The street of American dreams
The people behind the businesses make one stretch of San Bruno so special
In a region where Mavericks-sized swells of wealth and poverty crash against each other, San Mateo Avenue in San Bruno is a patch of middle-class calm. The signs painted on the windows advertise income tax preparation, clock repair and children’s toys — in short, necessities for local shoppers. A few windows are papered up. Power tools and stacks of four-by-sixes are visible through others. The proximity of YouTube and Genentech’s corporate offices can be felt, but faintly.
Only after you’ve walked up and down the avenue a few times, it may strike you: There are few restaurant rows in the Bay Area as densely varied as this one in the heart of San Bruno. You can shop for halal meat, fresh masa and taro leaves at the markets here. A Mexican seafood spot is flanked by a Pacific Islander kava bar and a classic American sandwich shop, all located across the street from restaurants specializing in Korean tofu stew and Beijing-style hot pots. There are also Filipino, Hawaiian, Japanese, Thai, Brazilian and Pakistani places on this three-block strip. A Hawaiian grill and a Guatemalan bakery are on the way.
Mike Kharsa, who has owned the Grand Leader Market on San Mateo Avenue since 2001, says longtime residents have told him that downtown San Bruno slumped in the early 1960s after business owners learned that BART’s proposed lines would churn up San Mateo Avenue (San Mateo County, with the exception of Daly City, originally opted out of BART in 1961). Since then, the fortunes of the sleepy commercial strip have swelled and ebbed and swelled again.
Low rents, compared to some of the surrounding cities, have made San Mateo Avenue an ideal place to start a business. Yet the major traffic whizzes by on El Camino Real and Highway 101, preventing many outsiders from stumbling across new restaurants.
Here, small-town nostalgia is entwined with economic promise. The immigrant communities that have coalesced and dissipated over the course of two generations have all made their mark. A Fiji Indian market now sees Jamaican shoppers. The owners of an Italian deli call out to each other in Korean. The strip exemplifies an America in which every boundary is blurred and every divide subverted.
It is all-American, in the most Bay Area way.
RAKESH KUMAR Kava Bar
Rakesh Kumar worked at Target for most of his first 15 years in the United States. He liked his job. But a first cousin in Fiji who had become a major exporter of kava root suggested that Kumar open up a kava bar. The idea appealed to him, and the appeal survived the eight months he spent decorating the space and getting permission from San Bruno to open.
In recent years, the Burning Man/ ecstatic dance set has taken up kava, appropriating the Fijian ceremonial beverage for its relaxing buzz. Some of them find their way to San Mateo Avenue through social media. But the bulk of Kumar’s clientele is Pacific Islanders, who spend hours playing pool and gossiping over coconut shells of the murky, slightly bitter drink. Kumar pounds the dried root to order, soaks and strains it carefully, and serves it in big wooden bowls imported from Fiji.
Kumar says that in the two years since Kava Bar opened, he’s seen San Mateo Avenue’s fortunes turn around. “When I was opening this store, there were a lot of stores going out of business,” he says. “But now more are coming.”
ELVIA VAZQUEZ La Paloma
Elvia Vazquez and husband Leo Perez bought La Paloma two years ago from the family that had run the Mexican restaurant for more than two decades. They heard about the sale through friends and Perez, Vazquez says, always wanted to own his own restaurant.
The couple brought a surge of new energy to the restaurant, whose standards are solidly Mexican American: taqueria fare at lunch, combo plates at dinner. Now lesser-known specialties of Jalisco, the couple’s home state, show up on the specials board. Vazquez says that she enjoys the fact that San Bruno is a small town, and during the week she recognizes most of the customers. Then again, she adds, San Bruno is a small town, with sparse street traffic at night.
That all changes on weekends, when the kitchen gets slammed with orders for birria and menudo. Customers come from as far away as Concord and Pittsburg for the two Jalisco-style stews, alerted by local radio presenter Chuy Gomez, who once announced on air that he thought La Paloma’s menudo was the best around. What makes it so good? Vazquez smiles, coyly, and says she has no idea. La Paloma: 699 San Mateo Ave., (650) 583-0939