Since August, the stretch of El Camino Real between Page Mill Road and the Mountain View line has picked up two new restaurants worth planning a meal around. Since last year, the council has approved three housing projects totaling 872 apartments on the same blocks, all within walking distance of where you'd park for dinner. These two stories share a cause. In February, Council member Pat Burt pointed to what drives both of them, and it's also what has kept the taqueria, the tofu house and the doughnut shop open for years. The rent here is low.
"It has been our most affordable retail, and you get retail functions there that can't afford to be elsewhere in our city, and yet the occupancy has been high in general."
Burt said that at a council Retail Committee meeting, as reported by Palo Alto Online. The same report noted that rents on El Camino tend to run lower than on University Avenue, California Avenue or at Stanford Shopping Center. Low rent is why a chef with a following picks this street over downtown. It's also why developers are filing plans here.
The street got rebuilt before the restaurants arrived
The road itself changed first. Caltrans finished its El Camino Real paving and accessibility project in fall 2025 and held a ribbon-cutting on October 6, 2025. The work added ADA curb ramps, accessible pedestrian signals, high-visibility crosswalks, three pedestrian hybrid beacons and roughly 13.5 miles of bike lanes along the full corridor. The City of Palo Alto's project page lists parking removal as part of that project. If you used to pull up at the curb in front of a favorite counter, that spot is now a bike lane. Dinner on this stretch now means using a side lot or a cross street, or arriving by bike.
The two arrivals
Yutori, 3375 El Camino Real. Chef-owner Jerome Ito, who also runs Go Fish Poke Bar and Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar, opened Yutori's cafe and konbini in the Ventura neighborhood in April. Late in September he soft-opened the final piece of the project, a full-service restaurant and bar, according to Palo Alto Online. For now it serves dinner only. The dining room seats 72, and the patio adds 30 more. Brunch is expected to start in the spring. Dinner came before brunch for a practical reason. Ito told the paper the cafe's demand was so high that one shared kitchen couldn't run the konbini and a full brunch service at once.
The menu is short, with 15 dishes. Small plates run $19 to $36 and large plates $34 to $98. Ito's recommended starter is a Nikkei ceviche of bluefin tuna, salmon and local halibut in black sesame-yuzu leche de tigre, served with taro chips, for $32. The chawanmushi with blue crab and scallop is $22. Pastry chef Janet Tong's desserts include a hojicha Earl Grey tiramisu. The bar is run by Francisco Carranza, whose résumé includes Pacific Cocktail Haven in San Francisco.
HolyShred, 3924 El Camino Real. This fast-casual Thai restaurant opened August 8 in the old Siam Fine Thai space. Its co-founders, Pearadet "Pete" Mukyangkoon, Thanat "Jackie" Jatuphattharachat and Stanford alum Jinny Akkaratatta, opened their first location in San Francisco and want to build the country's first fast-casual Thai chain, according to Palo Alto Online. Most dishes have at least 40 grams of protein and cost $13.50 to $16.25. The bestseller is the $13.50 shredded chicken noodles, a Bangkok dish made with vermicelli, a house sauce and crispy chicharrón. Every sauce except the sweet chili is made in-house, the mayo included.
At $98, Yutori's top plate costs about seven times HolyShred's cheapest bowl. Both restaurants picked the same mile of the same road, and that range is the point Burt was making. A street where both can open is a street where rent isn't yet sorting out who can be there.
The regulars, block by block
Here is the mile from north to south, with the long-running places shown next to the newcomers and the approved housing.
- 3150 El Camino Real. Former site of The Fish Market. A 368-unit apartment project here was the first big proposal the council approved under the new El Camino rules.
- 3375 El Camino Real. Yutori, about two blocks south.
- 3606 El Camino Real. A 321-apartment complex, recently approved.
- 3636 El Camino Real. El Grullense, the family Mexican restaurant with the salsa bar, founded in 2004, according to its own site.
- 3740 El Camino Real. Celia's Mexican Restaurant.
- 3781 El Camino Real. A 183-apartment development, recently approved.
- 3916 and 3924 El Camino Real. Happy Donuts, at the address Palo Alto Online gave for its 24-hour shop, sits a few doors from the newly opened HolyShred.
- 4119 and 4127 El Camino Real. Fuki Sushi and Palo Alto SGD Tofu House, next door to each other near El Camino Way. Tofu House's menu includes seafood tofu soup, barbecue beef short ribs and beef bibimbap.
El Grullense and Celia's are on the block between the approved projects at 3606 and 3781. The opposite case also happens on this street. Ma'lawah Bar closed its El Camino storefront on May 29 after a run of about two years, Hoodline reported. A low-rent strip makes it easy to open and just as easy to close.
Why the housing shows up on these same blocks
Palo Alto spent two years making El Camino south of Page Mill more attractive to housing developers. It loosened height, density and parking rules and expanded a housing incentive program that the city expects to produce 550 more units. The new El Camino Real Focus Area allows housing up to 85 feet tall. Most of the proposals so far are in Ventura and Barron Park, the neighborhoods around the restaurants listed above.
The pressure has now reached north of Page Mill too. Last week the city received plans from Bayspring Development Partners to replace the Chipotle building at 2675 El Camino Real, near Sheridan Avenue, with an 85-foot building. It would have 156 apartments, ground-floor retail and a pedestrian plaza on Sheridan, Palo Alto Online reported on October 12. That application is only a proposal for now. Nothing has been approved or closed.
The map that decides where a counter can survive
City leaders saw this coming. Palo Alto has a retail protection ordinance that bars converting retail space to other uses. It was first limited to downtown and California Avenue, then extended citywide in 2017. In 2025 the council set up one large protected zone covering everything from Page Mill to the southern city line, as a stopgap. In February the council took up a narrower map. It would require ground-floor retail in any new development inside three "nodes," and the planning commission and the council's Retail Committee had both backed it unanimously.
- Central Node. The largest of the three, running north from Los Robles Avenue. The city staff report puts its northern edge at Matadero Creek, while Palo Alto Online described it as starting near Chimalus Drive.
- Triangle Node. The triangle between El Camino Real and El Camino Way plus the commercial properties across El Camino Way, which covers Fuki Sushi and Tofu House.
- Bike to School Node. The El Camino intersection with Charleston and Arastradero, known mostly for a Walgreens and several car dealerships.
When Palo Alto Online previewed the vote, it named three places council members didn't want to lose to redevelopment: Happy Donuts, El Grullense and Celia's. No project has been reported as targeting any of them, and all three are still on the street. Retail Committee chair Keith Reckdahl summed up the trade-off the map is meant to manage: "the number of units we gain in this area is pretty small, but the impact to retail can be quite large." One caveat on the map: a ground-floor retail requirement keeps the storefront, but it can't keep a particular tenant in it.
One detour north, to Town & Country
If your dinner plans head toward Stanford, Horsefeather at Town & Country Village, 855 El Camino Real, is switching to a new menu by Casey Thompson, the "Top Chef: Miami" runner-up, The Almanac reported. The changeover starts with limited-time prix-fixe preview dinners, and then her à la carte menu replaces the current one. Two dishes to look for are the Nashville-hot chicken wings with do chua and the miso yaki skirt steak with yuzu-kosho butter. It's open Monday from 4 to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Rents at Town & Country are a different tier, and the menu prices you see at a shopping-center address reflect that.
The south El Camino mile is one of the few places in Palo Alto where a $13.50 noodle bowl and a $98 wagyu plate are a five-minute drive apart, with a 2004 taqueria between them. If you own a home near this corridor and want to know how the approved projects at 3150, 3606 and 3781 could change your block, Tom Correia, a Palo Alto native, is glad to go through it with you, starting with a free home valuation.
