Downtown Redwood City Fall Food and Events Between Festivals

Friday, September 4 was the last night of Music on the Square this year. Pride & Joy closed out the fourteen-week run, the lawn chairs came in, and Courthouse Square went back to being a plaza instead of a stage. Oktoberfest does not take over the same ground until September 18. That leaves a stretch of about two weeks with no headline event downtown, the kind of gap that in past years meant picking a restaurant almost at random because nothing else was pulling you toward Broadway on a Friday night.

This year the gap doesn't feel the same, and the reason has nothing to do with the events calendar. It has to do with what happened to the restaurants around it over the summer.

A German Beer Garden Closes, and Something Faster Takes Its Place

The clearest marker of the shift sits at 830 Middlefield Road. Palo Alto Online reported that Dasbierhauz, the German beer garden known for pretzels, bratwurst, schnitzel and one-liter beer boots, poured its last pint in Redwood City on June 30. The location had only opened around 2024, expanding out from the original Dasbierhauz that owner Mehmet Vural and his brother started in Mountain View in 2020, in partnership with their Olympus Caffe & Bakery.

"So we just decided to give up on the location," Vural told Palo Alto Online, tying the closure to his business partner moving away rather than to slow business. He noted the final night was one of the busiest shifts the team had ever worked.

The Middlefield Road space did not sit empty. Gangsan, a modern Korean restaurant, moved in and is now open, serving galbijjim, or braised beef short ribs, along with seolleongtang, a slow-simmered ox bone soup, hand-cut kalguksu noodles and sizzling bibimbap. With Dasbierhauz gone, Gourmet Haus Staudt is now the only German restaurant left in Redwood City. A downtown that had two German kitchens two years ago now has one, and a new Korean option filled the gap within weeks rather than months.

Three Kitchens, One Shared Chef

Gangsan's arrival is one story. A Palo Alto Online report described what happened a few blocks away on Veterans Boulevard: a longtime Sizzler location reopened in June as Reef Zaman, a Mediterranean restaurant built around flame-grilled branzino, kebabs and lamb chops. The room is large by downtown Redwood City standards, seating close to 280 people inside, with a 2,000-square-foot patio in progress that owner Faris Alqabass expected to add roughly 300 more seats within a few months of the June opening.

Alqabass is not new to the business. He's the operator behind Yemeni Restaurant in New York and Mandi House, which has locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. What matters more for anyone tracking the neighborhood is who he hired to run the kitchen: Chef Mohammed Al-Omari, who came over from Mazra, the wood-fired kebab and shawarma spot on Broadway whose chefs Jordan and Saif Makableh were named 2025 James Beard Award semifinalists.

That single hire is worth sitting with. When a chef leaves an already-acclaimed kitchen to lead a brand-new one a short walk away, it isn't a sign that the first restaurant is struggling. It's a sign there's enough demand in this specific stretch of downtown to support two serious flame-grilled kitchens competing for the same diners, rather than one modest option getting by on novelty. Add Limón, the Peruvian restaurant that opened its Redwood City location in October 2024, and the stretch from Broadway to Veterans Boulevard now covers three distinct grilling traditions instead of one.

What Changed, Where, and When

None of these openings happened because of a single festival or a single developer push. They stacked up one at a time, over about two years, and the effect only becomes visible when you look at the addresses together instead of one at a time.

Restaurants Add to Downtown Between Events

Redwood City's downtown food scene wasn't built to fill the two weeks between Music on the Square and Oktoberfest. It just happens to now, because the restaurants that used to close for the season, or close for good, have been replaced by ones with staying power and, in Reef Zaman's case, room to grow into a bigger footprint than what came before it.

Bay Burgers is a good example of that staying power. Palo Alto Online reported that chef-owner Xavier Pereznegron is a Redwood City native who started as a dishwasher at 14, spent three years flipping burgers at In-N-Out, then worked his way up to chef de cuisine at La Mar before back surgery forced a year of recovery and a rethink. He and his partner started grilling smashburgers on a Blackstone at Hoover Park, moved the operation into a tent in an industrial stretch of town in the summer of 2024, sold out most weekends, and used the momentum to open a permanent restaurant on Woodside Road in March 2026. That's not a pop-up riding a trend. That's someone who grew up here building something meant to last.

The same pattern holds for The Baker Next Door, which opened on Main Street in August 2024 under head baker Luis Lujan and built a following on a boule made with green olives, asiago and thyme, and Pizzeria Cardamomo on Broadway, where Chef Momo, who trained in Lake Como, turns out organic sourdough pizzas that range from a classic Margherita to a Moroccan version topped with sausage and dried plums. Neither is new news to anyone who already lives downtown, but both are part of why the current stretch of restaurant openings reads as a real shift rather than a single good year.

What's Actually Open This Week

For anyone downtown between now and September 18, before Oktoberfest opens its tent, here's what fills the gap that Music on the Square left behind:

• Reef Zaman, Veterans Blvd, for a group dinner large enough to make the 280-seat room feel like the right call rather than overkill
• Gangsan, 830 Middlefield Rd, for galbijjim or a bowl of seolleongtang on a night that calls for something slow-simmered
• Mazra, Broadway, for the wood-fired shawarma that earned its chefs a James Beard semifinalist nod
• The Baker Next Door, Main Street, for a boule to carry home before any of the above
• Fireside Books & More, 2421 Broadway St, for the browse before or after dinner, since it opened close enough to the restaurant strip to make a two-stop evening easy

Then Oktoberfest Takes Over Anyway

The gap closes fast once September 18 arrives. Oktoberfest returns to Courthouse Square for ten days, running through September 27 except for a rest day on the 21st, with more than 2,000 feet of family-style bench seating under a Munich-inspired tent. The Golden Gate Bavarian Club plays the opening weekend, The Internationals Band closes it out over September 25 through 27, and smaller happy hour sets from Deutscher Musikverein, Alpine Sound Band and The Internationals fill the weeknights in between. Tickets run from $10 to $35 depending on the day and whether you're drinking, with weekend VIP tables for six going for $250.

Oktoberfest returns to a downtown where restaurants are also drawing diners. The festival adds another reason to spend time there, alongside the businesses nearby.

The Read

Restaurant turnover usually reads as noise, one closing, one opening, nothing to track. What happened around Courthouse Square this summer reads differently once you line the addresses up. A two-year-old beer garden closed and was replaced within weeks. A chef left an award-nominated kitchen to open a bigger one two blocks away. A pop-up that started on a Blackstone grill at a public park became a permanent restaurant. None of that happened because of Oktoberfest, and none of it happened because of a single planning decision. It happened because enough independent operators decided, at roughly the same time, that this stretch of downtown could support something built to last rather than something built for a season.

If you already live in Redwood City, that's the kind of shift you feel before you can name it: the two weeks that used to be dead time downtown just aren't anymore.

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