Oktoberfest Returns to Courthouse Square. The Restaurants Around It Have Already Moved On.

By the time Reef Zaman soft-opened on June 29, Mohammed Al-Omari had already left his kitchen at Mazra, the wood-fired kebab and shawarma spot on Broadway, to run the kitchen at this new Mediterranean restaurant three-quarters of a mile away on Veterans Boulevard. He didn't leave downtown. He walked over to it, carrying nearly the same menu with him: lamb chops, branzino, kebabs cooked over an open flame.

That's not a story about one chef changing jobs. It's a preview of what happens to Courthouse Square starting September 18, when the city turns the plaza into a Bavarian village for ten days, complete with a Munich-style tent and family-style benches. Oktoberfest is the most visible thing that will happen downtown this fall. It is not, however, where the real food story is. That story has been unfolding a few blocks in every direction, and it has almost nothing to do with Germany.

A Kitchen Moved Three-Quarters of a Mile, Not Out of Town

Reef Zaman soft-opened June 29 in the former Sizzler space at 1011 Veterans Blvd. The owner, Faris Alqabass, already runs Yemeni Restaurant in New York and Mandi House in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He'd planned to open this concept in New York. He found the space in Redwood City instead and pivoted.

When he needed a chef, he didn't have to look far. Al-Omari had been cooking a few minutes away at Mazra, and once Alqabass tasted his food, the decision was easy.

I've eaten in so many places, and I never tasted a lamb chop the same that he makes.

That's not a small compliment from someone who runs restaurants on two coasts. It's also a small, specific piece of evidence that the neighborhood's Mediterranean and Middle Eastern kitchens have started drawing from the same bench of local talent rather than importing it. A restaurant scene that can poach its own chefs from three-quarters of a mile away isn't a scattering of unrelated openings. It's a cluster with enough density to compete with itself.

The scale backs that up. Reef Zaman seats about 280 people inside, and as of mid-July the owner estimated a 2,000-square-foot patio would open within about three months, adding another 300 seats. Once that patio is finished, the restaurant will hold close to 580 people, a size that puts it in a category almost nothing else downtown occupies. The menu stays in the mid-casual range: a falafel platter with hummus and tabbouleh at $24, wraps at $13 to $15, and lamb shank at $22 to $32. No alcohol, just mint and raspberry lemonade at $6 each. That's a restaurant built for volume, not for a special-occasion crowd, which tells you the owner is betting on repeat weeknight traffic from people who already live here.

The German Restaurant That's Down to One

Here's the part of the story Oktoberfest's tent doesn't tell you. While Redwood City's Mediterranean and Middle Eastern kitchens have been expanding and trading staff, its German dining scene has been contracting. Gourmet Haus Staudt, the longtime German restaurant and beer hall, now holds that lane by itself, without another full-time German kitchen left downtown to compete with it.

That matters because Oktoberfest is, for ten days, the loudest German thing happening in Redwood City, complete with lederhosen, stein-holding contests, and a chicken dance. But it's a temporary structure built by the city's parks department, not an expansion of the neighborhood's actual German food identity. The tent goes up, the bands play, the benches fill, and on September 28 it comes down again. What's left standing the other 355 days of the year is one restaurant. The costume and the closet are two different things, and this is the moment of year when it's easiest to mix them up.

What Else Opened This Year

The rest of downtown's new arrivals sit outside the Oktoberfest conversation entirely, which is exactly why they're worth naming:

• Bay Burgers, on Woodside Road in the former 5th Quarter Pizza space. Chef-owner Xavier Pereznegron started as a dishwasher at 14, spent three years flipping burgers at In-N-Out, and worked his way up to chef de cuisine at La Mar, an upscale Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco, before bringing that fine-dining instinct to a smashburger counter that began as a pop-up in Hoover Park.
• The Baker Next Door, on Main Street, run by head baker Luis Lujan, known for a green-olive-asiago-thyme boule worth the walk.
• Limón, the Peruvian restaurant that's added another point of variety to a downtown that used to lean much more heavily on a handful of standbys.
• Mazra, rebuilt on Broadway after a June 2024 kitchen fire, still the neighborhood's default for wood-fired kebab and shawarma even after handing its head chef to a competitor down the street.

None of these are chains. None of them needed Oktoberfest's foot traffic to find an audience. They found it on their own, on ordinary Tuesday nights, which is the more durable kind of proof that a restaurant works.

Two Different Versions of Courthouse Square, Back to Back

The square itself is about to run through two very different identities in the space of a month, and knowing the calendar changes how you use it.

Music on the Square is finishing its 20th season this year, and the finale lands September 4. It opened May 29 with a Santana tribute and closes with the pop and soul of Pride & Joy, part of a fourteen-week run of free Friday concerts from 6 to 8 p.m. If you've been meaning to catch a Friday show before the season ends, that's your last date. The city has kept the rest of the plaza just as busy all summer, with Music in the Park on Wednesdays, Movies on the Square on Thursdays, Pub in the Park and Kids Rock! on Saturdays, and Shakespeare in the Park filling weekends in August.

Then, two weeks after the last Friday concert, the square changes costume entirely. Oktoberfest runs September 18 through 27, dark on September 21, with more than 2,000 feet of bench seating under a Munich-inspired tent. Weekend seatings lean into full festival programming: dance music, stein-holding contests, yodeling. Weekday happy-hour seatings are lighter, built around live German bands rather than the full production. Tickets range from $10 to $27 for non-drinkers of all ages and $16 to $37 for drinkers 21 and over, and a weekend VIP table for six runs $250. Every ticket includes a commemorative stein and a drink ticket, and the popular seatings sell out in advance, so this isn't the kind of event you show up to on a whim.

The Right Order of Operations This Fall

None of this is an argument against going. The tent is genuinely fun, the benches fill fast for a reason, and a ten-day run of a Bavarian village on a Peninsula courthouse lawn is not something every town gets to do. Go for the show. Go for the chicken dance. Just don't mistake it for the neighborhood's actual food story.

The better version of this fall is to book an Oktoberfest seating for one night, then spend the other nine walking the three-quarters of a mile between Mazra and Reef Zaman, or detouring to Woodside Road for a smashburger from a chef who used to work fine dining, or picking up a boule from the bakery on Main Street on your way to whatever's left of the season at Courthouse Square. The tent tells you what Redwood City is celebrating this month. The kitchens around it tell you what the neighborhood is actually eating, and that story has been building all year, one soft opening at a time.

If you already live here, you don't need anyone to tell you Redwood City is a good place to spend a Friday night. But if a Peninsula move is somewhere on your horizon and you want a read on a neighborhood that goes deeper than a listing photo, the Anagnostou Team has been paying attention to these blocks for a long time. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what's next.