New Menlo Park Restaurants at Springline and Oak Grove

For a decade, if you asked a Menlo Park resident where to eat, the answer pointed to Santa Cruz Avenue. That is not quite true anymore. The block that matters this August sits one street north, on Oak Grove, where Springline's restaurant roster finally closed out in June and a beloved Singaporean kitchen quietly reopened two blocks east after a year in exile. If you already live here, the practical consequence is small but real: your default Wednesday walk has a new shape.

This is a resident's update, not a food tour. The point is to catch you up on what has actually changed since spring, why the changes cluster on one street, and how to fold them into the rhythm of a summer week that is still winding down.

Springline finally filled its last seat

Springline has spent the last few years assembling a lineup of restaurants that mostly crossed the county line from San Francisco. The Menlo Park mixed-use campus has steadily been bringing a host of San Francisco-based eateries to the Peninsula, including Andytown Coffee Roasters, Barebottle Brewing Co., Burma Love, Che Fico and Proper Food. That project ended this summer. Burma Food Group opened the first restaurant at Springline. On June 11, it debuted a new concept at the Menlo Park development, the final addition to a now full list of restaurant tenants.

The new concept is Alisios Mexican Cocina, and the parentage is worth pausing on. Located next to Barebottle Brewing, Alisios is a contemporary Mexican restaurant and bar from the team behind Burmese restaurants such as Burma Superstar, Burma Love, Teakwood and Kayah. Executive chef Carlos Villegas and sous chef Renee Gomez developed a menu that draws on flavors from Oaxaca and Baja, with many recipes from Villegas' family. This is the group that opened Springline's first restaurant, Burma Love, and has now bookended the campus with its debut Mexican concept.

For daily use: Alisios is open Monday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Happy hour is Monday to Friday from 3-6 p.m. Brunch is Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The 3 to 6 p.m. happy hour is the piece worth memorizing if you are heading to Fremont Park at 6 for a concert.

Causwells is the other April opening you may have missed

Two months before Alisios, Springline's other new tenant opened in the former Canteen space. Springline is cementing itself as a taste of San Francisco with its latest restaurant tenant: Causwells. The Menlo Park mixed-use campus has steadily been bringing a host of San Francisco-based eateries to the Peninsula, including Andytown Coffee Roasters, Barebottle Brewing Co., Burma Love, Che Fico and Proper Food.

If you know Causwells from the Marina, forget most of it. The menu is about 75% new, chef-owner Adam Rosenblum said. Still distinctly American in cuisine, Rosenblum's culinary perspective is influenced by his classical French training and time cooking in New Orleans. The bar program, developed by co-owner Elmer Mejicanos, aims to showcase the flavors of America today. Mejicanos is utilizing the restaurant's size, twice that of Causwell's original location, with the addition of a martini cart.

The martini cart is not a gimmick you need to explain to out-of-town guests. Causwells Menlo Park will also offer a martini cart with three options: the Causwells Martini is made with gin, white peach balsamic and eucalyptus; the Filthy Martini features olive-oil washed vodka and housemade olive brine; and the Sazerac is made with beeswax aged rye, Chinese five-spice, winter melon and absinthe foam.

A first visit is easier if you order the way the chef would. For a first-time diner, Rosenblum recommends two dishes that have been on the menu from day one. To start, order the housemade ricotta with rosemary honey, olive oil and lavash, he said ($15).

The room itself will tell you it is not the San Francisco original. The 50-seat art deco-style restaurant features peacock-print wallpaper, sage green velvet chairs, and brushed gold hardware, as well as a garage roll-up style wall that opens to seat an additional 60 outdoors.

Here is the current Springline restaurant roster in one place, since you will not find a printed directory on the sidewalk:

• Andytown Coffee Roasters
• Barebottle Brewing Co.
• Burma Love
• Che Fico Parco Menlo
• Proper Food
• Causwells (April 2026)
• Alisios Mexican Cocina (June 2026)

Every one of those names originated in San Francisco. That is not an accident of taste. It is a landlord strategy that has now run to completion.

Shiok! came home, two blocks east

The other Oak Grove story is smaller and more personal, and it is the one long-time residents will actually feel. After being forced out of its longtime Menlo Park home last year, Shiok! Singapore Kitchen has found its way back. The restaurant has reopened in a new space on Oak Grove Avenue with the same kitchen staff dishing up the same family recipes.

The backstory is worth knowing if you were a regular at the old location. Since 1999, Shiok! served traditional Singaporean dishes out of its space at 1137 Chestnut St., co-owner Dennis Lim said. The restaurant was started by Lim's sister, who moved from Singapore after marrying an American and began cooking the food she grew up with for friends at home before opening a small restaurant in San Carlos. When it outgrew that space after only six months, she and their mother moved the business to Menlo Park, eventually calling Lim, then living in Micronesia, to take over about 13 years ago.

The displacement happened quickly. When the Chestnut Street building was sold, Shiok!, along with other tenants, including Gerry's Cakes, was forced to leave by the new owner by Jan. 1, 2025. Lim said he looked for a new location to avoid laying off staff but struggled to find one that fit his needs. During the search, Shiok! has been operating as a delivery and takeout restaurant from a "ghost kitchen" in Redwood City, which anyone who ordered laksa via app in 2025 already knew.

Lim was direct about why the return matters:

"I drove up and down the Peninsula, but we really wanted to come back to Menlo Park, because of the community," Lim said. "My customers are like family. I watch kids here grow up, go to college, and then come back. I'll see my regulars every month or even two or three times a month."

Current hours are worth writing down, because they are not what they used to be. Shiok! is open in its new location Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for lunch and 5-8 p.m. for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. The old Chestnut Street storefront, meanwhile, sits, boarded up, which is a strange thing to walk past if you have been eating on that block for twenty years.

How to sequence a concert Wednesday around the new map

The Summer Concert Series is the one calendar item that ties all of this together for people who already live here. The City of Menlo Park's Summer Concert Series takes place at Fremont Park and Karl E. Clark Park. Free music at twilight with your family and friends, all concerts start at 6:00 pm. The series begins July 8 and runs weekly through Aug. 12.

The final Fremont Park date is Aug. 12, which gives you exactly one more Wednesday to use the new dining map the way it is meant to be used. A practical sequence:

1. Arrive at Springline around 4:30 p.m. and catch Alisios happy hour before 6.
2. Or grab something quick at Proper Food and a beer at Barebottle to carry.
3. Walk five blocks southwest to Fremont Park at the corner of University and Santa Cruz.
4. Bring a blanket. If you are a Menlo Park resident, free, zero-waste party packs (complete with shatterproof plates, tumblers, utensils, and cloth napkins for up to 40 people) are available to residents who are planning to picnic. For more information about borrowing or reserving a party pack, please fill out the form online.
5. After the 7:30 wind-down, walk back to Oak Grove for a nightcap at Causwells' martini cart, or a late plate at Shiok! if it is a Thursday.

If you want a slower version, do Shiok! for lunch on a Tuesday or Wednesday between 11 and 2:30, then bring the leftovers to a bench at Burgess Park in the afternoon.

What the map is really telling you

Zoom out for a second. Two years ago, if a Menlo Park resident said "let's grab dinner downtown," the default was one of five or six long-tenured Santa Cruz Avenue spots. Today the default sentence is different. Springline finished its build-out, an original Menlo Park institution came back on the same street, and the summer concert crowd has a shorter walk in the direction of Oak Grove than it does to Santa Cruz. That is a real shift, and it happened almost entirely inside the last four months.

The Chestnut Street building sitting boarded up two blocks from a fully leased Springline is the whole story compressed into one intersection. It says something about who is deciding what downtown looks like, and it says something about which operators are patient enough to wait a year for the right storefront. Both are worth watching if you plan to stay a while.

If you own a home in Menlo Park and want to talk about what any of this means for the value of your block, or you are curious how a redrawn downtown affects the way agents position listings a few streets over, Kia Amini works this market every week. Let's connect and discuss your home's potential.