Order the same thing you always order at Nate 'n Al's this month and the room around you looks exactly like it did a decade ago. Leather booths, a deli case of smoked fish, a waitress who has probably worked the floor longer than some of the restaurants two blocks over have existed. Walk out the door onto Beverly Drive and the neighborhood does not match the counter you just left. Within about five months this year, three of the Golden Triangle's longest-running dining rooms changed hands. The deli that anchors the corner where all of this began has not, not yet, though the paperwork for its exit is already approved.
That sequencing is the story here. Not that Beverly Hills got new restaurants, which happens every year, but that three specific, decades-old addresses turned over in the same stretch of 2026, while the oldest of them all is still standing on its original lease, judging a pickle contest at the farmers market like nothing has changed.
Two Blocks, Five Months, Three New Occupants
The Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills at 9850 Wilshire Boulevard opened Baldi on February 18, a Tuscan steakhouse from Edoardo "Edo" Baldi, whose family also runs Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica and e.Baldi, marking twenty years in Beverly Hills this year. Baldi took over the hotel's ground-floor dining room, previously home to Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Beverly Hills restaurant.
Six weeks later, on March 28, Azur opened at 453 North Canon Drive, a French-Mediterranean concept from husband-and-wife hospitality team Erik and Florence Chol, built around wood-fired Riviera plates and a lounge program with DJ sets.
In May, the Waldorf's rooftop turned over as well. What had operated for years as The Rooftop by JG, still carrying Vongerichten's name on the menu, became Gemma, a Pan-Asian dining room from Chef Peleg Miron, who has run the property's kitchens since 2022. Miron described the new menu as "a reflection of the places that shaped me across Southeast Asia, Southern California, and Hawaii."
Then on May 26, Bad Roman opened at 267 North Canon Drive, in the space that had housed The Palm steakhouse. Bad Roman is the first West Coast restaurant from New York's Quality Branded Hospitality, the group behind Don Angie.
Here is what those four dates look like laid out against the addresses they landed on.
| Date | Address | Previous Tenant | New Arrival |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 18, 2026 | 9850 Wilshire Blvd, Waldorf Astoria (downstairs) | Jean-Georges Beverly Hills | Baldi |
| March 28, 2026 | 453 N. Canon Drive | New build-out | Azur |
| May 2026 | 9850 Wilshire Blvd, Waldorf Astoria (rooftop) | The Rooftop by JG | Gemma |
| May 26, 2026 | 267 N. Canon Drive | The Palm | Bad Roman |
Four openings, three of them replacing tenants who had held those rooms for years, all within a walk short enough that you could hit every address in an evening without moving your car.
What the New Owners Actually Built
The interesting part is not who is cooking. It is what each operator chose to build inside a room that used to mean something specific.
Bad Roman's design, by Brooklyn firm GRT Architects, who also designed Alba in West Hollywood, replaced The Palm's dark-wood steakhouse formality with maximalist floral booths and glossy red tabletops, plus a signature fried eggplant "pull-a-parm" that arrives at the table as a large-format starter. The room carries a celebratory energy that differs from the more reserved register The Palm held for decades.
Gemma's rooftop, reworked by Franco-Italian designer Marc Ange, softened what had been a more clubby JG identity into what Ange called a space that moves "from a panoramic daytime environment into something more cinematic and enveloping at night." The result leans into tiki-inflected cocktails, a Scorpion Bowl built for sharing, and weekend brunch, positioning the space as an all-day draw rather than a dinner-only destination.
Baldi, designed by Ezequiel Farca Studio, took the opposite route from Bad Roman. It kept the steakhouse register but rebuilt it around an olive wood-fire grill and an aperitivo list, trading Jean-Georges' French fine-dining formality for something closer to a family table with a wine list.
Put those three side by side and a pattern holds. None of the new operators simply refreshed a legacy concept. Each one replaced a specific mood, hushed, clubby, formal, with something built for a longer, louder, more photographed evening. That is a design decision as much as a culinary one, and it changes how these two blocks feel to walk through on a Friday night compared to five years ago.
The One Address Still Holding Its Lease
Nate 'n Al's opened in 1945 at 414 North Beverly Drive, founded by Nate Rimer and Al Mendelson with room for thirty customers. It grew into the deli where industry deals got made over lox and eggs, where Larry King ate breakfast for more than forty years, and where a longtime waitress named Catherine "Kaye" Coleman built her own following of regulars before her death in 2004. The founding family sold in 2018, and in 2019 longtime customers Shelli and Irving Azoff bought the deli along with a group that included Jeff Shell, Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford.
The Beverly Hills Planning Commission has approved a Development Plan Review for a three-story commercial structure at 414 North Beverly Drive, the deli's current site. Shelli Azoff has said the restaurant will stay at that address for at least twelve more months while the lease runs out. Building owner Stephen Cloobeck has said publicly that the deli's next home will sit one block south, at the corner of Beverly Drive and Dayton Way. Azoff has not confirmed that detail. What both agree on is that the deli is not closing. It is packing up an address it has held since before the Golden Triangle had that name.
As of this month, nothing has moved. The counter is still the same counter. Sant Ambroeus, the Milanese cafe and gelateria, is opening nearby at 301 North Beverly Drive, close enough to Nate 'n Al's original block that the two will likely share a sidewalk for a while before one of them changes its sign.
There is a smaller, less obvious thread that ties Nate 'n Al's to daily life here beyond the dining room. The Beverly Hills Farmers' Market runs every Sunday, rain or shine, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. along Civic Center Drive between Third Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, with free two-hour parking in the Civic Center garage. Each August, the market runs PickleFest, its annual contest for Best Dill Pickle in Beverly Hills, and for more than a decade the deli judging that contest has been Nate 'n Al's. It is a small, specific civic role, the kind that does not show up on a menu, and it is one more reason the deli's eventual move will register as more than a restaurant closing.
What's Actually on the Calendar This Fall
None of this requires waiting for the deli to move to have a reason to walk these blocks. The city's free Fall Art Show returns October 17 and 18 to Beverly Gardens Park, running 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days along Santa Monica Boulevard between Rodeo and Beverly Drives, with more than 245 artists showing painting, sculpture, ceramics and photography alongside a wine-and-beer garden and food trucks.
The following weekend brings the second annual Beverly Hills Autumn BBQ, October 18 from 6 to 9 p.m. at The Maybourne Beverly Hills and the adjacent Beverly Cañon Gardens, both on North Canon Drive. Wolfgang Puck is partnering with The Maybourne on the event, which benefits No Kid Hungry and raised fifty thousand dollars at last year's edition. Participating chefs include Puck and his son Byron of Spago Beverly Hills, Nancy Silverton and Alisa Vannah of Chi Spacca, Burt Bakman of SLAB, and Frank Ostini of the Hitching Post, among others.
Between the art show, the barbecue, and four restaurants that redrew two blocks of Canon and Beverly this spring, there is more reason than usual to walk this stretch of the Golden Triangle before the year is out. Nate 'n Al's will still be there when you do, at least for now, serving the same pastrami at the same counter it has held since before most of what surrounds it existed at all.
If the way a neighborhood remakes its public rooms tells you something about where its architectural mood is headed, that is exactly the kind of detail Eric Haskell Group pays attention to across Beverly Hills and the rest of the coast. Reach out if you want to talk about what any of it means for a specific address.
