El Paseo Summer Dining in Palm Desert: What's Open in August

If you drove down El Paseo last week wondering whether anything was actually open, you were asking the right question at the right time of year. For as long as most Palm Desert residents can remember, the answer followed a predictable script: shops keep their lights on, but the kitchens go dark until the snowbirds come back in October. This year, the script changed for at least one restaurant, and that single decision says more about where this street is headed than any seasonal closing sign does.

The short version is that El Paseo isn't shutting down uniformly this summer. Restaurants are following a range of schedules, giving residents different options through the hottest months.

The Old Rule Everyone Still Repeats

Ask anyone who has lived here more than a season and they'll tell you the same thing: El Paseo's high season runs roughly October through April, when outdoor dining is comfortable and reservations at the corridor's better-known tables require real advance planning. Once June arrives, patios thin out, some restaurants trim their hours, and a handful close entirely until the weather turns again. That pattern is real, and it isn't going away. What's changed is that fewer restaurants are treating it as an automatic, all-or-nothing decision.

Backstreet Bistro is the version of the old rule you'd expect. The Tuscan-leaning spot near the Gardens on El Paseo posted a straightforward note thanking its guests for the season and confirming it will stay closed until October 15, the kind of full seasonal shutdown that used to define summer on this street. As of today, that's still seven weeks away. If you're craving their courtyard seating this month, you're simply out of luck until mid-October.

Kitchen 86 took a different approach entirely: a pause, not a shutdown. The restaurant closed August 17 and plans to reopen September 3, giving itself roughly two and a half weeks for what it's calling a deep clean and seasonal refresh rather than a full summer hibernation. That's a meaningfully shorter break than Backstreet Bistro's, with a reopening date still weeks ahead of the valley's tourist season.

The Restaurant That Broke Its Own Rule

As NBC Palm Springs reported in June, The Fix on El Paseo planned to stay open through the entire summer for the first time in its nearly decade-long history.

The reasoning, according to that report, wasn't about betting on a surge of summer tourists. It was about the staff. The owner, identified only as James in coverage of the decision, said the goal was steady income and job security for the restaurant's core employees during what is reliably the slowest stretch of the year.

What makes this worth paying attention to if you live here, rather than just visit, is the contrast between The Fix staying open and other restaurants taking seasonal breaks. That gives residents another dining option in August.

The Anchors That Never Ask the Question

Not every kitchen on El Paseo treats summer as a decision at all. Il Corso, the Sicilian-rooted Italian spot helmed by chef Mario Marfia since 2014, keeps its regular hours running Monday through Saturday year-round, closed only on Sundays as it always has been. For a resident planning where to eat this month, that consistency is worth more than a seasonal special menu you'll only catch four months out of twelve.

That's the real distinction hiding under all three approaches. Backstreet Bistro's full seasonal closure is one approach. Kitchen 86's short pause is another. The Fix's decision to stay open through summer is a third. Three different schedules, same six blocks of sidewalk.

What This Actually Means for Your August

If you're trying to plan dinner this week rather than parse restaurant strategy, here's where that leaves things as of late August 2026. The Fix is open and running its full menu, breakfast through happy hour, seven days a week, the same schedule it would keep in peak season. Kitchen 86 is dark until September 3, when it reopens for happy hour at 3pm. Backstreet Bistro won't be back until October 15. Il Corso is running its normal hours, six days a week, as it has for over a decade.

None of this is a complaint about the slow season. Palm Desert's summer rhythm has always had its own texture: quieter mornings, easier parking near the Gardens, a corridor that feels more like a neighborhood and less like a destination for a few months a year. What's changed is that the businesses along it are no longer responding to that rhythm the same way. Some are taking seasonal breaks. Others are keeping the lights on.

That shift is worth noticing even if you have no plans to move, sell, or buy anything this year. A street's dining scene is one of the more honest signals of how a neighborhood is actually used, not how it's marketed. When a restaurant that spent nearly a decade following the seasonal script stays open through August for the first time, that's a small but real change in everyday life for the people who live here now, not just those who visit in January.

If you're weighing what a neighborhood like Palm Desert feels like to live in day to day, details like these are worth paying attention to. They can tell you something a market report may not.

For more on what's actually happening in Palm Desert and across the rest of the Coachella Valley, from the everyday texture of life here to the occasional real estate question, Catherine Joubert is always glad to talk. Let's Connect.