on San Vicente under the coral trees. Coffee wherever your usual is. Late morning at Diesel for a browse, then across the courtyard to the fire pit. Lunch at Neighborly, four counters, one table, split whatever the group orders. Afternoon at the Getty if the weather holds, or Palisades Park along the 26-mile bike path if it does not. Back to San Vicente in the early evening for handrolls at Savta. If you want to see the room Montana's is inheriting, walk past 11920 on the way to the car.
That is a full Brentwood Sunday that touches six operators, two of which arrived in 2026, one of which arrives in 2027, and none of which required you to leave the neighborhood.
The Undercurrent Worth Watching
Neighborly's operator, in a Westside Today interview around its April 11 opening, framed the arrival as a Westside statement rather than an outpost. The multi-restaurant casual dining spot received its final sign-offs from the city of Los Angeles ahead of the Saturday, April 11 opening at 11 a.m., and the h.wood announcement three weeks later positioned Brentwood alongside Newport Beach and West Hollywood in a coordinated Southern California expansion.
Two independent groups made the same call inside a month. When that happens on a boulevard that already has the sidewalks, the trees, and a Sunday market anchoring one end, the reasonable read is that the corridor is entering a phase of consolidation rather than a one-off opening cycle. Brentwood residents will feel that first as more places to walk to on a Wednesday night. What follows tends to be quieter and slower, and it is worth watching from the sidewalk.
If you own a home along the San Vicente corridor or in the streets that feed it and would like a considered read on how your block is being reshaped by the summer's arrivals, The Haskell Group is available for a private conversation. Request a Bespoke Valuation.
