The Deck Is Gone and the Clocks Have Fallen Back. Where Does The Village's Sunset Drink Go Now?

At the bottom of Sleepy Hollow Lane, The Deck on Laguna Beach sat just above the sand. It was an open-air boardwalk lounge known for craft cocktails, raw oysters and the sunset straight ahead. It closed on Monday, Sept. 7, along with Driftwood Kitchen, the more formal dining room next door. Its website now carries a short farewell: "We Will Miss You. Thank you Laguna for 14 Amazing Years."

Eight weeks later the clocks fell back too. Put those two changes together and the Village's evening runs on a new schedule. Sunset now comes before 5 p.m., in the middle of the weekday 3 to 6 p.m. happy hours at the ocean-view rooms that are still open. All of those rooms sit higher up, on the bluff, on a fourth-floor rooftop or at a resort bar a short drive south.

What Closed on Sleepy Hollow Lane

The Deck was at 627 Sleepy Hollow Lane and Driftwood Kitchen at 619. According to the Laguna Beach Independent, hospitality partners Chef Rainer Schwarz and John Nye opened The Deck as a casual lounge above the beach. In 2014 they added Driftwood Kitchen as its ocean-to-table counterpart, so an evening could start at The Deck and move upstairs to dinner. In its farewell statement, management told the Independent the two restaurants had served "nearly one million oysters, including 10 years of Sip & Shuck events, which raised money for local nonprofit organizations."

Management also said money was not the reason for the closures. Both restaurants closed to make way for a redevelopment of the whole Pacific Edge Hotel property, which investment group Dune Drifter LLC bought in 2024. The city's Pacific Edge project page describes the plan the City Council approved on Aug. 10, 2021. It covers the property's nine buildings, which the Independent places at 610 to 668 Sleepy Hollow Lane. The plan includes a new hotel building with an underground parking garage, 25 more hotel rooms, roadway improvements along Sleepy Hollow Lane and a new 63-seat café with outdoor dining.

For now, that stretch of oceanfront is a construction site. The closest table facing the water at sunset is somewhere else.

Sunset Moved Into the 3-to-6 Window

Daylight Saving Time ended for 2026 at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The next day, timeanddate.com listed Laguna Beach sunset at 4:55 p.m. Under Daylight Saving Time, the same sunset would have shown 5:55 on the clock, near the end of a 3 to 6 p.m. window. Now it falls with more than an hour of happy hour left.

Sunsets keep getting earlier through the month:

By the end of November, sunset reaches 4:42 p.m. By Dec. 5 it has started moving later again, to 4:43. For the next several weeks, a 4:15 arrival means the full show: the light going gold, the sun dropping into the water and the afterglow, all before happy-hour prices end at 6.

Four Perches, Four Different Views

The Deck put you almost level with the water. The rooms still open look down on it from different heights and angles, and each has its own schedule.

Las Brisas sits on Cliff Drive above the Heisler Park end of the Village. Its menu mixes traditional Mexican flavors with seafood, and the kitchen makes its own tortillas and salsas. On weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m., Las Brisas takes $4 off featured cocktails from the dinner menu and house wines, and bottled beers are $5.

The Cliff Restaurant has the biggest view of the four, with 180-degree whitewater views from a multi-level patio. Happy hour runs 3 to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. The Cliff also has live music at the bar and fire pits on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday nights. The fire pits matter more in November, when it cools down quickly after a 4:47 sunset. The restaurant serves lunch and dinner every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas, with breakfast Friday through Sunday.

The Rooftop at La Casa del Camino sits four stories up, south of the Village core, with panoramic Pacific views. The hotel's dining page says The Rooftop closes on Mondays and Tuesdays during winter hours. The Rooftop Lounge site lists daily hours, so call or check before planning a Monday or Tuesday visit.

Splashes Bar at Surf & Sand Resort is the only one of the four with a happy hour every day. Surf & Sand calls it Golden Hour, with drinks and food facing the sunset from 3 to 6 p.m. daily. The resort's event listing says it runs "Daily through November 30."

How the Rest of the Year Plays Out

Each venue's schedule changes the plan in a different way through the end of the year.

• Weekdays get the best deal. Las Brisas and The Cliff only run happy hour Monday through Friday, so the sunsets at the earliest times of the year line up with their prices only on weekdays.
• Weekends belong to Splashes for now. Through Nov. 30, Golden Hour at Splashes Bar is the one happy hour of the four that runs on Saturday and Sunday.
• Thanksgiving week. The Cliff is closed on Thanksgiving, which falls on Nov. 26 this year, and closed again on Christmas.
• The earliest sunsets. Sunset bottoms out around 4:42 p.m. at the end of November and is back to 4:43 by Dec. 5. Late November into early December is when the window between arriving and sunset is shortest.

For anyone reading on publish day, the schedule works like this. Sunset is a few minutes before 4:50, Las Brisas and The Cliff are into the second hour of happy hour by then, and Splashes' Golden Hour has a little over two weeks left. The Pacific Edge plan on file with the city still shows a 63-seat café with outdoor dining at the bottom of Sleepy Hollow Lane.

Danielle Purcell and the team at Team Laguna have followed the Village's oceanfront through many changes like the closures on Sleepy Hollow Lane. Contact us if you'd like to talk about how the Pacific Edge redevelopment and changes along the coast may affect a property you own or are considering nearby.