Every Restaurant at State Street Market Has Changed Except One

Joey Camacho runs two stalls next to each other at State Street Market. When he decided to open a second concept in the space that used to hold Bibo's NY Pizza, he put it simply: "it just made sense for us to try something new." He was talking about his own pizza spot, Miko's Calitalia. He could have been describing the whole food hall.

Since State Street Market opened in downtown Los Altos in the fall of 2021, nearly every stall inside it has changed hands at least once. Some have changed twice. The anchor restaurant facing State Street itself has had three different identities in five years. Only one tenant has been there since the doors first opened and never left: Little Blue Door, the casual sister restaurant to Palo Alto's Ettan.

If you live nearby and haven't kept track of who's actually cooking there this fall, here's the arc that got the market to where it is now, and what's on the menu today.

The anchor space that couldn't hold on

The market's marquee restaurant slot, the largest sit-down space inside the building, opened in March 2022 under chef Traci Des Jardins as el Alto, a California-Mexican concept built around the region's ranchero history. It closed unexpectedly about six months later, in September 2022.

The space sat empty for nearly a year while the market itself went through a larger reset. In early 2023, State Street Market ended its contract with Bon Appétit Management Company, the outfit that had been running day-to-day food hall operations, and closed for several weeks between mid-February and the end of March to bring in a new group of vendors. Konjoe Burger and Little Sky Bakery joined during that overhaul. Almost every stall that had opened with the market in 2021 was replaced in the process. Only two survived that round: Murdoch's Bar and Little Blue Door.

The anchor space finally found its next tenant in mid-October 2023, when Cetrella moved in. The Mediterranean-Californian restaurant had operated a few blocks away on Main Street since 2015, and the move into State Street Market let it expand into lunch and weekend brunch service, add Mediterranean-Rim tapas and wine flights, and take over the market's underground speakeasy for late-night bites and private dining. Cetrella has now held that anchor slot for close to three years, longer than any previous tenant.

The smaller stalls kept turning

While the anchor space stabilized, the stalls around it kept shifting. Ikuka closed in August 2024, opening up another vacancy. Two months later, Bibo's NY Pizza was replaced by Camacho's Miko's Calitalia, a Sicilian and what he calls "Neapolitan-ish" pizza concept that soft-opened that October and has since expanded into pasta.

Then, this past March, Murdoch's Bar became Laughing Monk Brewing. The San Francisco-based brewery, run by Bedrock Restaurant Group president Sam Ghadiri, added beer on tap, draft cocktails, and made-to-order drinks to the lineup. Laughing Monk is currently building out a second South Bay location at The Pruneyard in Campbell, in the former Rock Bottom Brewery space, which means the same operator now has a hand in two different food scenes a few miles apart.

That March change also closed the loop on the market's original roster. Murdoch's had been one of the two tenants that survived the 2023 revamp. With it gone, Little Blue Door is now the only stall left that has occupied the same spot since State Street Market opened in the fall of 2021.

What's actually there right now

Here's the current lineup, with how long each tenant has held its spot:

Eylan, the fast-casual Indian concept co-founded by chef Srijith Gopinathan and Ayesha Thapar, made the 2026 James Beard Award finalist list for the Bay Area, which is the kind of validation that doesn't happen for a food hall stall unless the kitchen behind it is doing something worth noticing.

Why the turnover doesn't mean the market is struggling

A five-year run with this much tenant change can read like instability from the outside. Read against the actual timeline, it looks more like a food hall doing what food halls are built to do: test concepts, let the ones that don't connect with the neighborhood move on, and give the ones that do more room. Cetrella's near three-year run as anchor is the longest tenancy any single restaurant has had in that marquee spot. Camacho didn't leave when Miko's opened next to his original Konjoe Burger stall, he expanded. Little Blue Door never had to prove itself twice.

The pattern that emerges isn't a food hall in trouble. It's a food hall where the edges keep experimenting while the center holds.

Fall is a good time to check back in

Downtown Los Altos has a run of events on the calendar this fall that put the market back on people's radar even if they haven't walked through in a while. The Los Altos Village Association's Witches and Warlocks Wine Stroll runs October 23 from 6 to 9 p.m. through downtown. A BOO-tiful Downtown Halloween trick-or-treating event for kids follows on October 30, with participating stores marked by orange pumpkin signs. The 23rd Annual Holiday Stroll takes over downtown on November 13 from 5 to 9 p.m.

None of those events are run by State Street Market itself, but the market sits at 170 State Street, right in the stretch of downtown these events move through. If you're heading out for any of them, it's a convenient point to grab a drink at Laughing Monk or a slice from Miko's before or after.

What this tells you about the block

State Street Market has never been a fixed lineup. It's been closer to a running experiment that's now three years into its most stable configuration since opening. Cetrella anchoring the front of the building, Little Blue Door still holding the spot it started in, and a rotating cast of newer stalls filling in around them. Whether that counts as reassuring or unpredictable probably depends on how attached you were to whatever used to be in the Laughing Monk space.

Either way, the fastest way to know what's actually cooking in downtown Los Altos this fall is to walk in and look, not to trust whatever was true the last time you checked.

If you're weighing a move into downtown Los Altos and want a read on how a block like State Street handles change over time, the Bonafede Team can walk you through what that kind of turnover means for property values nearby and what to expect from the neighborhood day to day.