It was just before lunchtime on its third day of operation, and the line outside Elon Musk’s new Tesla Diner in Hollywood already stretched to nearly 100 people.
The restaurant has been billed as a “retro-futuristic” drive-in where you can grab a high-end burger and watch classic films on giant screens, all while charging your Tesla.
After months of buildup and controversy, the diner had suddenly opened on Monday, at 4.20pm, the kind of stoner boy joke that Musk is well-known for. Hundreds of fans lined up to try burgers in Cybertruck-shaped boxes, or take photos of the Optimus robot serving popcorn on the roof deck of the gleaming circular diner.
But that was for the grand opening. Less than 48 hours later, when we visited for lunch, the Tesla Diner experience was less a futuristic fantasy than a case study in how to fail with impunity. Many parts of the experience were breaking down, the food was mediocre, yet the fans were still cheerfully lining up to buy merch.
The line to get into the diner on Wednesday morning was so long, an employee told us, in part because of technical problems. The app that allowed Tesla drivers to order from their cars was glitching, so the diner was “prioritizing” Tesla owners who had to come inside to order instead. This meant that non-Tesla owners in the walk-up line might need to wait as long as two to three hours before we got our food.
I expected at least a few people to leave the walk-up line immediately, but the only ones who did were two families of Tesla owners who went back to order from within their cars. Even if the app didn’t work for them, they would still get their food faster. The hierarchy was clear: things were broken for everyone, but owners of Musk products had to suffer slightly less.
The rest of us kept waiting in the hot sun. “Retro-futurism”, in this case, seemed to mean gorgeous, Tesla-inspired, mid-century modern architecture coupled with wait times that would shutter an ordinary McDonald’s. An episode of Star Trek was playing on the giant drive-in movie screens, but the best entertainment available was watching tricked-out Cybertrucks arrive and depart. I counted at least six when I arrived, and more kept appearing: a neon orange Cybertruck with Texas plates, another floating on giant custom rims. I did not spot a single anti-Musk protester, though social media posts were advertising protests outside the diner later in the week.
‘It is what it is’
Musk’s special projects have often unfolded with a degree of chaos. Most recently, his attempt to dismantle the large parts of the US government ended with him feuding with the president he had spent nearly $300m to elect.
Serving high-end burgers to Tesla fans while they charge their electric cars should be much easier than launching space rockets, developing brain implants or running a social media platform that is not overrun with hate speech and harassment. And Musk’s diner operation partners, the Los Angeles chef Eric Greenspan, who advised Mr Beast Burger, and restaurateur Bill Chait, of République and Tartine Bakery, have impressive food industry credentials.
But the billionaire CEO tends to make big promises and not quite fulfill them. That appeared to be true even for a tiny burger joint.
You don’t have to own a Tesla to order a meal at the diner, and its appeal clearly reached far beyond Tesla drivers. There were many people in the walk-up line on Wednesday with babies and small children, some of whom were particularly excited to be visiting the Tesla Diner after seeing videos about it online. While we all waited and waited, employees in branded T-shirts brought us glasses of water and paper menus.
Jake Hook, who runs a Los Angeles-focused “Diner Theory” social media account, had described the Tesla Diner menu to me as “all over the place”, with a combination of “very fast food shlocky” items combined with sandwiches made with “bread from Tartine”, the luxury California bakery. The diner also offers a mix of “own the libs” and “we are the libs” options: on the one hand, “Epic Bacon”, four strips of bacon are served with sauces as a meatfluencer alternative to french fries, and on the other, avocado toast and matcha lattes. There was a kale salad served in a cardboard Cybertruck: welcome to southern California.
“Diners are kind of a reflection of the community, and it doesn’t seem to really be that,” Hook told me over the phone. “It’s like a diner-themed restaurant.”
An employee gave the Wednesday walk-up line another update: they didn’t have chicken, waffles or milkshakes, or any of the “charged sodas”, which came with boba and maraschino cherries and extra caffeine.
“It gets better and better,” sighed a man behind me.
Josh Bates and his son Phoenix were in town for the day from Orange county, where they lived. “We are big Musk fans,” he said.
Phoenix, age 10, had been excited to visit the diner. “I never seen Elon Musk open a restaurant, so I just wanted to come here and see how the food is,” he explained.
But after waiting in line for 20 minutes and not getting much closer to ordering, Bates decided it was time to find somewhere else for lunch. “It’s the grand opening – things happen,” the father said. “It is what it is. They’re doing the best they can.”
Bates wasn’t the only Musk fan with this attitude. Ivan Daza, 36, who lived in Los Angeles, later told me that he had waited two hours the day before, only to be told around 6 or 7pm that the Tesla Diner’s kitchen was closed. He had brought his eight-year-old daughter back the next day to try again. She had seen the Tesla Diner on YouTube and was especially excited to see the Optimus robot. But it turned out that Optimus was not in operation.
Daza said he was surprised by the various problems the kitchen seemed to be having – he thought they would have a “plan B”. But he was pleased the diner offered an “experience”.
The prices, though expensive, weren’t that bad for Los Angeles. The burger was $13.50, without french fries. Later, as Daza ate the meal that had taken him two days to get, he grinned: “Delicious.”
The interior design was certainly closer to Disneyland than In-N-Out: all sleek and shining chrome, futuristic 1950s white chairs and tables, and beautifully designed lighting. The curved staircase up to the Skypad was decorated with robots in display cases on the wall. Inside a curved chrome window was what looked like a pretty ordinary, low-tech restaurant kitchen.
I had waited in line for a full hour before I could place my order. When I finally got to the register, I asked an employee to remind me what on the menu was actually available. She said I needed to check the screen in front of me – they had whatever was there. It turned out, contrary to what I had been told, that I could order both chicken and waffles.
After the long wait outside, my food arrived in about 10 minutes – much less than the three-hour wait I feared, but absurdly long for any fast-casual restaurant. A waffle, branded with the Tesla lightning bolt, was cold. The fried chicken had a tasty coating but was also cold. The heap of kale and tomatoes was only partially dressed with an odd dill-flavored dressing. The generic-brand cola tasted cheap and was served with a woke bamboo straw. But the food did come in elaborate Cybertruck boxes – and they were, to be honest, delightful.
While locals seemed to be forgiving of the new diner’s glitches, some tourists were less impressed. Rick Yin, 32, who was visiting Los Angeles from China with his mother, had stopped by the diner on their way to the airport to “grab a quick lunch” that had turned out not to be quick at all. Yin had also been excited to see the Optimus robot in action, and had hoped the diner would be “more hi-tech”. What he had found was “a regular restaurant”.
“It’s all right,” he said, while still waiting for his food. After eating, he said he liked the Cybertruck boxes: “That’s the only thing that’s worth it.”
Musk’s ‘retro-futurism’
I took my meal upstairs , to the Skypad, an open-air balcony with a view of the charging Teslas. The Twilight Zone was now playing on two giant screens. I sat down next to a steady line of people buying Tesla Diner merch: a $95 retro diner hoodie, $65 Tesla salt and pepper shakers, a $175 “levitating Cybertruck” figurine.
There was a large popcorn machine in front of me, which seemed to be where Optimus had been serving snacks on opening night. Musk had been posting on X earlier in the morning that “Optimus will bring the food to your car next year” and suggesting the robot might be dressed in a “cute” retro outfit.
In reality, Optimus was nowhere in sight. The robot was “out today”, an employee told me later, as if the pricey piece of machinery were a human celebrity with a busy schedule. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Is it possible to get some popcorn regardless of the robot?” a woman asked.
“It’s probably old popcorn,” an employee told her regretfully.
A different employee warned me that I could not walk down the same staircase I had taken up to the Skypad because it was too crowded and that “everyone’s colliding with each other and trays and milkshakes”. I would have to go down another way: a bland flight of stairs without any hi-tech decoration.
During a Tesla earnings call on Wednesday, as the company disclosed declining revenue and profits, Musk highlighted his new burger palace as a success: “Diners don’t typically get headline news around Earth,” he bragged. He also called the diner “a shiny beacon of hope in an otherwise sort-of bleak urban landscape”. (It is located on Santa Monica Boulevard, in a neighborhood full of high-end art galleries.)
I’d had plenty of time in the diner line to think about “retro-futuristic” experiences, and how good a description that was, not so much for this very ordinary diner, but for the rightwing political project that Musk had joined. We were now moving into a future that offered tank-like electric cars and on-demand drone deliveries, and also a resurgence of measles outbreaks and women dying from preventable pregnancy-related complications.
But continuing to function in the United States right now requires being very good at compartmentalization. I tucked away the cardboard Cybertruck lids to show my co-workers, threw away the Tesla waffles, and went on with my day. Nothing works properly here any more, but hey, it’s an experience.
