LA's Tesla Diner is so dead, even the protesters gave up

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News | Los Angeles
LA's Tesla Diner is so dead, even the protesters gave up

Just eight months in, not even the tech bros are eating there


The exterior of the Tesla Diner as seen from Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, Calif., on March 12, 2026.

Karen Palmer/SFGATE
By Karen Palmer,
Los Angeles Food Editor
March 13, 2026

On a recent midday visit to the Tesla Diner, Elon Musk’s two-story Space Age eyesore of a restaurant in West Hollywood, the soundtrack modulated between modern dance tunes and classics like the Beatles. But it may as well have been the sound of crickets.

Sure, there were about a dozen cars parked in the surrounding charging stations while an animated film played on the two giant movie screens. A handful of diners were inside, seated at the long, curved bar or at gray-and-white retro-futuristic booths, trying the fried chicken sandwiches and other diner-style fare. But the real image of Tesla Diner today, some eight months after its opening, is this: Just outside, a lone staff member spent the duration of my time there slowly cleaning an empty red carpet leading up to the front door.

The scene was a far cry from the hoopla surrounding the opening last July, after years of construction and social media teases. Customers lined up and waited for hours to try burgers served in Cybertruck-shaped boxes. Of course, the timing of the restaurant’s debut was also a moment of severe anti-Musk sentiment, arriving in the wake of his brief term running the so-called DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, for the Trump administration. Protesters came out in force for opening day, some brandishing inflatable Musk balloons wearing his signature black baseball hat and giving Nazi salutes as cars whizzed by on Santa Monica Boulevard.

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If the Tesla Diner plans to stick around, it needs a shot of … something. Electricity, maybe. Or a new owner.

Tesla Diner, 7001 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Open for in-house dining from 6 a.m. to midnight. In-car dining available 24 hours a day.