The long-awaited retro-futuristic Tesla Diner opened in Los Angeles on July 21 to lines stretching down the block, with some Angelenos waiting for hours for the restaurant to open at exactly 4:20 p.m. Eater LA was in line when the doors finally opened at the scheduled time — Tesla tends to delay most of their product launches, sometimes for years — with screens at the front counter showing a photo menu and ordering system that will reflect the ones found inside Tesla vehicles.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk first announced the retro-style diner in 2018 that would operate alongside a charging station, with the intention that roller skate-wearing carhops would bring food and drinks to drivers while they charge. In 2022, NBC4 reported that the diner would open on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood just east of the border with West Hollywood. Over the past few months, Tesla fans and social media followers have generated a rabid amount of hype for the car company’s first-ever restaurant, the two-level structure looming over dark, graffiti-covered fences. Earlier this year, self-described Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt reported on X that chef Eric Greenspan — who operated the Foundry on Melrose, Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, and helped open Mr. Beast Burger — would be the restaurant’s chef alongside operator Bill Chait, a seasoned Los Angeles restaurateur who opened Republique, Bestia, the Rose Venice, Tartine, and Tesse, among others.
Hundreds of people lined up to try the company’s first attempt at a casual restaurant, despite Musk’s polarizing reputation. That controversy over Musk’s outsized influence on U.S. politics reached a fever pitch in 2024 as Musk endorsed Trump in his campaign against former President Joe Biden and joined him on the campaign trail. It was around that time that Teslas became the targets of vandals. When Trump won the election, Musk was instated as a special government employee leading DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) where the Tesla CEO and his team began dismantling key elements of foreign aid organization USAID and reducing the budget for public broadcasting. In January 2025, Musk made a gesture at Trump’s inauguration that has been widely likened to a Nazi salute.
What it’s like inside Tesla Diner
The Tesla diner occupies the site of the former Shakey’s, just across the street from a luxury apartment building whose decks overlook the 45-foot screens and Supercharger stalls. The curved structure is cloaked in metal and strips of lights, which make it resemble the waiting area for Disneyland’s Star Tours or Space Mountain more than a diner.
Inside, a stark white floor runs the length of the first level, punctuated by curved booths along the other edge and a lengthy service counter that looks into the kitchen. On the second floor, a deck wraps around the entire building, with a humanoid robot serving popcorn and handing out fist bumps at the bar. Food comes out of the first-floor kitchen, served in Happy Meal-esque Cybertruck boxes by human staff. The center of the building features a mini-museum of Tesla’s humanoid robots, with three models placed in display cases along the somewhat cramped staircase. It’s almost as if Tesla were taking a page right out of a scene in Terminator, chronicling humanity’s unchecked development of artificially intelligent machines.
A glass case by the doorway holds a lineup of Tesla diner merchandise, from a $95 hoodie to $35 “supercharged” gummies. The only silverware available is blocky wood forks, spoons, and knives emblazoned with the Tesla logo that resemble the off-putting shape of a Cybertruck.
On the first day open, Teslas and Cybertrucks lined the streets of the neighborhood, almost blocking traffic in some areas. In the parking lot, custom-wrapped trucks stood out from the pack — one in a DOGE-style print emblazoned with the meme-ified Shiba Inu heads and another with twin American flags affixed to its rear. While the diner’s first day offered both in-store and in-car ordering, soon drivers will be able to place orders in advance with Tesla’s new geofencing technology. Once they arrive within a 15 to 20-minute radius of the restaurant, a notification will be triggered to both the driver and the cooks that their order will commence.
Musk’s goal of opening a diner that could also host a fleet of Tesla superchargers dates back to 2018, when he posted on X (then Twitter) that he was planning to “put an old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in LA.” Seemingly, the goal was to address the issue of Tesla drivers having nowhere to go while their cars charge, which can take between just a few minutes and almost an hour at a Supercharger. The diner is also located in a bit of a Supercharger desert — the next closest option is in West Hollywood, alongside Sunset Boulevard.
A retro-futuristic take on a diner
The sweeping, futuristic design meant to recall the side of a stainless steel Cybertruck was conceived by Franz von Holzhausen, the chief designer of every Tesla vehicle, including the Model S, Model 3, and Cybertruck. The balcony offers clean views of the 45-foot screens that show short films, animations, and sometimes strange futuristic screen savers during the day and a single, longer feature film during the evening, beginning at 9 p.m. Given the light pollution the screens emit and the venue’s proximity to nearby residential buildings, the screens will likely have to turn off at 11 p.m.
The rest of the facility basically accommodates over 100 cars, no surprise given Los Angeles’s already car-drenched culture. The ancillary charging stations are partially covered by large solar panels, but the main lot is uncovered. Though the Tesla Diner is meant to be a model for numerous other locations around the world, this one, built right into the urban fabric of Hollywood, feels almost claustrophobic, a potential traffic chokepoint and likely destination for those wanting to protest Elon Musk. Currently, there is only parking for Teslas and other electric vehicles — gas-powered cars will have to find street parking.
The entire restaurant, while seemingly functional and granularly designed, also seems to serve as a living, breathing promotion of Tesla’s proprietary technology, from the focus on the Supercharger stations to the Tesla OS ordering screen to the Optimus bot serving diners popcorn (and fist bumps). There are not one, not two, but four robots on site (although only one is interactive; three are encased in glass in the stairwell). The diner also serves as a reminder that, as far as food is concerned, many people yearn for the old school: smiling servers, a well-stocked condiment table with glass ketchup bottles and Zab’s hot sauce, and a semi-open, diner-style kitchen.
Still, the company’s clear mission of building the Googie dream we were “promised” is stunningly clear here, from the bathroom, which offers a simulation of being aboard Tesla’s Starship craft, to towering screens that were playing (you may have guessed it) The Jetsons when we arrived. Yes, there is some impressive technology. As mentioned above, Tesla vehicles will start receiving notifications if they’re near the diner and be able to order directly from the screens within their cars; for walk-in customers, there’s on-screen ordering and other now-standard integrations of modernity into the dining experience. But overall, the effect is 1950s space-age with a Tomorrowland fantasy.
On tips and service charges
Chait tells Eater that gratuities will not be accepted at the registers or car ordering screens. Instead, the company will pay 20 percent of total sales as a gratuity to staff. The restaurant currently supports a staff of 140 employees.
The only savory breakfast item we tried, this was a fairly excellent preparation of the Southern morning classic. Layered, flaky, golden-brown buttermilk biscuits cut into square shapes look just right inside the ridiculous Cybertruck box. For a fast-food diner, this dish is somewhat surprising, as one imagines preparing hundreds of servings of biscuits requires a lot of labor. Along with the egg sandwich and breakfast tacos, it serves as another solid breakfast dish available throughout the day. Red-tinted chorizo gravy offers a gentle paprika spice while the organic egg comes sunny-side-up, ideal for breaking into the sauce. The only real downside might be that guests have to attempt to eat it with the angular wooden spoon or fork; biting into the sandwich may result in the sticky gravy adhering to the roof of your mouth. However, among all the breakfast items, this rib-sticking dish stood out as the most sophisticated. Maybe bring your own metal utensils to maximize enjoyment. — Matthew Kang
On the Tesla diner’s website, the cinnamon roll appears quite classic: interlocking rounds of dough get topped with an opaque frosting that has a slight fatty sheen. But what arrived at the table, ensconced in the Cybertruck paper box, was less a cinnamon roll and more a cinnamon swirl slab. At first glance, the entire table had the same concern: Will it be dry? After a bite, those fears were quickly assuaged, though it became clear that “cinnamon roll” may not be the most apt descriptor for this dish. Set in the box was a square slab of a pastry that would fall into the babka family. The slice is a little more than an inch thick and chock-full of cinnamon swirled through tender dough, which seemed less yeasted than usual. The texture, like a traditional babka, falls between cake and bread, with some lift from the yeast, while still maintaining a denser crumb. The topping has the impact of a fluffy frosting, with a gently whipped texture that allows it to sit on top of the roll without making the outside too damp. If only there were some more useful cutlery, instead of the incredibly frustrating wooden “Cyber Fork” and “Cyber Knife” which are astoundingly blunt and look like they carry the risk of giving splinters. —Rebecca Roland
Tesla’s cheeseburger forsakes the classic charbroiled diner burger for a more trendy smash burger, but it doesn’t quite work here. While the ingredients themselves check out — Brand Beef for the patty, Martin’s for the bun, and Greenspan’s own New School American cheese — the execution is still lacking. The burger has the crispy, lacy edges that have become the platonic ideal of the smash burger, but achieving that requires the patty to cook for so long and be smashed so thin that it becomes dry. An “Electric” sauce is slathered on top, plus the usual accoutrements of pickles, caramelized onions, and shredded lettuce. The Martin’s Potato Roll is as good as ever, usually plush and savory enough to stand up to the patty and toppings, but it gets lost in how overcooked the patty is. There’s a lot of room for this burger to improve, especially with the base quality of ingredients, but at least on day one, it’s not a must-order. The burger, currently priced at $13.50, does not come with fries or any sides. —Rebecca Roland
Tesla Diner’s tuna melt might be the best item on its menu. As any tuna melt enthusiast can tell you, they are not all created equal. There are multiple variables that must all align to create a great tuna melt, from the bread and its toasted exterior to the cheese, and the composition of the tuna salad itself. So it was an incredible surprise to discover that the tuna melt at the Tesla Diner is, honestly, fantastic; our staff unanimously agreed on its excellence. The tuna melt starts with grilled Tartine buttermilk bread, toasted until golden, while still retaining a soft, brioche-like interior. Within, a well-seasoned wild-caught albacore tuna salad is dotted with lots of fresh dill and the perfect ratio of mayonnaise to make it creamy but not watery; an abundance of snappy, garlicky dill pickles; and two slices of New School American Cheese, which this very publication has described as “astoundingly better” than the stuff served at a high school cafeteria. Temporarily putting aside all other thoughts on Tesla and its diner, this is one really good tuna melt that starts with elite ingredients and results in something at least on par with the sum of its parts, if not greater. —Hilary Pollack
Elon Musk personally ate through the Tesla Diner menu the week prior to opening and demanded that everything on it be “epic.” Somehow, only the maple-glazed bacon comes with the epic tag on the menu; its presence affirms the bro-tastic, hypermasculine base that tends to attract Tesla fans. High in protein and dusted with black pepper, the strips we got certainly had a good, smoky flavor and meatiness, but lacked an appropriate crispy or crunchy texture that marks the best kinds of bacon. It is respectable that this bacon comes from Bakers Bacon, a small-batch producer from Marina that uses heritage-breed pork and applewood smoke. Unfortunately, this set of bacon wasn’t particularly epic, though it was at least serviceable. —Matthew Kang
Wagyu is now so prevalent that the Japanese breed cow is now splashed onto diner menus like it’s just another label. The menu says this chili was developed “in collaboration with RC Provisions,” the producer that also makes Langers’ pastrami and virtually all of the quality Jewish deli meats in Los Angeles. This tiny $8 cup isn’t the best deal on the menu, but it’s thick and substantial, probably better as a hot dog topping than a standalone dish. Topped with a blob of New School American cheese and shredded white onions, it’s another protein-laden bite for those avoiding gluten or carbs, exactly the kind of fare Cybertruck drivers will want to wash down their “epic” bacon slices. —Matthew Kang
While the soft serve swirl arrived decidedly half-melted, the flavor (chocolate-vanilla swirl, in this case) and creaminess were rich and old-school, somewhere between Shake Shack’s frozen custard and Fosters Freeze’s classic soft serve. This is the exact intersection where a modern diner’s soft serve should land; don’t mess with a good thing. Speaking of messing with a good thing, the ice cream was served with what was colloquially described as a “Cyber Spoon,” a flat wood paddle. This rang annoying at first, but it is also, in some sort of backwards futuristic way, reminiscent of the mass-produced individual mini sundaes with Popsicle-stick-like “spoons” that were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. As for the meltedness — well, it’s day one. Either this issue will be remedied over time, or the Tesla diner could become a victim of the ice cream machine drama that many fast food chains suffer (soft serve equipment is notoriously temperamental). —Hilary Pollack
The Creamsicle is one of the diner’s “Charged Sodas,” essentially dirty sodas fortified with green-coffee-extract-based caffeine that are reminiscent of Panera’s caffeine-laden lemonade. The Creamsicle is a combination of orange soda, cream soda, and fresh orange with a vanilla foam and a surprising orange popping boba. These drinks might be the most experimental items on the menu; while you can certainly find a burger or even a tuna melt on any American diner menu, a “Dirty Kombucha” or boba-laden energy Creamsicle feels very Tesla Diner-specific. We had mixed feelings on the Creamsicle; while the flavor is fine, if not nostalgic and refreshing — can’t really go wrong with orange and vanilla — the foam felt unsettling on a carbonated beverage, and the popping boba felt unnecessary. The Creamsicle seems to come from the same school of thought that led Del Taco to start offering boba: a sense of wanting to tap into a more specialty (nonalcoholic) drink experience and perhaps a pervasive belief in the novelty of popping boba from people who probably don’t drink a lot of boba (popping boba have been around for a couple of decades). The wooden boba straws at least hold up better than the commonly found paper ones, staying structurally sound while being environmentally friendly. —Hilary Pollack
While it seems like Musk is constantly trying to reinvent things that already exist (including the underground transit Boring Company, which is shaping up to be a less efficient version of a metro system, a concept that has been around since the 1800s), the Tesla Diner seems to know where to respect the classics. A prime example is the strawberry shake, which is on par with those found at Mel’s Diner or other classic institutions. Its choice to be a bit boring is its greatest strength, leaning on quality dairy from Strauss Farms and flavorful strawberries, rather than trying to redefine what a milkshake should be. The texture is just right, sippable through a wide straw, but not too thin where it becomes milky. It straddles the line of feeling like a treat to be enjoyed on the upper deck on a warm Los Angeles day without being too sweet. There are options to add pie as a mix-in to the shake, but resist the urge. Adding any more sugar in this setting would likely be difficult to stomach and would only detract from how good the milkshake already is. —Rebecca Roland
The popularity of Tesla Diner’s first day, with dozens of Cybertrucks, some heavily modified with unique wraps, and numerous other Tesla vehicles parked in the charging station, confirms the Elon Musk-led company’s enduring fandom.
The entire experience feels pulled out of left field for Tesla, a technology company whose multi-trillion-dollar value is based on the sales of electric vehicles. As Tesla tries to enter a notoriously difficult business, questions swirl around how long Greenspan, Chait, and company will be able to maintain the quality if the company is trying to maximize profits, and if it will continue to be committed to using sustainable and expensive ingredients. Does the project need to be profitable, or can it be a loss leader given the revenues from electric vehicle charging?
Musk hinted that the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles would eventually be a model for charging stations around the world. A few years ago, Tesla built a charging station lounge in Kettleman City, California, around the halfway point between Los Angeles and San Francisco off the 5 Freeway. That facility only had some beverages and vending machines with some comfortable seating, but the Tesla Diner is a quick-service restaurant with a full menu and 24/7 service. Operating multiple locations with the same commitment to local ingredients and consistent cooking will be a very difficult, though not impossible, task. It’s only the first week of Tesla Diner’s operation, so time will tell if Angelenos will adopt this restaurant into the city’s diverse dining scene, or if the marketing ploy will fade back into being a glorified charging station.
