A vital beach neighborhood restaurant returns to Venice’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard this week. After a March 2023 fire forced it to close temporarily, the Tasting Kitchen, led by chef Casey Lane , reopens on July 16, 2026 with a refreshed facade and interior,
as well as a menu that will please longtime loyalists coupled with new dishes prepared over charcoal and fire.
Since opening the Tasting Kitchen in 2009, chef Casey Lane has kept busy: In recent years, Lane has worked as the culinary program lead at Ghisallo and Jyan Isaac Bread. In 2018, he developed a compelling menu at West Hollywood’s Viale de Romani in the La Peer Hotel before it closed in 2020. Lane also worked on menus for Downtown’s Hotel Figueroa and partnered with Palisociety while redeveloping the menu at Marco Polo at the Silver Lake Pool & Inn and Simonette in Culver City. Over the last three years, Lane and the Tasting Kitchen team explored what to change at the beloved Venice restaurant, embarking on a long process to secure permits, oversee building construction, reimagine the interior design, and form a 2026 reopening menu. Lane tells Eater that diners will find their old-time favorites and some new reasons to visit. “The idea is a restoration, not a rehabilitation,” says Lane.
In the kitchen, the team reconfigured the preparation and cooking line and installed a Josper oven with charcoal and wood to prepare the new skin-on mackerel escabeche. Immediacy is key to the new menu: If Lane likes something found at the farmers’ markets in the morning, it will end up on the menu that night. The team kept the shrimp taglierini, spaghetti pomodoro, and the bucatini all’Amatriciana, the latter of which received a glow-up with onion, Pecorino Romano, and tomato conserva. Other familiar dishes include gnocco fritto and roasted chicken with only slight adjustments. To start or finish, diners can find a firm selection of cheeses including a Chemin du Brûlé from Canada and creamy Garrotxa from Spain. A culatello rillette and mandarinquat marmalata can be paired with prosciutto.
Main dishes feature a garlicky and pil pil verde–roasted turbot, as well as two types of steak, including a picanha with Spanish chimichurri and Bordelaise sauce. The team expanded the appetizer menu with a stone fruit aguachile spot prawn and crispy vegetable salad centered around broccolini, peas, sungolds, gooseberry, and puffed buckwheat. Braised pork, ‘nduja, and béchamel croquettes make exciting newcomers to start the night with. If you let Lane take the wheel, a $150 chef’s choice menu includes an unfussy selection of five dishes split into appetizers, mains, and sides, feeling familiar to chef Marcus Jernmark’s $150 menu at Pico-Robertson’s Lielle.
Before the makeover, the original Tasting Kitchen had muted lighting in a vibey but lo-fi dining room with ‘90s and ’00s hip-hop blaring from the speakers, where it served well-heeled Venetians and became a quintessential Venice restaurant from 2009 until 2020; during the pandemic, a front parklet became an al fresco dining area. In 2026, design firm Matt Winter Group brought in or built all-new furniture and banquettes and modified the main dining rooms, which include a 32-person dining area, 24-seat mezzanine, and a 34-seat bar with built-in shelving. It’s a smart rework that brings the room up to date — a little less bohemian, a little more mid-century-meets-2026.
Lane hopes the new Tasting Kitchen will lure longtime fans to revisit and entice new ones to give the restaurant a chance to be as full and vibrational as it was before the pandemic.
“How do we keep the magic and how do we apply our new experiences, abilities, and a carefully selected group of people who bring something to our ethos?” Lane says. “That’s what the Tasting Kitchen shows now.”
The Tasting Kitchen is located at 1633 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291. During opening week, the restaurant is open Thursday through Sunday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., and the week of July 20 from Wednesday through Sunday. Eventually, the Tasting Kitchen will be open daily with later hours on weekends in August.
