The Same Restaurant Group Just Bet Twice on One Block of Campbell Avenue

Walk east on Campbell Avenue past the space that used to be Opa! and you will find a Mediterranean restaurant called Elia doing weekend brunch where the old sign used to hang. Keep walking two doors down, past what used to be Mo's Breakfast + Burger Joint, and you will find a Turkish kebab counter that was not there at the start of the year either. Both storefronts turned over within weeks of each other in early 2026, and by this point in August both have had roughly six months to settle into the block.

Two storefronts, 276 and 278 East Campbell Avenue, new tenants at almost the same moment. It would be easy to read that as coincidence, two unrelated owners who happened to sign leases on the same block in the same season. It is not a coincidence. It is one person.

Two Doors Apart, One Name Behind Both

Fatih Ulas is behind both projects. At 276, he opened a fourth location of Elia, the Mediterranean restaurant he founded in Pleasanton in 2021 with executive chef Mehmet Duygu. Elia has since added a Walnut Creek location and a San Carlos outpost that opened in late 2024 with three private dining rooms and a wine cellar. The Campbell location took over the space Opa! vacated when it closed in fall 2025 following a bankruptcy, and the menu runs the brand's usual mix of shareable mezethes, seafood, and full weekend brunch service.

At 278, two doors down, Ulas is co-owner of the Campbell location for Sultan's Kebab, the Turkish restaurant he runs with partner Murat Edis. That spot moved into the former Mo's Breakfast + Burger Joint space. Mahmut Seyhan, who has served as head chef at the Sultan's Kebab in Pleasanton for more than a decade and is also a partner at Bodrum Turkish Restaurant in Dublin, came on as a partner in the new Campbell location. Sultan's Kebab has run since 2002 with locations in Pleasanton, Livermore, and Danville, built around Adana and Beyti kebabs, shawarma plates, and halal preparations.

In a January 2026 interview, Ulas confirmed both openings were happening on close to the same timeline, Elia targeting late January into early February and Sultan's Kebab following at the end of the next month. That detail matters more than either opening on its own. This was not two landlords filling vacant space with whoever showed up. One operator looked at a single block of Campbell Avenue and decided it could support two different restaurant concepts from his own portfolio at the same time. Six months later, both have had enough time on the block for regulars to form real opinions about whether the bet paid off.

The Block That Keeps Changing Hands

Zoom out from those two addresses and the same stretch of downtown shows more churn than the rest of Campbell Avenue put together. The building that used to house Vin Santo now holds Il Sogno, run by the same ownership group, sharing the space with Campbell Brewing Company. A few doors from there, what used to be Liquid Bread Gastropub went through a full renovation to come back as Boiler Maker. FLIGHTS, which serves comfort food tapas style with everything presented as a three-preparation flight meant to be shared, has already settled into the everyday rotation of the dining scene. The Vesper, also on this stretch, was named to Eater's list of top new restaurants for the South Bay, which is the kind of outside validation that tends to draw more operators to try their luck on the same block rather than fewer.

Put together, that is five or six ownership changes on one short run of storefronts in about a year. Most downtowns see that kind of turnover spread across their whole footprint over several years. Here it is concentrated on a stretch you could walk in under two minutes.

Two Blocks Over, Nothing Has Changed in Decades

None of that turnover shows up once you step off that specific stretch. Komatsu Japanese Cuisine has held the same slightly out of the way corner of downtown since 1977, which puts it at 49 years in the same spot while the restaurants two blocks over have traded hands multiple times just this year.

The Sunday Campbell Farmers' Market runs on the same weekly rhythm it always has, and it has built enough of a following that it gets called one of the best year-round farmers markets in the South Bay. The city's Summer Concert Series is in the middle of a full eight-concert 2026 season at Orchard City Green, mixing returning favorites with a few acts new to the lineup, all proceeds from food and drink sales benefiting the Campbell Historical Museum Foundation. The finale set belongs to The Houserockers, a band the series describes as one of its long-running favorite acts, which tells you these are not one-off bookings but relationships the city keeps renewing. The free two-day Boogie festival, now in its 47th year, still fills five stages with live music and more than 100 artisan booths every time it comes around.

That is the actual shape of downtown Campbell right now. One tight corridor keeps getting remade by operators betting on each other's success. Everything around it is running on traditions that predate every business that opened on that block this year.

If You're Deciding Where to Eat This Week

For anyone trying to decide where to go tonight, both new additions are worth knowing what they actually serve rather than just that they exist. Elia leans into shareable Mediterranean plates, seafood, and a full weekend brunch menu, which makes it a reasonable pick for a slower Saturday morning rather than a quick weeknight stop. Sultan's Kebab is built as fast-casual, meant for dine-in, takeout, or catering, with a menu that runs from mezze and small plates to Adana and Beyti kebabs, shawarma, and vegetarian falafel, plus baklava and kunefe for dessert. If you want a sit-down evening, Elia is the better fit. If you want dinner on the way home, Sultan's Kebab is built for that.

Getting downtown does not require circling for parking either. Downtown Campbell maintains more than 1,000 free off-street public parking spaces, and the First Street Garage sits about two blocks from the center of downtown with space available even at peak times.

If you want to see both new spots with a crowd around them rather than mid-week quiet, the calendar gives you two good windows before the year is out. The Fall Wine Walk lands on September 17, bringing more than two dozen winemakers into downtown for an evening tasting walk. The 31st Annual Campbell Oktoberfest follows on October 17. Either weekend puts you within a block of both restaurants along with everyone else who came down to see what changed.

Watching which businesses bet on a block, and which local institutions never have to, is part of how Bonafede Team tracks what is really happening in the neighborhoods we work in every day. If you are curious what any of that means for your own property in Campbell or the surrounding South Bay, request your complimentary home valuation and we will walk you through it.