List of New San Jose Restaurants

The Silicon Valley Business Journal has a full list of notable South Bay restaurants, both those recently opened in late 2024 and coming soon this year. Below is the list for San Jose, but you can check out the source link for all of Silicon Valley.

Tomorrow I'll have a full review of Eos & Nyx, San Jose's most highly anticipated restaurant opening in the past several months. From the list below, I'm super excited about the return of Adega as well as Augustine in Santana Row (their other restaurants are excellent). Campus Burgers gets the award for biggest surprise of 2024 for me. Who would have thought $2 smashburgers could be so good?

New San Jose Restaurants

Adega: San Jose's only Michelin-starred restaurant reopened in October after closing in December 2023. Serving Portuguese cuisine, owners Carlos and Fernanda Carreira had planned to turn the 1614 Alum Rock Ave. location into a second location for their Petiscos restaurant but had a most welcome change of heart. 

Augustine: The Bacchus Management Group's second restaurant in Santana Row will offer Mediterranean cuisine in two dining rooms across 8,000 square feet as well as a 3,000-square-foot patio space. The site, formerly a dim sum restaurant, will also have a reservations-only cocktail bar. 

Campus Burgers: Home of the $2 smash burger, this family-run burger stand opened in July offering students and locals an inexpensive alternative to the larger chains. Located across the street from San Jose State University at 108 Paseo de San Antonio, this little burger joint has become a student staple. 

California Fish Grill: Coming soon to the Evergreen Circle shopping center at 2394 Evergreen Place, this will make three Silicon Valley locations of the healthy fast-food chain. 

Caminos de Michoacán: Offering up authentic Mexican cuisine like goat birria tacos, menudo and enchiladas michoacanas at 5138 Monterey Road in San Jose. 

Dough Burger: Big burgers, shakes and fries at 1721 Old Bayshore Highway. "All meat is Hand-Slaughtered Halal," they brag on their website. 

El Amigo: Family-style Mexican food and beverages located in Santa Teresa Village, in South San Jose. Regulars love the wet burrito as well as breakfast favorites like huevos rancheros and machaca. 

Eos & Nyx: This Mediterranean-inspired two-story dining complex comes from MO Hospitality Group, the folks driving Downtown San Jose's revival with MiniBoss, PaperPlane, Still O.G., and Alter Ego. The restaurant opened this past November as part of Urban Catalyst’s Paseo project. 

Hey Chicken: This fried chicken fast-food joint opened at 670 River Oaks Pkwy. last year. 

La Korita Restaurant: Offering up a combination of traditional Mexican street foods like tacos and quesa birrias in what was formerly Tony P's Park Ave Bar & Grill, La Korita also offers a Mexican seafood menu. 

La Más Querida Cantina & Cocina: Located at King and Story Road, this Mexican bar and restaurant that aims for a festive, fiesta feel. 

Los Arcos Restaurant: Traditional Mexican food and entertainment that's been open for more than a year on Tully Road. Live entertainment, big portions, and plenty of parking.  

Mendocino Farms: The sandwich shop opened its fourth location in San Jose at the Westgate Center offering up its trademark "fast-casual" fare of gourmet sandwiches and salads. 

Moonwake Coffee Roasters: What began as a pop-up cafe out of the back of a Tesla Cybertruck, husband and wife team of Ming Wood and Mabel Yeung opened a cafe proper at 1412 Saratoga Ave. in West San Jose this past fall bringing a little Apple Store atmosphere to coffee culture. 

Mylapore South Indian Restaurant: Opened in April in the Westgate Mall, Mylapore offers quick, easy, and inexpensive vegetarian dishes like dals, dosas, and jaggeries. 

Pizza Guys: The Sacramento-based chain opened its fourth San Jose location at 2471 Berryessa Road, Suite 2 in September as part of its plan to open eight more franchises in the state. 

The Pressroom: Located at the intersection of Santa Clara and North Almaden Ave., this upscale restaurant and bar will be the latest addition to restaurateur David Mulvehill's San Jose mainstays, Five Points craft cocktail bar, O’Flaherty’s Irish Pub, Dr. Funk Rum House, and Hella Good Burger. Done in partnership with Nuvo Hospitality Group, it's expected to open in early 2025. 

Pho King Restaurant: Celebrating chicken noodle pho, this Vietnamese restaurant at 385 Kiely Blvd. also celebrates traditional pork chops and spicy beef noodle soup. 

Raising Cane's: The fried chicken finger chain, founded in Louisiana in 1996, plans to open later this year at the Evergreen Circle shopping center. 

Shake Shack: The New York-based gourmet burger chain opened a third location in San Jose at the Westgate Center at 1640 Saratoga Ave. with a rumored fourth location to be on the way in 2025. 

Taelynn Cafe: A modern Vietnamese coffee shop located in the Sun Plaza offers a variety of teas and coffees with some small bites like beef and rice and banh mi sandwiches. 

Tang's Asian Vegetarian Restaurant: A Vietnamese specialty restaurant — an all-vegetarian menu — opened on the site of Champa Kitchen, a halal-style Vietnamese restaurant. Foodies on social media praise Tang's use of meat alternatives like mushrooms and bean curd as well as being one of the more sensibly priced veggie restaurants in the area. 

Wowmia Pizza: Recently opened pizza joint that offers an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet as well as its signature pizzas at 2951 Monterey Rd. 

Source: SVBJ

Hobee's Restaurant and Beer Garden is now open in Downtown San Jose

San Jose's newest Hobee's sits in a blue Victorian that used to be Ludwig's German Table. It also has one feature that no other Hobee's has, a beer garden. This element of the menu will open in 2025, but diners can already enjoy the breakfasts and coffeecakes that Hobee's is known for.

The current seating capacity is 65 on the inside and up to 140 outdoors. The new location is planning to play a strong role in the community and is already getting repeat customers and regulars.

Hobee's Restaurant and Beer Garden is located at 261 N. Second Street and is currently open from 8am to 2pm, Tuesday through Sunday. Those hours should expand in 2025. 

Source: The Mercury News

CEO Noodles: Chief Eating Officer

Another new eatery is open in Downtown San Jose. CEO Noodles has a mix of authentic noodle dishes from Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. They also have some very unique items like papaya snow-fungus dessert soup. 

The restaurant features fantasy-inspired decor and a mobile app for seamless ordering. It's yet another highly anticipated San Jose restaurant that is racking up excellent initial reviews.

CEO Noodles is open from 10am-9:30pm every day and is located at 130 E. Santa Clara Street (between 3rd and 4th Street).

Source: The Downtowner

Augustine will be Santana Row's newest high-end restaurant

Bacchus Management Group has run several Michelin-starred restaurants including The Village Pub in Woodside, Selby's in Atherton, and Spruce in SF. They also launched one of the most popular restaurants in Santana Row two decades ago--Pizza Antica. Now they are opening a second restaurant at Santana Row called Augustine.

The new restaurant will focus on family-style Mediterranean cuisine and encompass 8,000 SQFT along with a 3,000 SQFT patio space. They actually tore down the front of the building and moved the entrance back 25 feet to make the patio even larger and give the restaurant an indoor-outdoor feel.

It will have a cocktail lounge, a large bar, two dining rooms, a reservation-only cocktail bar (could it be another speakeasy?) and options for private dining. Pricing will be around $80 for a two-person dinner, but I'm assuming that is without alcohol.  

The goal is to open by end of the year at 377 Santana Row, a spot formerly occupied by Sino that has been vacant since 2020. I can't wait to try it out!

Source: SVBJ

Paleta Planeta now open in Downtown San Jose

The highly anticipated Paleta Planet officially opened over the weekend. The new shop specializes in unique popsicles like the Astro (mix of guava, horchata, and watermelon), Aguacate Coco (Avocado Coconut), and the Cookie Monster which is pictured below with self-explanatory ingredients🍪. They also have ice cream, dips, toppings, and some specialy items that are not desserts. I'm also excited about the Mexican Street Corn which is white corn with sour cream, mayo, cotija cheese, chili power, and lime.

Paleta Planeta is located at 150 E. Santa Clara Street in the heard of Downtown San Jose. They are open from Monday through Thursday from 12pm to 7pm and Friday through Sunday from 12pm to 8pm. 

Campus Burger opens to long lines for it's $1.99 burgers in Downtown San Jose

One of Downtown San Jose's most popular new restaurants is a burger shack in a large kiosk where the Circle-A Skateboard shop used to be on Paseo de San Antonio (don't worry about Circle-A, they relocated to SoFA). 

When I first found out about Campus Burgers, the pricing is the first thing that stood out. They have just five items on the menu and the hamburgers are just $1.99. This seemed too good to be true... I've paid $7 for a Big Mac before. However, this is a legit restaurant. The owner Jim Angelopoulos previously owned and operated Scrambl'z in Almaden and Yolked in Morgan Hill. It's all about simplicity and efficiency to get the costs down to something anyone can afford.

Campus Burgers did a soft opening last week where they gave away 1,000 burgers for free. In the following days they have had long lines and have completely sold out of food well before closing time. They are ordering more meat to keep up with demand. As a side note, San Jose State University is a block away and classes don't even begin until August 19th.

So far their Yelp rating is an impressive 4.5 stars with 30 reviews in the past week. This is despite people often waiting more than half an hour in line to get their burgers, which are cooked to order. Initial reviewers are really impressed with the quality, value, and are even comparing it to In & Out. I can't wait to try this for myself, but if you're in the area it certainly seems worth swinging by.

Source: SVBJ (photos by Tomas Ovalle from the SVBJ)

Prime corner spot in Downtown San Jose to become a new restaurant and office space

A new corner restaurant is destined for 189 West Santa Clara Street at the intersection of Almaden Avenue. The space is part of the thriving San Pedro Square area and the owner already operates multiple restaurants around this block.

The space is also known as the Lyndon Building and was constructed in 1884. In 1902 it housed the Times-Mercury which was a precursor to the San Jose Mercury News.

The new restaurant will span 5,500 SQFT and feature both a bar and outdoor seating. It will be open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the menu will be California-style farm-to-table. It still doesn't have a name, but will be something related to the newspaper printing heritage of the building.

There is also an 8,000 SQFT upper floor that will be leased as office space. This part of the building was a venue for big bands and country music in the 1940s and '50s, and then rock in the '60s. I believe it also hosted the Irish Innovation Center at one point. The building owner envisions a tenant such as a creative firm or AI startup for this space.

A restaurant and high-tech tenant would further activate this space and help connect it to the next block, which has an Opa! Greek restaurant and an office tower.

Source: The Mercury News

San Jose's Evergreen area is getting a Chick-Fil-A 🐔

Normally this wouldn't be news, but one of the most popular posts of all time of this blog was about a Chick-Fil-A opening in North San Jose. Soon, Evergreen residents won't have to go far for their controversial chicken sandwich fix.

Chick-Fil-A paid $4.5 million dollars for a parcel that is currently a parking lot in front of the Target on E. Capitol Expressway and Silver Creek Road. It's in the same shopping center as a Chevron, The Boiling Crab and Pho Papa (or for any San Jose OGs, where Beef Noodle #1 used to be).

The land is about 3/4 of an acre and it's unclear whether it will be a traditional single story building or one of the fancier designs that Chick-Fil-A is building starting in 2024. One variant even has the drive-through going through the middle of the building with in-restaurant dining on a 2nd floor.

The new Chick-Fil-A could be open as soon as next year, but there doesn't appear to be an official ETA yet.

Source: The Merc

Rollati Ristorante - Downtown San Jose's newest flagship restaurant

I had the chance to try out Rollati across from San Jose City Hall on opening weekend and am happy to say it lived up to the hype. This restaurant is brought to you by the same group responsible for Left Bank, LB Steak, and Meso Mediterranean at Santana Row. I like all of those places, but Rollati is my new favorite.

Quick disclosure that this was not a sponsored meal. I paid for everything and my wife and I crushed seven courses and four cocktails, so we got a pretty good feel for the place. We also dined at 5pm since we have a baby at home. I'm bummed we had to leave before we could see Sonic Runway light up in front of City Hall through the massive floor to ceiling windows, but we'll leave that for another trip.

First off, it's gorgeous. Right when you walk in there is modern yet homely feel. The bar looks awesome and was completely packed by the time we left. You can see through to the kitchen and brick pizza oven and there is small shop by the host desk for take-home items and Italian condiments. Eventually they will also set up outdoor seating with fire pits and planters for privacy.

We started with the namesake dish, the Eggplant Rollatini with roasted garlic ricotta, spinach, and marinara. This alone was worth the trip. One of the best Italian dishes I have ever had, full stop.

We washed the Rollatini down with a Limoncello Spritz using housemade Limoncello, Elderflower, and Proseco and one of the most unique cocktail's I've even had... an Heirloom Martini with olive oil washed vodka, heirloom tomatoes, basil, and white balsamic. Yup, balsamic. It was like a taste of Italy in a Martini. I wouldn't order it on its own, but surprisingly it paired perfectly with the food. 

Next up were the Gnocchetti Alla Bava with pancetta and crispy sage. This was almost as good as the Eggplant Rollatini. We also went with a Traditional Caesar which sounds a bit basic to try at a trendy new restaurant but it had crispy parmigiano crisps and a rustic crouton that made it one of my favorite Caesars of all time. They nailed the sauce with just the right amount of anchovy flavor.

For the next round of drinks we got refreshing Bufala Negra which is bourbon with basil, balsamic, and ginger ale (yup another drink with balsamic) and a Black Manhattan which uses bourbon and multiple Italian Amaros. These were definitely up to "craft cocktail" standards and honestly I would be perfectly happy coming here just for the drinks at the bar.

Finally the real show, the main courses. A Spaghetti Alla Limon with Dungeness Crab. This had a lemon cream sauce, parmigiano, and breadcrumbs. We added on the crab as an option and it was outstanding. And then just when we think we've had our favorite course...

...a "Thousand" Layer Lasagna with Beef Short Rib Ragu. This was really something else and unlike any other Lasagna I've had before. It was crispy, soft, cheesy, and meaty in all the right proportions.

We were crazy so we also ordered a Braised Rabbit with polenta, pine nuts, and currants. This was my wife's favorite. It didn't taste gamey at all and was much more flavorful than let's say a chicken dish.

We were completely stuffed at this point. There were no leftovers, we ate everything. However, when every single dish is this good, you have to assume they are going to have great desserts as well. So we squeezed in a Fig Leaf Panna Cotta and I have no regrets. It was served with a Florentine cookie and fig compote.  

Final verdict? Was it worth $250 for two (in all fairness it was probably a meal for three or four)?

Yes. 10/10. 

Rollati is the best major new restaurant in Downtown San Jose since Petiscos (which is now San Jose's first and only Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant). If you live in Miro which is directly above the restaurant, I am very jealous and you're probably going to gain some weight.

Protip: you can park for free after 6pm in the neighborhoods around the Miro Towers and all day on Sundays. They also have valet parking and there is 90min of free parking in city-owned garages throughout Downtown San Jose.

La Ca Phe now open on 740 Story Road in San Jose near Vietnam Town

La Ca Phe is a Vietnamese Coffee shop specializing in a variety of specialties that are not easy to find in the Bay Area. Their Eggspresso Hanoi is a special egg-based coffee drink that I last tried in Vietnam and it blew my mind. They also have Ube Coffee and a wide variety of other Vietnamese and Southeast Asian-style drinks.

They have been working on this coffee shop for three years and opened to huge demand. La Ca Phe is at 740 Story Road. Instead of doing your typical Starbucks routine, come try out some unique and truly delicious coffee someplace new!

Source: Insta

Rollati Ristorante - New 7,000 SQFT flagship restaurant coming to Downtown San Jose

There has been some debate lately on the state of Downtown San Jose. A viral video has been circulating around showing all the empty storefronts throughout Downtown, but it glossed over not only areas that are very active today but failed to point out the exciting new projects coming to our city's core. Rollati is definitely one of those projects.

The Silicon Valley Business Journal snagged an exclusive about the new restaurant. If you have a subscription you can access it here. Below are my notes.

Rollati Ristoranti is coming from the same team behind Left Bank Brasserie, LB Steak, Meso Modern Mediterranean and Camper in Menlo Park. It will be one of the anchor tenants on the ground floor of the Miro apartment towers across from City Hall. The restaurant is 7,000 SQFT large (massive) and will seat up to 189 people between an indoor dining room, bar and lounge, private dining rooms, a retail cafe, and outdoor space. A large outdoor dining area will be on both sides of the restaurant and accommodate up to 52 people.

The "retail cafe" definitely piqued my interest when I read the article. This will be a market that sells pastas, house-made sauces, and some prepared items like meatballs. It's catered towards the residents upstairs and Downtown workers that might want to quickly grab some items to take home.

The CEO of the company behind the restaurant described the menu as a "love letter to Italian-American cuisine" and stated that "a modern American-Italian restaurant hasn't been done in the caliber we're hoping." Bring it on I say!

Two sides of the restaurant space will have floor to ceiling windows to let in a lot of natural light and the vibe is going to be modern yet nostalgic.

The grand opening is slated for some time in September and dinner hours will be 5pm-9pm Sunday through Thursday and 5pm to 10pm on Friday and Saturday. For near real-time photos and additional info as it becomes available, follow The San Jose Blog on X.

Source: SVBJ

2nd Taco Bell *Cantina* opens in San Jose

If you have ever been to Taco Bell and wished there was something with a little more kick to wash those tacos down, today is your lucky day. A new Taco Bell Cantina opened next to the Century Theaters at Oakridge Mall. Unlike other Taco Bells, the "Cantina" variety serve alcohol including blended margaritas and beers and usually stay open until midnight.

It's a surreal experience getting your alcoholic beverages at a Taco Bell, but they were surprisingly good and affordable. I would take this over your typical movie theater food any day of the week.

There is one other Taco Bell Cantina at 19 Market St. in Downtown San Jose. I'll never forget that location as it's the only place where I personally experienced a crime. As I sat down to eat, a young man in a peacoat asked if he could have one of my Cheesy Gordita Crunch tacos. I said I'm good. Then he tried to trade me his peacoat for the taco. While tempting and likely a trade in my favor, I still said no. When I got up to tell one of the managers I was getting a bit uncomfortable, he grabbed my taco and ran away! He didn't even leave the peacoat. Thankfully customer service was excellent and Taco Bell Cantina staff immediately replaced my pilfered Cheesy Gordita Crunch taco at no additional charge. No police report was filed.

True random story aside, if you enjoy Taco Bell this is the best one to go to. Their fancy frozen margaritas can also be made without alcohol and they have nicer seating they your typical Taco Bell. This new one even has a patio with a fireplace.

Source: Fox KTVU