Every Sunday morning, folding tables go up along the 9300 block of Civic Center Drive, and by eight o'clock, Beverly Hills residents are already picking through strawberries and fresh greens before the heat sets in. Sometime in August, those same tables hold something different: jars of homemade pickled cucumbers, watermelon rind, and whatever else contestants have fermented in their kitchens for PickleFest, the market's annual contest for Best Dill Pickle in Beverly Hills and the wide-open category called I Can Pickle That! For more than a decade, the deli judging that contest and handing out the prize money has been Nate 'n Al's. This year, the sponsor doing the judging is also running out the clock on the only address it has ever had.
A Sunday Ritual Older Than the Buildings Around It
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. It is the kind of fixture that residents plan a weekend around rather than a destination that shows up on a visitor's checklist. Beyond the produce stalls, the market hosts a running calendar of small traditions: a Pie Bake in June, a Kid Zone every third Sunday, and PickleFest in August, sponsored every year by the same delicatessen, more than 80 years old, a few blocks north.
That sponsorship is not incidental. Nate 'n Al's has judged the contest since it started, awarding market money to the best entries in a city where the deli itself has become something like a civic landmark. This year, the contest arrives at an odd moment for its longtime sponsor. The building Nate 'n Al's has occupied since the Truman administration is scheduled to be torn down.
The Deli That Outlasted Everyone Else on the Block
Nate 'n Al's opened in 1945 at 414 North Beverly Drive, founded by friends Nate Rimer and Al Mendelson with an initial seating capacity of thirty people. Over the following decades it became the kind of place where industry deals got made over lox and eggs. Larry King was a regular morning customer there for more than 40 years, and a waitress named Catherine "Kaye" Coleman worked the floor for over two decades before her death in 2004, gathering a following of regulars along the way.
By 2018, the founding family's grandchildren put the restaurant up for sale, and in 2019 it was bought by longtime customers Shelli and Irving Azoff, along with a buyer group that included Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Jeff Shell and Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford. The deli briefly closed in March 2020 as pandemic shutdowns hit Beverly Hills, then reopened and has kept the booths and counter stools running under the Azoffs ever since.
Now the Building Itself Is Coming Down
On June 10, 2025, the Beverly Hills Planning Commission approved a development plan review for a three-story, 14,448-square-foot commercial building at 414 North Beverly Drive, replacing the existing one-story structure that has housed Nate 'n Al's for eight decades. At the time, Azoff said the deli's lease at that address ran for a minimum of twelve months past the hearing, which puts the likely expiration earlier this year. Whether the actual move has already happened by the time you're reading this or is only weeks away, this stretch of summer sits right at the edge of that window.
Shelli Azoff addressed the situation directly after the vote.
"We bought the restaurant for that reason, to make sure that yet another family business didn't go under."
The building's owner, Stephen Cloobeck, has said publicly that Nate 'n Al's new home will sit one block south, at the corner of Beverly Drive and Dayton Way. Azoff has not confirmed every detail of the new space, but she has been consistent on one point: the deli is not closing. It is relocating within the same few blocks it has occupied since before most of the restaurants now opening around it existed at all.
Meanwhile, the Blocks Around It Are Getting an Entirely New Menu
While one of Beverly Hills's oldest tenants prepares to change addresses, the surrounding streets are filling in with names that have never had a Beverly Hills location before. According to the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau's own 2026 announcement and local business reporting, recent and upcoming additions include:
- Marea Beverly Hills, the first West Coast outpost of the acclaimed New York restaurant
- 88 Club, a supper-club-style restaurant from Top Chef winner Mei Lin
- Pura Vida, which took over the former Tocaya Organica space for its first West Coast location
- Levain Bakery, known nationally for its six-ounce cookies
- Bad Roman, the New York-based Quality Branded group's West Coast debut, occupying the former Palm steakhouse space at 267 North Canon Drive
- A new Tuscan-inspired steakhouse from chef Edoardo Baldi, which replaced the Jean-Georges restaurant on the ground floor of the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills in February 2026
That is on top of a Milanese cafe and gelateria making its Beverly Hills debut on North Beverly Drive, and a fine-dining concept from a Michelin three-star chef that recently opened above one of Rodeo Drive's fashion flagships, marking her return to Los Angeles dining after nearly two decades away. Between the retail additions on Rodeo Drive, including a three-story Cartier boutique and a Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton building, and the restaurant openings on Beverly and Canon, this is one of the more concentrated waves of new construction and new tenants the Golden Triangle has seen in years.
Two Kinds of Beverly Hills, Sharing the Same Few Blocks
Look at these two stories side by side and a pattern shows up that neither one tells on its own. The businesses with the deepest roots in Beverly Hills are not being priced out of the city. They are being compressed into smaller footprints and nudged a block over, while the buildings large enough to house a 45,000-square-foot flagship or a three-story retail concept go up in their place. Nate 'n Al's is not an exception to that pattern. It is close to a textbook example of it: a delicatessen more than 80 years old, sitting on land now valuable enough to support a much larger commercial building, kept alive by owners who chose to move the restaurant rather than let the address end it.
For someone who has lived in Beverly Hills for years, this is not really a story about restaurants opening and closing. It is a story about what it takes for something familiar to survive next to something entirely new, on streets where both are now competing for the same corner lots.
What Sunday Actually Looks Like This Year
None of this changes the shape of a Beverly Hills Sunday so much as it changes what fills it in. The farmers market still opens at 8 a.m. The pickle jars still line up on folding tables in August. The deli that has sponsored the contest for more than a decade is still handing out the prize money, even while its own lease runs down. A few blocks over, the storefront that used to be Tocaya Organica now serves a different menu, and the space that used to house the Palm has a new name on the awning.
Residents who have watched this neighborhood for a while are used to storefronts turning over. What is less common is watching an institution old enough to have served Larry King breakfast for four decades get pulled into that same cycle, and choose to keep going rather than fold.
Denise Marks Group spends a lot of time paying attention to exactly this kind of detail, not because every corner of Beverly Hills shows up in a listing, but because the blocks that hold their value tend to be the ones where something old and something new can both find a way to stay. If you are curious what your own piece of this neighborhood is worth while all of this plays out around it, request a free home valuation whenever you are ready.
