When The Country Club posted its farewell notice this year, it pointed regulars toward "our sister restaurants, Playa Mesa and Wild Goose, both located on 17th Street." That reads like a clean handoff. One door closes, two stay open down the block. Weeks later, Playa Mesa taped up its own goodbye note. The handoff the Country Club had just promised its regulars quietly stopped being true.
If you eat on 17th Street more than once a month, you've probably already pieced together that something bigger than two random closures happened here this summer. The full picture is more specific than "another indie couldn't make rent." It's a single, well-known local operator pulling back from two of its own restaurants on the same block, in the same season, right as national chains moved into the real estate that pullback left behind.
A Redirect That Didn't Hold
Here's the actual sequence. The Country Club, at 330 E 17th in the old Pierce Street Annex building, one of Orange County's oldest drinking and dining addresses, closed and told departing regulars to redirect their evenings to Playa Mesa and Wild Goose. Playa Mesa served its final dish on July 31, 2026, ending an eight-year run at 428 E 17th. The owners posted on Instagram that they were closing for good, thanking the neighborhood for "every meal, every celebration, and every memory." No reason was given.
So the redirect that The Country Club offered its own customers had, within weeks, lost one of its two destinations. That's not a coincidence of timing on a busy commercial strip. It's the same ownership group closing two of its own venues back to back.
One Ownership Group, Half the Block
Playa Mesa and The Country Club were both built by local restaurateurs Mario Marovic and Andrew Gabriel, the same pair behind Wild Goose Tavern, Dory Deli, Stag Bar, and Malarky's Irish Pub. That's not a footnote. It means the story residents have been telling each other, that outside money and national brands are squeezing out the neighborhood spots, doesn't quite hold up here. The two biggest closures on the block this year weren't chains beating out independents. They were one hometown group choosing to step back from two of its own six concepts, on its own terms, while Wild Goose and its other properties kept running.
The Back Bay Buzz newsletter put the tension plainly, noting that Playa Mesa and The Country Club couldn't make it work "but the KFC across the street with more parking than a KFC will ever need has been selling lukewarm fried chicken for over a decade." It's a fair jab, and it points at something real: rent, format, and staffing math on this stretch of 17th don't always sort themselves the way you'd expect from foot traffic alone.
Before Playa Mesa moved into 428 E 17th in 2018, that same address spent years as a Ruby's Diner. This corner of the block has changed hands more than once, and the operator behind the last two changes just changed its mind about two-sixths of its own footprint.
What's Actually Moving Into 428 East 17th
The space isn't sitting empty for long. Zov's, the Mediterranean restaurant chain the Karamardian family has run since 1987, announced it will open its fifth Orange County location at 428 E 17th, in the old Playa Mesa space, before the end of 2026. Zov's already operates in Tustin, Irvine, Newport Coast, and San Clemente, where it opened its most recent location earlier this year. An official opening date for the Costa Mesa spot hasn't been set, but the family has said they're aiming to be open before the year is out.
That's worth sitting with for a second. The address that spent eight years as a bright, upscale Mexican kitchen with hand-pressed tortillas is about to become a forty-year-old family Mediterranean brand's newest storefront. Two very different kitchens, same four walls.
The Daytime Side Got Busier Too
While the evening end of the block absorbed those closures, the daytime end picked up a new anchor. CAVA opened its third Orange County location at 350 E 17th this year, joining FishBonz Seafood Grill and Paris Baguette at the new-construction development on that stretch. It's a fast-casual, build-your-own-bowl format, closer in spirit to a quick lunch counter than to a sit-down dinner room, and it landed in a spot that didn't have much competition in that lane before.
Meanwhile, over at Paseo 17, the small courtyard center anchored by Milligram, the kitchen renovation planned for earlier this year kept the rest of the courtyard's shops and restaurants open and running throughout the work. That's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that tells you how an operator reads demand: enough confidence to reinvest in the space, not enough uncertainty to empty it out first.
Where the Rotation Actually Lands This Fall
None of this means 17th Street lost its character. It means the map shifted slightly, and the businesses that were already doing steady weekday and weekend business absorbed the difference. If you're deciding where to actually go this month, the reliable rotation still runs through names that didn't change:
- Wild Goose Tavern, the other half of the Marovic and Gabriel group still open on the block, now picking up more of the after-dark crowd that used to split time with The Country Club
- The 17th Street Deli, which has been slicing Boar's Head meats and C'est Si Bon baguettes at 369 E 17th since 1989
- Hi-Time Wine Cellars, still running one of the largest underground wine cellars in the country, with regular tastings
- Plums Café and Sidecar Doughnuts for the breakfast and weekday lunch crowd
- Milligram at Paseo 17, back to full service after this year's kitchen work
That list matters more than the headline openings, because it's the part of the block a resident actually leans on week to week. The destination spots come and go with an operator's decisions. The daily bench underneath them is what keeps 17th Street feeling like 17th Street even when two of its longest-running names disappear in the same summer.
What this really tells you about the neighborhood isn't that chains are winning or that independents are losing. It's that one local group, the same two names behind roughly a third of the block's identity for close to a decade, decided this was the year to consolidate. The real estate they let go of didn't sit vacant. It went to two operators with very different track records, one a forty-year family chain expanding carefully, the other a fast-casual brand testing its third foothold in the county. Both bets are on the same six-block stretch of Costa Mesa continuing to draw people who already live within walking distance of it.
If you want the fuller texture of what daily life looks like on this stretch beyond the restaurant turnover, our earlier look at everyday life around 17th Street covers the rest of the corridor's routine.
Mason | Taylor Associates keeps close tabs on the small shifts that shape daily life in Eastside Costa Mesa, from who's opening on 17th Street to how a block like this holds its character through turnover. If you're weighing a move in this neighborhood, or just want a second opinion on what a corner of the market is actually doing, schedule a confidential buying or selling consultation with our team.
