If you walk Cal Ave on a Sunday morning this July, the market still smells the same. Stone fruit at the El Camino end, coffee near the middle, someone testing a cello outside a stall. What has changed sits at the edges of that familiar picture. The city has finally locked in a parklet standard, four new restaurants have either opened or are opening within a hundred yards of each other, and two very tall buildings have moved from rumor to formal application. For a street that spent five years described as "temporary," the summer of 2026 is when temporary quietly ended.
That is the thesis worth carrying through the rest of this walk. Cal Ave is not drifting anymore. It is being designed.
The parklet vote that ended the argument
For most of the last two years, the block between El Camino Real and Birch existed in a strange planning limbo. Cars were gone. The plastic orange water barriers came out in early 2025. But the parklets themselves, the wood-framed dining rooms that half the block built during 2020, were still operating on emergency rules that kept getting extended one quarter at a time.
That ended on June 1, 2026. The City Council signed off on new design standards for the parklet structures, with three approved models for the car-free stretch between El Camino Real and Birch Street. One is a cabana with a sloped roof and overhangs; the second is a pergola with a flat roof. The earlier version of the plan, the one that would have swept the parklets away in favor of open tables and umbrellas, died after months of pushback from restaurant owners who pointed out that Palo Alto has weather and that customers do not eat outside in it if there is no roof.
The bike question got resolved in the same round. Cyclists can still cruise through Cal Ave, but thermoplastic bands along the street function as a traffic-calming texture that encourages them to slow down, a departure from the earlier two-way bike lane concept that merchants worried would encourage speeding.
If you own a home within walking distance of the strip, this is the change that will define the next decade of your evenings. The block is not becoming a pedestrian mall by accident anymore. It is being tuned like one.
Four openings that changed the walk
The restaurant turnover on and just off Cal Ave this spring was heavier than any single stretch since the pandemic. The names worth knowing, because they will be on your dinner rotation:
The Rendezvous, 3407 Page Mill Road. Opened in June. Half French bistro, half wine bar, staffed by a team most locals already recognize. Fans of Pastis, the Cal Ave staple for more than a decade before it closed in 2022, can once again find its signature escargot, mussels and pâté at The Rendezvous, where chef Maxime Roucoule says half the menu is what he used to do at his old restaurant. The project pairs Roucoule with restaurateur Giuseppe Carrubba, owner of Kirk's Steakburgers, Caffe Riace and Osteria Toscana, combining Carrubba's Italian roots with Roucoule's French ones and a shared interest in wine. The list carries about 300 labels, roughly 40 percent French, 30 percent Californian and 30 percent Italian.
La Corneta Taqueria, 324 University Avenue. A 31-year-old taqueria has expanded into the former SliderBar location on University Avenue, opening before Cinco de Mayo per co-owner David Perez-Campos. This is the fifth location for the San Francisco taqueria and the first north of the county line where a real burrito used to require a drive.
Bistro Demiya, 407 Lytton Avenue. Cupertino residents Demi Ebara and Arthur de la Cueva are opening their sixth Bay Area restaurant this summer in downtown Palo Alto, an elevated version of their casual Demiya chain that specializes in Japanese curry, located in the former Poke One space, seating about 25 with an additional 10 in the backyard.
Rikyu. The team behind Los Altos omakase restaurant Hiroshi is opening a matcha cafe in the former TOMO Tea House footprint, with matcha and coffee beverages using housemade syrups alongside Japanese sandos including katsu-style chicken and Japanese A5 wagyu.
Two more are worth flagging because they land later this year and will fill spaces that have been dark for a while. A trendy French bakery called Croissanté, with outposts in Santa Clara and Los Gatos, is coming to 321 California Ave in the former Antonio's Nut House space, with owner Sean Kang expecting a late 2026 opening after a significant delay. And Brazilian gelato chain Bacio di Latte landed at Stanford Shopping Center in late April, the first Bay Area location for a company with more than 200 shops in Brazil and 16 in Southern California.
Here is the compressed picture, sorted by when you can actually go:
| Now open | Opening this summer | Arriving late 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| The Rendezvous (Page Mill) | Bistro Demiya (Lytton) | Croissanté (Cal Ave) |
| La Corneta (University) | Rikyu matcha cafe | Peng's Kitchen (Bryant) |
| Bacio di Latte (Stanford Shopping Center) | Mints & Honey (Emerson) |
The point is not that Palo Alto has a lot of new restaurants. It always does. The point is that six of these openings sit within a fifteen-minute walk of the Cal Ave Caltrain platform. That kind of density has not happened here in a decade.
What is going up above the storefronts
The other reason this summer feels different is that the ground rules for building housing on Cal Ave changed on July 1, and the first proposals have already been filed under the new law.
The team behind a mixed-use development at 414 California Ave is turning to a new state law that lets them bypass local restrictions on height and density, with a proposal for five stories of apartments totaling 39 units above ground-floor retail and restaurant space, plus two underground parking levels with 75 stalls; at its tallest, the building would rise to 72 feet using Senate Bill 79, which allows housing projects to reach 75 feet within a quarter-mile of a transit stop. The 414 Cal Ave project is one of three that have invoked SB 79 for approval, alongside a 76-unit complex at 2455 El Camino Real on the Coronet Motel site and a 21-unit project at 525 Hamilton Ave.
The bigger story sits at the other end of the block. Redco Development's alternative proposal for the Mollie Stone's Market site at 156 California Ave calls for three towers, one 14 stories and two 12 stories, after the developer agreed to reduce the height of its tallest building from 17 stories to 14 following months of negotiations with city officials and the looming threat of litigation. Whatever you think of the design, that mass of housing landing on top of the current strip will do more to change the Sunday market experience than any parklet vote.
For a resident already living here, none of this arrives quickly. Several years of daytime construction noise and dirt is a real concern for the restaurants on that block whose business model now depends on lively car-free lunchtime outdoor dining. Worth knowing, if you are choosing between two blocks to live on, which one will be a construction site through 2028.
The rhythm that has not changed
Underneath all of this, the Sunday market runs on the same clock it always has. The California Avenue Farmers Market is open Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round, rain or shine. Since the street was broadened it now holds three separate live music spots that do not interfere with each other, plus anchors like Zombie Runner for espresso, Zareen's for Pakistani-Indian, and County Foods for produce.
Two habits worth adopting this summer if you have not:
- Do the market first, then walk east toward Birch and eat at whichever parklet has the shortest line. The new roofed structures mean that a 90-degree afternoon does not knock outdoor dining off the table anymore.
- If you have out-of-town guests, the best twenty-minute loop is Cal Ave market, coffee at one of the roasters near Ash Street, and then a five-minute drive up Page Mill to The Rendezvous for a late lunch of escargot and a glass of something French. The whole thing costs less than a single dinner at any of the big University Ave rooms and tells a much better story about how the town actually eats.
The version of Cal Ave that existed in 2019 is gone. The version that will exist in 2030, with 14-story residential towers on the west end and roofed year-round dining down the middle, is not here yet. What is here, this July, is the visible seam between the two. Walking it now is the only chance to remember the small version of the street before the bigger one arrives.
If you own a home in Palo Alto and are thinking about how the coming construction cycle, transit-adjacent zoning changes, and shifting foot traffic will affect your block specifically, that conversation is worth having before the next round of permits gets filed. Reach out to Angelo Fierro Group to start your white-glove consultation.
