In July 2025, a curious attraction opened on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California, mere blocks from landmarks like the TCL Chinese Theater. That venue was the Tesla Diner, a vision of the retro-future from America’s most controversial tech billionaire.
Elon Musk conceived of the diner in 2018, back when he was a darling of the media and a seeming leader of a green, high-tech future. Now, of course, his star has fallen under his laissez-faire (except when the insults were directed at him) stewardship of Twitter (rechristened X in 2022), the overall market failure of Tesla’s Cybertruck, his participation in the incompetent and calamitous “Department of Government Efficiency” (D.O.G.E.) at the outset of the 2nd Trump Administration, and his apparent fascist overtures, including his seeming Nazi salute at the 2025 presidential inauguration.
All of the fresh, Trump-Musk chaos didn’t exactly stall the Tesla Diner’s rollout last July, when hundreds queued up in lines that snaked around the block to sample the diner’s cuisine, buzzy for the involvement of local star chefs like Bill Chait (of popular L.A. French restaurant République) and Eric Greenspan (who created the formerly James Beard-honored The Foundry). Diners were greeted by a parking lot dressed as a drive-in movie theater, playing old movies and Jetsons cartoons, (though the spots were reserved for Tesla charging only, of course) and even a popcorn-serving robot, one of Musk’s Optimus models which began development in 2021, according to Walter Isaacson’s 2023 Musk biography.
The D.O.G.E. protesters were quick to join the party — including an inflatable Musk giving the Nazi salute, reminiscent of union rat-inflatables during picket lines — but in the months that followed the diner’s buzzy launch, the restaurant faded into the rest of the sun-cooked L.A. landscape. Greenspan disassociated himself from the restaurant, and even the protesters vanished. So too did the popcorn-serving clankers.
I came to visit the Tesla Diner in the spirit of understanding Los Angeles’ status as a Clanker City, but the only Tesla robots I saw on my visit in January 2026 were behind glass, as the popcorn-serving Optimus had been already retired.
Instead, what I did find was basically a glorified, overpriced Shake Shack. After you order and pay on a tablet screen, browsing through a menu of standard café and fast food fare, — i.e., Shake Shack — you wait to pick up your drink and order on the counter. Reminiscent of a Happy Meal, the food is served in Cybertruck-shaped boxes. What did Yoda say? “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.”
A single soda, smashburger and fries will cost you $25, before California taxes and tip. While the burger was solid, the fries I found bland, making the meal wildly overpriced. Remember, the commensurate product — an In-N-Out combo — still goes for about $7.50.
Now, the reason you might want to tip is because there’s a literal army of people working at Tesla Diner. They are constantly scrubbing the circular glass doors, which would otherwise be coated in L.A. dust and water-spots, another sign of the inefficiency of the design. The retro-future styled booths and tables are intriguing, and to give credit where credit is due — they are clean.
On my visit, most of the people at the diner were Japanese tourists, families with small children, and even a man who asked for non-iced water, a request that the staff-member behind the counter fulfilled. But the main business they might be doing is selling merch, including an In-N-Out-styled t-shirt and a $150 Tesla Optimus action figure — selling the image of a robot that isn’t even currently functioning in the store.
I wondered why Tesla Diner was located here, in Hollywood. On the one hand, it had a Universal Studios / Disney quality — here was a novelty branding exercise, in a neighborhood completely defined by billboards pretending that people still watch movies in theaters. On the other, here was a burger joint in the literal land of burger joints, in a neighborhood at the center of the SoCal freeway vortex, making it extremely inconvenient to reach for anyone living in any of L.A.’s satellite cities of the megalopolis.
Come to think of it, Tesla Diner would make much more sense in the Bay Area, where techies would eat up the design and strange virtue-signaling. (Inside, a Tesla banner advertised the slogan: “Accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable abundance,” an idea that seems more aligned with Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s 2025 Abundance book than the current Musk doctrine.)
At present, Tesla Diner seems destined to a slow death or — depending on the billionaire’s hot-and-cold relationship with President #47 — open up a kiosk within the forthcoming White House ballroom. Say what you will about the powerful pair — they both have a keen sense of tastelessness.
