The fate of one of the most iconic restaurants along Pacific Coast Highway is in limbo months after its destruction in January’s Palisades fire, but in an about-face, California State Parks says it will work to allow the Reel Inn to rebuild on or near its original site.
The funky seafood shack strung with colorful Christmas lights and decorated with aquariums, surfboards and other nautical bric-a-brac served more than 1,100 meals on its busiest days, and attracted generations of locals, surfers and tourists for nearly 40 years in its dirt-lot location across the highway from Topanga Beach.
Following the Palisades fire — which also destroyed dining landmarks Moonshadows, Cholada Thai and other businesses on PCH — husband-and-wife owners Andy Leonard and Teddy Seraphine-Leonard immediately said they hoped to rebuild. While they’ve recently weighed reopening the Reel Inn elsewhere, their first choice is returning to the restaurant’s original, longtime home at the base of Topanga. But without a clear timeline from the state, that possibility remains opaque.
“There’s no one person in charge of this project,” Leonard said. “It’s one of those 400-headed monsters. We don’t know any bad guys at State Parks, but it’s just like walking into the post office and ordering a pizza.”
They had owned the building but leased the land from the state and hoped to enter discussions over its future. In early August, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, the owners received a letter from the California Department of Parks and Recreation that said they could not rebuild on the plot of land but that they could have the opportunity to bid against other concessionaires to temporarily run a food truck nearby.
Leonard told The Times he’d taken the response as “an upraised middle finger.”
Social media lit up with angry comments and general outcry at the outcome. The option not only to operate a food truck but to have to bid on the opportunity, Leonard said, felt insulting. The cost of purchasing the truck, renting a commissary kitchen and permitting the operation could cost well over $100,000, and would ultimately only be temporary — if they won the bidding process to begin with.
Then, in early September, California State Parks sent Leonard and Seraphine-Leonard a new letter “to reaffirm our commitment to thoughtfully exploring a path forward that makes it possible for the Reel Inn to thrive on State Parks property.”
“Some of the department’s recent communications with the Leonards may have not fully conveyed our values and intent to partner with them,” Marty Greenstein, deputy director of communications for California State Parks, told The Times via email.
Last week, California State Parks told The Times that the agency is now working with the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom and local philanthropic groups “to rebuild the infrastructure lost at the site.”
“As funding is secured,” the representative said, “our intent is to bring back the Reel Inn and the other displaced businesses as key tenants.”
After the update from the Parks Department, Leonard said, “the possibility is now glimmering.”
Representatives have not yet provided a timeline for a return to the site, an idea of what next steps might be or how the restaurant might play into the redeveloped lot.
“They think the Reel Inn is as cool as canned beer, and they really want to make life good for everyone,” Leonard said, “but they have absolutely no idea what the time frame or the reality of that might look like.”
The Reel Inn’s location near the Topanga Lagoon is historic: The plot of land has served as rodeo grounds, a small residential enclave and countless filming locations. The Reel Inn’s structure housed multiple seafood restaurants before Leonard, now 77, took ownership of the Reel Inn after a career photographing and recording the Grateful Dead and owning a nightclub in New York City.
When the fire tore through the Palisades and portions of Topanga and Pacific Coast Highway, the owners of the Reel Inn had roughly one month remaining on their lease. But they also had “a handshake deal with state parks for a multiyear extension that [they] never saw on paper,” according to Leonard.
After the fire demolished the restaurant, and more than 30 structures in Topanga State Park and Will Rogers State Historic Park, the space became a central hub for local and federal agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers as teams began debris removal around burn sites.
Leonard and Seraphine-Leonard hoped they could continue the discussion when these agencies vacated the stretch of land, but then saw that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power erected temporary buildings and more fences while rebuilding and reconnecting its services affected by the fire.
When the restaurateurs received word that the state would cancel the restaurant’s lease, they wondered if the decision was tied to the long-planned Topanga Lagoon Restoration Project. The extensive project would rebuild the nearby PCH bridge, and multiple plans for the Reel Inn’s grounds, including possible demolition or renovation for a concessionaire, had been proposed.
“Due to these changes [fires] at the site, State Parks plans to reassess/reenvision the opportunities for Visitor Services,” the latest update from the project said. “Public meetings will take place in the Fall of 2025,” but plans will now most likely “use a portion of this space to provide low-cost overnight accommodations as well as enhanced visitor amenities.”
“Ninety-nine percent of the people doing this project have never been to the Reel Inn,” Leonard said.
The family has considered reopening elsewhere and has been approached to open new locations in L.A. and Orange County as well as merge with other restaurants or assume existing leases, but a beach location historically worked best for the affordable seafood concept.
“We’ve had four Reel Inns,” Leonard said. “We’ve been in shopping centers. We were on the Third Street Promenade for 13 years. It works much better at the beach because the food’s cheap, it’s really good. It’s that sawdust-on-the-floor kind of thing, and you can’t do that in a shopping mall.”
Their children have offered to one day help run the Reel Inn, should it be rebuilt, but more immediately they’re discussing a cookbook.
The family plans to publish the Reel Inn’s recipes, which were originally gathered decades ago as the restaurant grew with multiple locations. It would detail how to make their secret sauces, spice blends, seafood specials and more.
During the fire they received thousands of photos from fans, including multigenerational shots of dining on the patio, and a bride who wore a full ballgown to the space after her wedding. It proved to be a favorite restaurant of countless Angelenos, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, who chose that location as the place to meet her future stepchildren for the first time. These stories, Leonard said, could easily be included for a cookbook that’s also part yearbook.
Fans might also see bottles of the Reel Inn’s house-made chipotle hot sauce in the future.
And, one day, the restaurant could return: ideally in its original location, but perhaps somewhere new. If rebuilt, it could feature more space in the kitchen or other tweaks that weren’t permitted in the decades prior.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s going to reveal itself,” Leonard said. “But we really feel quite strongly, we have to do something. It’s inappropriate in our minds to just let the Reel Inn tip over and die.”
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