Taco Loco Is Back in Laguna Canyon, and the Clock Is Ticking on Sawdust's 60th Summer

Drive past the old Taco Loco storefront on Pacific Coast Highway and you will not find tacos. The space that fed generations of Laguna locals sits closed, its awning still faintly legible if you know where to look. But Chef Gonzalo Rebollar's food never actually left town. It moved half a mile inland, under the eucalyptus trees of Laguna Canyon, where it now exists for exactly nine weeks a year inside the Sawdust Art Festival.

That is the part of this year's Sawdust story that most visitor guides skip past on their way to talking about pottery booths. The festival's food lineup is not just concessions. It is a working archive of restaurants Laguna has lost, kept alive one summer at a time, and this year's run ends on a fixed date: September 6, 2026. After that, Taco Loco disappears again until next June, if it comes back at all.

The Storefront Closed. The Tent Didn't.

The Sawdust Art Festival's ticket page describes Taco Loco plainly: Chef Gonzalo Rebollar's restaurant is "a former PCH staple" now serving inside the festival grounds. That phrasing matters. It is an admission that the standalone restaurant closed and that the only way most people taste that menu today is by walking into Laguna Canyon during the nine weeks the festival runs.

This is not how most people think about Sawdust. The festival markets itself as an art market, and it is one, with more than 180 local artists exhibiting original work along sawdust-covered paths. But for a certain kind of longtime resident, the food tents have become the more reliable draw, because they are sometimes the only place a shuttered neighborhood spot still operates. Taco Loco is the clearest example this year. It will not appear on a restaurant reservation app. It will not have regular hours next month. It exists at 935 Laguna Canyon Road, and only until the gates close for the season.

What's Actually New in the Canyon This Year

Two other food additions are worth knowing before the run ends, because neither has been at Sawdust before this season.

AhbA is making its festival debut, described on the festival's own materials as a beachside cottage restaurant serving elevated American fare, including a classic burger. It is a genuinely new concession, not a returning favorite, so this is the first summer anyone can walk into Laguna Canyon and order from it.

The Cove by Starfish has become known this year for a specific item: a churro bao bun that the festival itself now calls one of its signature treats. It is a small, strange, very Laguna combination, a Mexican pastry folded into a Chinese steamed bun, and it did not exist at Sawdust before this season either.

Between the tacos that used to have their own address, the burger spot that just opened its first tent, and a churro bao bun nobody was making a year ago, the food side of Sawdust in 2026 has changed more than the art side has. The 180-plus artists are largely the same names locals have watched for years. The concessions are where this year's real turnover happened.

The Free Nights Locals Actually Use

Sawdust is not free, but residents have more no-cost access than the general public realizes, and the schedule is more specific than "locals get in free."

That Thursday policy is the one most residents underuse. It is not a single promotional day, it is every Thursday of the run, all day, with a valid ID at the gate. For a household deciding whether a Thursday evening after work is worth the drive up Laguna Canyon Road, the honest answer is that it costs nothing but parking.

Parking itself is the real friction. Metered spots line Frontage Road and Laguna Canyon Road directly in front of the festival, but they take credit cards only. The larger paid lots, including Lot 10 and Lot 11 on Laguna Canyon Road, sit a short walk from downtown. On Friday through Sunday, a free trolley runs between downtown and the festival from Lot 16, which is the least stressful option if the metered spots are full, which they often are by early evening.

Nine Weeks, Not a Season

It is easy to treat Sawdust as a fixture, something that is simply always there every summer, and lose track of the fact that it runs on a hard calendar. This year that calendar is June 26 through September 6, 2026, a 66-day run in its 60th year. A single-day adult ticket is $12.50, seniors 65 and older pay $10.50, and youth ages 6 to 12 pay $5.50. Children under 5 get in free, and veterans with military ID get in free any day the festival is open, no ticket required.

For residents planning more than one visit, or planning to bring visiting family through multiple Laguna art venues, the Passport to the Arts is worth knowing about even if you never intended to buy one. For $29, it covers one entry each to Sawdust, the Festival of Arts, and Laguna Art-A-Fair, plus a one-time free parking pass at the Act V lot and a set of discounts at other local art organizations. It is a single purchase that solves the parking problem at least once and covers three separate festivals most residents already mean to visit anyway.

Once September 6 passes, the canyon empties out until Winter Fantasy takes over the same grounds from November 20 through December 20, 2026, a different event with a different feel, more holiday market than summer art village. Taco Loco's status for that run has not been announced. Neither has whether AhbA sticks around past its debut season.

The Real Deadline Isn't the Art

None of the roughly 180 artists at Sawdust are going anywhere. Most of them have booths every year and will have booths next year. The actual scarcity in 2026 is on the food side, where a restaurant with no other current address, a debut concession with no track record yet, and a pastry mashup invented for this specific run are all operating on the same nine-week clock as the art market around them.

If there is a restaurant you have been meaning to revisit, or a name from Pacific Coast Highway you assumed was simply gone for good, Laguna Canyon is worth checking before the first weekend of September. After that, it is a wait until next June to find out if it comes back at all.

Living in Laguna Beach means running into these small closures and quiet returns constantly, the kind of local knowledge that never makes it into a visitor's guide. If you are ever curious about what else is changing in the neighborhoods around you, or thinking ahead to a move within the community, Mahlia Rittenhouse is always glad to talk through what's happening on the ground here. Let's Connect.