A Summer Afternoon At Malaga Cove Plaza: What's New Around The Neptune Fountain
July 16, 2026
July 16, 2026
If you have walked the plaza more than once this June, you have already noticed the small shift. There is a new line forming near the fountain in the late afternoon, drifting out from a storefront that used to hold a real estate office. The peacocks still cross the lot as if they own the place. The bells still echo off the tile roofs. But the plaza's daily clock, the one that used to end around Yellow Vase's four o'clock close, now runs several hours later.
For a plaza this small, that is a real change. Malaga Cove Plaza had been quietly missing an evening anchor for seven years. It finally has one again, and it has rearranged how locals move through the afternoon.
Peninsula residents who track these things know the marker. When Yummy Yogurt in Rolling Hills Estates closed in 2018 after more than three decades, the whole peninsula lost its default after-dinner stop. Nothing at Malaga Cove filled that hour. Yellow Vase runs a breakfast-and-lunch shift. The Ranch Market winds down by early evening. The former Cove Cafe at 36 Malaga Cove Plaza went quiet and eventually relocated toward Long Beach. For most of the last seven years, the plaza after five o'clock was a place to sit by the fountain, not a place to walk to.
That is the space Neptune's Frozen Treats stepped into last fall. The self-serve dessert shop at 55 Malaga Cove Plaza opened its doors in October 2025, run by the Palos Verdes native Katherine Kemps and her mother Gemma. The storefront itself is a small piece of local trivia worth knowing: as Southbay Magazine reported in its coverage of the opening, Neptune's occupies what used to be the RE/MAX office at the plaza, reworked with white subway tile, natural wood, and a mosaic tile wall installation by Jonathan Cohen of Joseph & Sons that reads as a wink to the plaza's Italian Neptune fountain a few steps outside.
There is a family thread here that even long-time regulars have not caught yet. Katherine has spoken publicly about her great-great-grandfather William Henry Kemps, who ran Beverly Dairy in Los Angeles and Kemps Ice Cream in the Midwest. The shop's third-handle "twist" between two flavors is the operational signature she keeps returning to in interviews, and it is the reason the menu rotates rather than sits still. Cookies and cream, pumpkin pie, oat milk vanilla, mango sorbet, vegan and dairy-free options built in from the start rather than added on.
What matters for the plaza is the schedule. Neptune's runs noon to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and noon to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. That is the four extra hours the plaza did not previously hold.
Once you see the plaza as three shifts rather than three storefronts, the summer routine writes itself.
Morning through mid-day belongs to Malaga Cove Ranch Market at 43 Malaga Cove Plaza. Established in 1997, it is the plaza's oldest continuous tenant and still the most quietly useful one. Hot and cold deli counter, made-to-order menu, a wine bar and a fresh rotisserie chicken program locals know to call ahead for because the birds sell out. The market opens at 8 a.m. daily and closes at 6 p.m. weekdays, 4 p.m. weekends. If you have never used it as a Sunday-morning provisioning stop before heading out toward Bluff Cove or the shoreline trail, that is the move.
Late morning through mid-afternoon belongs to Yellow Vase at 51 Malaga Cove Plaza. The bakery, cafe, and florist has been at the plaza since 2008, and the tree-shaded patio at the back corner remains the plaza's best table. Coffee, French pastries, quiche, and the sandwich menu run from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week. There is a reason regulars refer to the tree rather than the address; the patio underneath it is the only real outdoor room the plaza has, and it fills up on Saturday brunch quickly enough that a 9 a.m. arrival is meaningfully different from a 10 a.m. one.
Late afternoon into evening now belongs to Neptune's. That was the missing shift. It is worth noticing that the three anchors do not overlap much: the market's peak is the mid-morning deli rush, Yellow Vase's is the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. brunch window, and Neptune's is the post-dinner walk from 6 p.m. onward. A resident who plans a summer Saturday around the plaza can now use all three without any single one feeling crowded.
Two other details worth carrying with you. The plaza's parking looks tighter than it is: the primary lot around the fountain fills fast, but the two streets fronting the plaza rarely do, and the walk in is under two minutes. And the peacocks are not a novelty. They live here. If you are arriving with a dog, the outdoor patios at Yellow Vase and Neptune's are dog-friendly; the plaza itself is not fenced, so a leash matters more than usual once the birds are on the move.
The other change worth marking this summer is that Neptune's is not the only new soft-serve spot on the peninsula. As Southbay Magazine documented in its November 2025 profile of the two openings, Julie and Jason Anthony opened Lunada Creamery in Lunada Bay Plaza around the same window, motivated by wanting a frozen-treat shop within walking distance of their own home. The peninsula went from zero to two, in the same season, at two different plazas.
That is a coincidence with a practical use. Malaga Cove and Lunada Bay Plaza sit roughly two miles apart along Palos Verdes Drive West, and the drive between them threads the coastline. For a summer evening with out-of-town guests or grandkids in the car, the sensible route is:
It is a route that did not exist last summer. It exists now because two families chose to open two shops in the same season, and because the plaza that had lost its evening rhythm quietly got it back.
If you have lived on the peninsula long enough to remember the plaza before Yellow Vase, or before the Cove Cafe closed, you already know that Malaga Cove is not a shopping center in any conventional sense. It is a small Spanish-Mediterranean courtyard designed as the civic heart of the original 1920s plan for Palos Verdes Estates, and it has always worked best when its handful of tenants covered the day between them. For seven years, they did not quite cover it. Now they do.
That is a small thing to notice. It is also the kind of thing that shows up in how a summer feels rather than in any single visit. The plaza that used to be a morning-and-lunch place is now a morning-through-evening place. If your habit for the last few years has been to swing through once for coffee and leave, it is worth building a second stop into the routine this summer, whether that is a late-afternoon walk with a dog or an after-dinner detour with a grandchild. The plaza rewards the second visit more than it used to.
If you are thinking about the peninsula more seriously this year, whether that means a first home near Malaga Cove or a legacy sale that deserves a careful hand, the team at The Gipe Group would be glad to talk. Reach out to see what is quietly available before it reaches the open market.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Etiam non quam lacus suspendisse faucibus interdum. Orci ac auctor augue mauris augue neque. Bibendum at varius vel pharetra. Viverra orci sagittis eu volutpat.