In 2025, Menlo Park put its name in bold letters on the Bay Area’s culinary map
The story this year in Silicon Valley dining doesn’t belong to a single restaurant. It belongs to the city of Menlo Park. By the end of 2025 its longheld nickname “Menlo Dark” felt like ancient history. Sort of. By 8pm, Santa Cruz Avenue still looks pretty sleepy but the new restaurants that opened this year remain wide awake after dark.
I’m going to attribute the general awakening to Camper’s 2018 arrival in the neighborhood. Chef Greg Kuzia-Carmel’s restaurant presented a tonal shift on the avenue. The décor heralded a new era of streamlined interior design. While the dishes on the menu mixed rustic and elegant elements together. Camper embraced everything we know about California fine dining: it’s farm-to-table and seasonal.
Then COVID-19 halted any other openings. The first restaurant in the area to really shake off the post-pandemic doldrums was Clark’s Oyster Bar. They opened their doors, with an al fresco patio, in the spring. National chain restaurants are generally impersonal places. They can land in any city and add nothing to the culinary landscape. The restaurant group behind Clark’s smartly tailors each of their new locations to the particulars of a region. For Menlo Park, the owners hired Rob Moss Wilson, a Bay Area artist, who painted a cliffside seascape above the prominent and finely buffed wooden bar.
Everything else about Clark’s interior reads nautical. And, in this case, it summons up California’s extraordinary coastline. From the huge gleaming fish tank at the entrance to the navy blue booths and the preserved marlin hanging mid-leap on the back wall. There are, of course, lobster rolls, oysters and a variety of fish dishes on the menu. But non-pescatarians can find a hearty hamburger to order. They serve it with an unscalable mountain of shoestring potato french fries.
Clark’s Oyster Bar presents a yuppy-eyed view of American dining. We all recognize that the clubby claustrophobic era referenced is extinct. But it’s still fun to play-act there for a gossipy afternoon, dressed in pink polo shirts with turned-up collars, to eat wedge salads and sip tall glasses of iced tea.
By the middle of summer, just up the street from Clark’s, a husband and wife culinary team opened Yeobo, Darling. Chefs Meichih and Michael Kim established their names with two previous concepts: Maum and Bǎo Bèi.
The new menu is also a marriage of their minds. It reflects and combines both of their distinct heritages. Meichih’s roots are Taiwanese and Michael’s are Korean, and they’re also Asian American, which accounts for lasagna, somyun, and chicken wings showing up on the same menu.
Yeobo, Darling is truly unique in the Bay Area’s culinary ecosystem. I can’t think of another restaurant that has a confident command over such a wide variety of ingredients and influences that successfully harmonize on the plate.
The scallion croissant loaf, made in partnership with Redwood City’s The Baker Next Door, transformed something familiar (scallion pancakes) into something magical. A plate of chicken wings, not a personal favorite of mine, found a new convert. The Kims are using masterful techniques with the right mix of spice and heat. They don’t make boring dishes. Going forward, I expect to find more experimentation on their ultimate fusion menu.
And then in the fall, Café Vivant opened in Le Boulanger’s stead. The conversion from one way of eating to another is startling. I actually felt, and I’m not kidding, enchanted by the cooking in the reimagined dining room. Executive chef Jared Wentworth, chef de cuisine Emily Phillips and executive pastry chef Almira Lukmanova made my favorite meal of the year. Weeks later, it feels like it was dreamed up or borrowed from a fictional place.
The night I ate dinner there the Café Vivant kitchen team made butter-poached Maine lobster; Southern fried quail; duck breast with roasted chestnuts; halibut covered in colorful “scales” of yellow squash and green zucchini; and an egg-shaped cheesecake that opened with the crack of its outer shell—a magical fairy tale egg that, with a final tap, put an end to our storied night.
Café Vivant, Clark’s Oyster Bar and Yeobo, Darling are all open on Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park.
