There’s no one reason why. The exodus of San Francisco residents to the suburbs during Covid, the continued prosperity of Silicon Valley tech, the recognition by arbiters of Northern California culture that SF isn’t the only game in town—each has played its part. Most of all, big name chefs and restaurant groups are increasingly open to trying their hand beyond the Bay’s beating heart, a wave that hasn’t yet even come close to cresting.
Srijith “Sri” Gopinathan, the executive chef who shaped SF’s Campton Place into the first two Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in the U.S., was among the first to propel the Peninsula food scene forward: In February 2020, he opened his restaurant Ettan in Palo Alto, a city that, along with neighboring Menlo Park, has benefited from the arrival of a whole host of others since: David Nayfeld (Che Fico), Adam Tortosa (Robin), Scott Nishimaya (Ethel’s Fancy), Burma Love, the team behind Kokkari (Evvia), and more.
Now, almost exactly five years after opening Ettan, Gopinathan has added a new restaurant to the growing stable of excellent Peninsula eats. Eylan, a live-fire Indian restaurant that combines traditional flavors with California’s global influences, is now open in Menlo Park.
Chef Sri is a master of bold flavors, velvety sauces and, as Eylan is now testament to, wood-fired grilling. His food would be staggeringly delicious even if it was served in an empty warehouse on paper plates. But the chef and Eylan’s co-owner, restaurateur Ayesha Thapar, know that a stunning visual design doesn’t just complement the dining experience, it catapults it to another level.
At Ettan, Gopinathan and Thapar leaned into the elegant, skylit space with cool blues and geometric patterns. At Copra, the coastal South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant they opened in SF's Japantown in 2023, they built an enchanting, transportative space dripping with vines, macrame, and traditional craft.
Eylan shares some of these similarities while simultaneously cultivating its own unique identity. It’s more eclectic, more colorful. It pulses with a vibrancy that fuses Indian motifs and earthy tones with natural foliage and throwback 1970s patterns and textures. It’s coquettish and unapologetically chaotic.
Eylan’s menu, too, is a singular addition to Gopinathan’s multiverse: a family-style Cal-Indian feast of snacks, stuffed breads, and fire-kissed meats.
The restaurant's been open less than a month but word of Gopinathan’s newest triumph has already spread. There’s not an empty seat in the house when I show up on a Tuesday night, a feat that even some of SF’s top restaurants can’t match. Our server, Hardik, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the menu and a brilliant smile, walks us through the offerings, explaining the elements that make his favorites stand out.
It comes as no surprise that Hardik knows what he’s doing. We’re sipping on cocktails—a rum-based Old Fashioned with pandan called Techies, Guns & Money for me, a tandoori-spiced Bazaar Paloma with mezcal and tamarind for my husband that I like so much, I order for my second drink—when his first recommendation arrives. “Raw fish is not common in Indian food,” he tells us, “but chef Sri has made a raw hamachi cured with fermented pepper and lime masala buttermilk that’s really excellent.”
We load the cubes of brilliantly spiced crudo onto delicately fried sesame leaves that are, themselves, works of art. “I can see you didn’t like the hamachi,” Hardik jokes when he checks on us shortly after. It took us less than five minutes to completely empty the dish.
Through buzzing dining room, plates parade towards our table one after another: taro root chatat, crunchy chips of taro topped nacho-like with tamarind, winter vegetable kebab, yogurt, and dates; fried disks filled with Bellwether Farm ricotta cheese and served with spicy mint and tangy pineapple chutney; mutabar (a flatbread made with egg, according to Hardik) stuffed with Dungeness crab and served with a curry-like dipping sauce. We skip the crispy chicken despite Hardik’s convincing assessment that it’s pretty much the best fried chicken ever.
There are a huge variety of meats and veggies hailing from the wood-fired grill in small and large formats. The celeriac and pineapple kebab, which is glazed with chilli murabba and rosemary butter, is an unexpectedly excellent combination; the blue shrimp are perfectly roasted; the hispi cabbage is meaty and succulent in its tikka masala and burrata cheese sauce.
The splendid butterflied (and deboned) sea bream comes with a nine-grain khichdi, grilled brussels sprouts, and a scallion and coconut-fish pour-over broth that are a meal in and of themselves.
There isn’t a single dish that strikes a disappointing note. In the kitchen, it seems, chef Sri can do no wrong.
So maybe the Peninsula’s restaurant landscape isn’t as abundant as San Francisco’s. There’s no denying that the city’s food scene is straight up world class. But don’t count the suburbs out completely. With the arrival of Eylan, they’re becoming a dining destination all their own.
// Eylan is open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday; 500 El Camino Rd. (Menlo Park), eylanrestaurant.com
