Two French restaurants opened in downtown Menlo Park in 1998, a few doors apart on Santa Cruz Avenue. Left Bank Brasserie took 635 Santa Cruz. Bistro Vida took 641. Twenty-eight years later, on the evening of Tuesday, June 23, Left Bank served its last dinner. According to The Almanac, that left Bistro Vida as the only French restaurant still open downtown.
By the end of September, two more long-running Menlo Park places had closed. Dashi on Willow Road closed after 26 years, and Lutticken's on Alameda de las Pulgas closed after 45. Each closing traced to a decision made outside the dining room. One was a restaurant group's decision, one a landlord's change of plans, and one a family's choice to retire. What replaces these places will come from the same kinds of decisions, plus a zoning change the City Council approved the day Left Bank closed.
Three closings, side by side
| Place | Years in Menlo Park | Last day | Decision made by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Left Bank Brasserie, 635 Santa Cruz Ave. | 28 | June 23, 2026 | Vine Hospitality, which closed several restaurants at once |
| Dashi Japanese Restaurant, Willow Rd. at Hamilton Ave. | 26 | July 3, 2026 | Ended when Meta, the property owner, terminated the lease |
| Lutticken's, 3535 Alameda de las Pulgas | 45 | Sept. 30, 2026 | The Lutticken family |
Left Bank closed along with its whole group
Left Bank's closing came from far above the Santa Cruz Avenue dining room. The 150-seat brasserie belonged to Vine Hospitality. On Monday, June 22, the group also announced on social media that LB Steak, Meso Modern Mediterranean and Petite Left Bank were closing for good. The Almanac reported that a manager learned of the Menlo Park closure in a meeting that morning, and that the restaurant's website still said it was "celebrating 30 years."
Longtime downtown diners may remember that this group has left Santa Cruz Avenue before. Its LB Steak at Santa Cruz and University Drive closed in 2018. Left Bank started in Larkspur in 1994 with Ed Levine and chef Roland Passot, came to Menlo Park in 1998, and added Santana Row in 2003.
Next door, Bistro Vida went the other way. Owner Ali El Safy opened Bar Loretta beside it in February 2025, according to The Almanac's review of Menlo Park's 2025. The Mercury News reported that Loretta sits inside the former Magoo's Pizza Parlor, where the Grateful Dead got their start. Left Bank closed when its corporate group did, while Bistro Vida, with El Safy running it since 1998, added a second door.
Dashi's lease ended with Willow Village
Dashi shows how much a landlord's plans matter. The restaurant was in a strip mall near Willow Road and Hamilton Avenue, across from Meta's headquarters. Meta had bought the shopping center for Willow Village, a project the City Council approved in December 2022. It called for 1.6 million square feet of office space, more than 1,700 homes and up to 200,000 square feet of retail.
On May 1, Meta put Willow Village on hold indefinitely, citing "changing market conditions." The Almanac reported that owner John Bek received a letter two days later ending his lease in 60 days. Bek told the paper that the restaurants in the complex had been promised space in Willow Village. A spokesperson for the Meta-owned center told the paper that the center had given Dashi more than $170,000 in financial relief and discounted month-to-month terms over recent years, and the two sides described the lease history differently in that article.
Apart from the national chains, Dashi was the oldest restaurant in that plaza. When it closed, the same center still had Mi Taqueria, HAJI'S Restaurant and SAJJ Mediterranean.
Lutticken's closed on the family's timeline
The west Menlo Park deli closed by choice. "Forty-five years is a long run. It ran its course," Bobby Lutticken, son of founder Bob Lutticken, told The Almanac. "Business model switched, and everyone involved just got older, and it was just time." Judy Congdon, a manager who had been there since it opened, told the paper that daytime business never fully came back after the pandemic.
The closing reached further than the Alameda counter. All four Lutticken's locations shut after Sept. 30: the Menlo Park flagship, two at Stanford Medical Center and one in a Sand Hill Road office building. The After 5 dinner, bar and live music program, which began in 2011, had already ended in August. In 2024 the deli was named Senate District 13's Small Business of the Year.
What comes next is still open. As of late September, the family had not decided what would happen to the storefront, and a longtime After 5 manager had said he and an investor wanted to take over. "There will be something there," Bobby Lutticken said.
What the empty storefronts can hold now
The day Left Bank served its last dinner, the City Council voted unanimously to widen the kinds of businesses allowed on Santa Cruz Avenue. Since the 2012 El Camino Real/Downtown Specific Plan, the street had been held mostly to retail and restaurants. "The specific plan has been almost a complete failure as it relates to actually revitalizing Santa Cruz Avenue," Councilmember Drew Combs said at the June 23 meeting, as The Almanac reported.
The changes took effect right away:
- Salons, spas and similar personal services can now open on the ground floor without a conditional use permit. Before, they were mostly limited to upper floors.
- Gyms, arcades and other small-scale recreation, which used to be banned on the street, can now apply for use permits, and the Planning Commission decides each one.
- Banks can apply too, but all banks on the street are capped at 30,000 square feet combined, with no single bank larger than 5,000. Existing banks already take up about 28,000, so there is room for roughly 2,000 more square feet.
- Ground-floor retail spaces can put limited office use in the back with Planning Commission approval.
The request came from Windy Hill Ventures, which owns and recently renovated 870 Santa Cruz Ave. The company argued that the old rules made big, expensive spaces hard to lease. Downtown has seen this kind of use outside the restaurant row already. On Aug. 24, the Planning Commission voted 7–0 to approve a use permit for a 6,134-square-foot private fitness studio at 550 Ravenswood Ave.
Some restaurants have come back without the rule change. Shiok! Singapore Kitchen, which has served Menlo Park since 1999, lost its Chestnut Street location and reopened in April at 625 Oak Grove Ave., with owner Dennis Lim bringing back the same kitchen staff, The Almanac reported. At Springline, Burma Food Group opened Alisios on June 11, completing the development's restaurant lineup. Kepler's Books at 1010 El Camino Real turned 70 in September 2025 with a block party. Each of these runs on a long lease, a new building or a community-financed ownership model, not a chain's balance sheet.
The rest of October on Santa Cruz Avenue
The city's free Halloween Hoopla Parade and Carnival is Saturday, Oct. 24, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The parade starts at the Maloney Street parking lot, goes down Santa Cruz Avenue and ends at Fremont Park, so it passes the 600 block where Left Bank and Bistro Vida stood side by side for 28 years.
Across town, the Belle Haven Community Campus at 100 Terminal Ave. has two events:
- Pumpkin Splash at Belle Haven Pool on Sunday, Oct. 25, with sessions at 11:30 a.m. and noon. The city lists a $12 fee.
- Trunk-or-Treat on Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. It's free.
The city's 11th Annual Storytelling Festival continues into November at Menlo Park Library, 800 Alma St., with a storytelling workshop on Nov. 15 and Tellabration! on Nov. 21.
Changes on a commercial street often come before changes in the neighborhoods around it. If you own near downtown Menlo Park and want to talk about what Santa Cruz Avenue's next tenants could mean for your own plans, Lynn North is happy to sit down for a free consultation and home valuation, with no pressure and no timeline.