Which Indian Wells Restaurants Are Reopening in September?

Vicky's of Santa Fe turned its lights back on Thursday. The adobe dining room went dark on June 14 and stayed that way for eleven weeks, taking the piano bar and the jazz series with it. If you drove past on Highway 111 in July, the parking lot told the story before the sign did.

Now it's back. But if you assume that means Indian Wells has flipped a switch and the whole town is suddenly "in season" again, you're describing a version of September that doesn't quite exist here. The restart is not a date on a calendar. It's a set of individual business decisions, and depending on which kitchen you're talking about, September looks completely different.

The reopening that actually happened

Vicky's closure and return are documented, not guessed at. The restaurant listed itself as temporarily closed from June 14 through September 2, with a re-open date of Thursday, September 3, 2026. That's a full summer gone: the tableside Caesar salad, the nightly live music program, the center bar where regulars have been meeting for decades. For three months, if you wanted that specific evening, Indian Wells didn't have it to offer.

That's one restaurant's schedule. Vicky's closure and return are a distinct timeline from the businesses that remained open through summer.

The restaurant that never fully closed, and also never fully reopened

Here's where the story gets more interesting than a simple open-or-closed toggle. Kestrel, the Richard Blais restaurant at Indian Wells Golf Resort, didn't close for summer. It just shrank. Its own posted summer hours, still live as of this writing, show the kitchen closed Monday and Tuesday entirely, lunch service running Wednesday through Saturday, dinner limited to Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday reserved for brunch. That's a restaurant open four or five days a week instead of seven, with dinner service compressed to a two-night window.

The distinction matters if you're planning an actual evening out. Vicky's reopening on September 3 is a clean, single event. Kestrel's summer schedule is still technically in effect, which means a Tuesday dinner plan that assumes Indian Wells is "back to normal" in September will run into a locked door. The lesson here isn't about one restaurant's hours. It's about the fact that "season" doesn't arrive on the same day for every business in town, even two that sit less than a mile apart.

Why some kitchens never left in the first place

Three names in Indian Wells never went through a closure at all. They followed different schedules from restaurants that paused service.

Nobu, tucked into Stadium 2 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, became a permanent restaurant there in 2023 after nearly a decade as a BNP Paribas Open pop-up. Most residents still assume it's a March-only proposition tied to the tennis tournament. It isn't. The kitchen runs year-round, and in the off-season it's quieter and easier to walk into, which makes a summer reservation there feel less like a scramble and more like a genuine find.

Tía Carmen, Chef Angelo Sosa's Contemporary Southwest concept at the Grand Hyatt Indian Wells Resort & Villas, is the second Coachella Valley location for Sosa, whose résumé includes stints in European three-star kitchens and restaurant openings in New York, San Diego, and Phoenix.

The Nest is the third, and it's the one with the longest local memory. An Indian Wells fixture since 1966, it's part restaurant, part piano bar, part dance floor, with an eclectic dinner menu that leans on owner Dodi Henry's Eastern European heritage, cabbage rolls and moussaka sitting on the same menu as steaks and pasta. The after-dinner shift with nightly live music is what's made it famous, and none of that paused for summer.

Put those three side by side and a pattern shows up: all three remained open through summer. Vicky's, by contrast, closed for summer and reopened September 3.

What this means if you're planning a September evening

If you're a longtime Indian Wells resident trying to figure out where dinner actually happens this month, the honest answer is that it depends which week you're asking about.

• Vicky's of Santa Fe: back open as of September 3, full dining room and lounge menu available again.
• Kestrel: still on posted summer hours as of this writing, meaning closed Monday and Tuesday, limited lunch Wednesday through Saturday, dinner only Friday and Saturday nights, brunch on Sunday.
• Nobu, Tía Carmen, and The Nest: never left, no adjustment needed, though Nobu in particular is worth remembering as a year-round option rather than a tournament-week novelty.

None of this is a complaint about the town. The BNP Paribas Open ran its 2026 main draw from March 4 to March 15, and restaurant schedules vary across town.

The pattern worth remembering

The next time a favorite spot's hours look off in the shoulder season, the question worth asking isn't "did they close for good." It's "what schedule is this business following?" The restaurants described here follow different schedules: some remained open through summer, while Vicky's closed and reopened September 3.

Indian Wells rewards residents who learn that difference. It saves you a wasted drive on a Tuesday when Kestrel's kitchen is closed, and it points you toward Nobu or The Nest on a quiet August night when you assumed nothing worth eating was open. The town isn't asleep for four months and then wide awake on Labor Day. It's a handful of separate businesses, each reading the same calendar and making a different call about when the season actually starts.

If you're thinking about what life in Indian Wells looks like across a full year, not just the fifteen days in March when the tennis tournament fills every table in town, that's exactly the kind of local rhythm worth understanding before you buy here. Catherine Joubert has spent years watching how this town breathes in and out with the seasons, and she's glad to talk through what year-round life actually looks like in Indian Wells. Let's Connect.