When chef Zareen Khan decided in 2023 to bring her fourth restaurant to Sunnyvale, she expected the move to happen quickly. Her lease on the original Mountain View location was supposedly winding down, Murphy Avenue had just gone car-free, and the block she had admired for years finally looked ready for a restaurant like hers. Instead the build-out ran more than two years past that decision. Zareen's didn't open its doors at 135 S. Murphy Ave. until this year, serving dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. in a space built for roughly 38 seats inside plus a parklet out front, according to reporting from Hoodline and the East Bay Times.
That gap between the decision and the opening is the real story behind why downtown Sunnyvale feels different this August than it did three summers ago, even though the sidewalk itself hasn't changed since the city closed Murphy Avenue to cars. If you live near Murphy and have caught yourself wondering why the block suddenly feels busier without anything obviously new happening, you're noticing a three-year lag finally closing rather than a sudden transformation.
The Sidewalk Changed First
The city converted Murphy Avenue to a pedestrian mall in 2023 and has since upgraded the walking paths for accessibility and cleanliness, according to Palo Alto Online's coverage of the corridor. Khan has said the "old downtown" feeling of historic Murphy Street was part of what drew her there in the first place. But turning a car-free street into a working restaurant row takes longer than repaving a sidewalk. Leases have to close, kitchens have to be built out, permits have to clear the city's tenant improvement process. For an operator with three proven locations and a strong reputation across the Peninsula, that process still took over two years.
That timeline matters if you've been mentally filing Murphy Avenue under "the street they closed to cars a while back" and moving on. The infrastructure decision was made in 2023. The businesses that make a car-free street worth using didn't finish arriving until 2026.
What Actually Filled the Gap This Year
None of the businesses that have landed on Murphy Avenue this year are brand-new concepts built for Sunnyvale specifically. They're all proven operators who succeeded elsewhere on the Peninsula first, and only moved onto this block once it could support the kind of foot traffic a sit-down restaurant needs.
- Zareen's, 135 S. Murphy Ave. Khan's fourth Bay Area location, following the original 2014 Mountain View restaurant and later spots in Palo Alto and Redwood City. She was named a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: California this year, which has drawn more attention to the samosas and kebabs that regulars at her other locations already order on repeat.
- Moods Wine Bar & Bistro, a former Palo Alto tenant that relocated onto Murphy Avenue.
- Meyhouse, a Turkish restaurant opening its second Peninsula location a short walk from Zareen's.
- Home Coffee Roasters, 200 W. McKinley Ave. This is the San Francisco-based roaster's first cafe outside the city, which is a meaningful vote of confidence in the block's morning foot traffic, not just its dinner crowd.
Put together, this isn't a case of a neighborhood inventing something from scratch. It's a case of a street finally clearing the bar that established restaurant groups use to decide where their next location goes: enough walkable density, at the right hours, to justify the lease.
The Older Anchors Are Doing More Work Now
The businesses that predate the pedestrianization haven't changed. What's changed is how many reasons there are to be standing near them at the same time.
Leigh's Favorite Books, at 121 S. Murphy Ave., has been run by owner Leigh Odum since 2004. Its sister shop, Bookasaurus, opened next door at 125 S. Murphy in 2012 and carries children's titles and STEM toys. Both have survived the rise of big-box bookstores and a pandemic largely on the strength of a regular events calendar and a staff that actually knows the inventory.
The Historic Del Monte building sits nearby as a preserved marker of the block's earlier life. The California Packing Company once employed hundreds of workers there packing locally grown apricots, prunes, and peaches, and the building was dedicated in 1999 after its exterior was refurbished and the structure relocated to its current spot on Murphy Avenue. Most people who live within a few blocks have walked past the plaque without stopping to read it.
Roosters Comedy Club, open since 1984, is one of the few standing comedy clubs left in Silicon Valley, with a lineup history that has included Ali Wong, Ellen DeGeneres, Hasan Minhaj, and Amy Schumer.
The Sunnyvale Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. year-round at Murphy and Washington avenues, operated by the Urban Village Farmers' Market Association.
A bookstore visit used to be its own errand. A Saturday morning at the farmers market used to end when the last vendor packed up. Now those same stops sit a few doors down from a restaurant that didn't exist two summers ago, which is a small but real shift in how a Saturday on Murphy Avenue actually gets spent.
Three Dates Left Before the Season Turns Over
If you're weighing whether to bother with any of this before summer programming wraps, the window is short. Here's what's actually left on the calendar as of this week:
| What | When | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Summer Series Music + Market, final night of the 27th annual run | Wednesday, Aug. 26, 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. | Historic Murphy Avenue, between Washington and Evelyn |
| Sunset Movie Series, final screening (Elio) | Friday, Aug. 28, around 7:40 p.m. | Sunnyvale Community Center, 550 E. Remington Dr. |
| Jazz & Beyond, closing Saturdays of the season | Saturday evenings through late August | Historic Murphy Avenue |
Jazz & Beyond alone has drawn crowds of up to 1,300 people a night across its run, and both weekly series lean into the block's new density: order from a QR code at a downtown table and the food comes from whichever nearby restaurant has the shortest ticket queue that night, Zareen's included. The final movie night is worth flagging separately because it's not on Murphy at all. It's out at the Community Center on Remington Drive, which is the point of the Sunset Movie Series in the first place. Rather than keeping every summer event downtown, the city rotates through neighborhood parks, so residents closer to Serra Park, Columbia Park, or Murphy Park got their turn earlier in August before this last one lands near Remington.
After Aug. 28, the calendar goes quiet for a few weeks before it picks back up with the city's State of the City address on Sept. 19, a Tech Business Expo on Oct. 15, and the 41st Annual Hands on the Arts festival on Oct. 17.
The Lag Is the Lesson
The version of Murphy Avenue that most residents still carry around in their heads is the one from right after the 2023 conversion, when the street had been cleared of cars but hadn't yet filled with the tenants that make a car-free block worth crossing for. That gap took three years to close, not because the city was slow, but because restaurant leases and build-outs move on a different clock than sidewalk paint. Anyone judging the block on a three-year-old impression is judging a version of it that doesn't exist anymore.
If you're the kind of Sunnyvale resident who likes knowing which block is actually worth the walk this month, this is one of the more useful stretches of the year to have paid attention. Jesse Kim writes these dispatches because knowing a neighborhood well means knowing what's happening on Murphy Avenue, not just what's for sale on it. Let's Connect if there's ever a Bay Area question, real estate or otherwise, worth talking through.
