According to Hoodline, Nandana Hazarika spent nearly two decades as a software engineer and data analyst before she walked into 193 S. Murphy Ave. as an intern, learning the kitchen at The Oxford Kitchen & Gastropub from the inside. When that restaurant's run ended, she didn't wait for the address to sit vacant while she found her footing. She opened Khaar there instead, the Bay Area's first restaurant built entirely around Assamese and Naga cooking from India's Seven Sister states, with a soft opening on August 14 and a grand opening on September 12. The space changed hands. The block didn't skip a beat.
That's the part of Murphy Avenue's current run of openings that's easy to miss if you're only counting new signage. This isn't a strip discovering an audience for the first time. Several recent arrivals had already built an audience elsewhere on the Peninsula before they got here.
The Space Doesn't Sit Empty, It Changes Hands
Look at who actually took the recent leases. Zareen Khan didn't open her first restaurant on Murphy. She opened her first restaurant in Mountain View back in 2014, then expanded to Palo Alto and Redwood City before her fourth location landed at 135 S. Murphy Ave. this past February, a roughly 38-seat room with a parklet out front. She's said the reason she wanted this block specifically was the feel of historic Murphy Street, an old downtown character she didn't find in a strip mall. Moods Wine Bar & Bistro, a name longtime Peninsula diners already knew from Palo Alto, reopened on Murphy this year rather than launching fresh. Meyhouse didn't invent a Turkish restaurant concept for Sunnyvale. It added a Sunnyvale location to a footprint it had already proven elsewhere.
Khaar is a different kind of arrival. Hazarika didn't pick Murphy Avenue at random after culinary school. She trained inside the exact address first, watched how the block moved, and stepped into the vacancy the moment it opened. She'd already tried and been cut from MasterChef India in 2022, a setback that didn't end her culinary ambitions so much as redirect them toward building something of her own on a street she already understood.
Here's the current lineup, with new arrivals alongside longtime anchors:
- Khaar, 193 S. Murphy Ave., opened by chef Nandana Hazarika in the former Oxford Kitchen & Gastropub space, soft-opened August 14, grand opening September 12
- Zareen's, 135 S. Murphy Ave., the fourth location for a concept that started in Mountain View in 2014 before expanding to Palo Alto and Redwood City
- Moods Wine Bar & Bistro, a Palo Alto name reopening on Murphy
- Meyhouse, a Turkish restaurant adding a Sunnyvale location to its existing footprint
- Metro City, 151 S. Murphy Ave., an all-day breakfast and American comfort food fixture for close to a decade, known for its hash brown Benedict
- Thai Basil, 101 S. Murphy Ave., a longtime corner spot for Thai staples including sai krok isan, a northeastern Thai sausage
One block. Most current openings are expansions or comebacks. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's what happens when a strip is short enough that a new tenant has to already be good at running a restaurant before they get a shot at it.
What Doesn't Rotate
The reason the turnover doesn't read as instability to anyone who actually lives near the block is that the anchors around the restaurants haven't moved in years. Leigh's Favorite Books has held its spot on Murphy since 2004, and its sister shop Bookasaurus since 2012, both still running the kind of calendar you don't often find in a suburban downtown anymore: author talks, book clubs, evening mystery and mocktail nights. Two blocks of restaurant turnover can happen around a bookstore that isn't going anywhere, and the presence of an actual working independent bookstore is worth noticing precisely because it's not guaranteed to still be there in another five years if nobody walks in.
The Historic Del Monte building sits at the other end of that same stability. It's a physical reminder that this strip was packing apricots, prunes, and peaches under the California Packing Company name in the early twentieth century, before its exterior was refurbished and the structure relocated to its current spot along Murphy Avenue and rededicated in 1999. The plaque takes about thirty seconds to read. It's also the clearest evidence that this block has been reinventing its ground-floor tenants for well over a century without losing what it actually is.
Then there's the Saturday farmers market at Murphy and Washington, open year round, rain or shine, and enrolled in the Market Match program that lets CalFresh EBT shoppers stretch their produce dollars further. Restaurants open and close around it. The market itself hasn't needed reinvention.
The Overflow Is Already Being Built Next Door
None of this happens in isolation from what's rising just off Murphy itself. The Cityline development, a roughly 36-acre mixed-use project led by STC Venture, a partnership between Sares Regis Group of Northern California and Hunter Properties, has been adding apartments, office space, and ground-floor retail across a construction footprint bounded by Washington, Murphy, McKinley, and Taaffe.
Murphy Avenue itself became a full pedestrian mall in 2023, a decision that took cars off the block and gave restaurants room to keep tables outside without competing with traffic. The city has since upgraded the walking paths for accessibility. Together, they help shape how people experience Murphy Avenue.
What a Walk Down the Block Looks Like Now
If you're heading to the Saturday farmers market at Murphy and Washington this fall, the sequence that makes sense of everything above isn't complicated. Walk the market first while the produce is freshest. Duck into Leigh's Favorite Books for a few minutes on the way past, since browsing there costs nothing and its calendar of author talks, book clubs, and mystery and mocktail evenings gives the block a reason to stay lit after the restaurants fill up. Read the Del Monte plaque if you haven't already, since it explains why the block looks the way it does architecturally before any of the newer restaurants opened. Then pick dinner. If you want to see what a chef who trained inside the exact space is doing with it now, that's Khaar. If you'd rather see what a restaurateur with three other successful locations decided was worth building a fourth room for, that's Zareen's.
Either way, you're choosing between different kinds of experience: an established multi-location name or a first restaurant led by a chef who already knows the block.
Kiersten Ligeti & Patricia Karoubi Team works this stretch of Sunnyvale often enough to notice which storefronts hold and which ones turn, and we're always glad to talk through what a block like Murphy Avenue means for daily life here. If you want that conversation, Kiersten Ligeti & Patricia Karoubi Team is a call away.
