The E. Third Avenue Swap That Explains Downtown San Mateo's New Food Scene

Walk down E. Third Avenue past Ellsworth this month and you'll pass a storefront with the lights off and a sign in the window that still says Shabuway. For years this was the place regulars went for hot pot, where the owner sliced the beef to order and told you which cut was worth it that day, where you learned to dip your meat for exactly two or three seconds before pulling it out pink. It closed sometime in the past year, one more entry on a growing list of downtown fixtures that didn't make it. What's coming next tells you more about this stretch of San Mateo than the closure itself.

By December, Pineapple King Bakery plans to open in that same 145 E. Third Ave space. The San Francisco bakery, known for Hong Kong-style pineapple buns, croissant egg tarts and milk tea since its 2015 founding by sisters Jennifer and Stephanie Leung, expanded to Fremont in 2024 and is now making this its next stop. A few doors down at 172 E. Third Ave, a different kind of change is underway. Roma Antica, the Roman trattoria that's been serving cacio e pepe and pinsa in San Francisco since 2017, expects to open its San Mateo outpost in late September, with a menu the ownership group says will run about 95 percent identical to the original. The founders, Dogukan Solmaz, Roberto Sbaraglia and Alessandro Vasselli, met in culinary school in Rome and also run 'Napizza and Bottega in San Francisco along with L'Oro di Napoli in Santa Rosa and Petaluma.

Two storefronts, a hundred feet apart, both changing hands within months of each other. That's worth pausing on, because it isn't really about Italian food or Hong Kong pastries individually. It's about what kind of eating downtown San Mateo is being built for right now.

A hot pot restaurant becomes a bakery, not a bigger hot pot restaurant

If a landlord simply wanted to keep the lights on, the obvious move after a destination dinner spot closes is to bring in another destination dinner spot. That's not what happened at 145 E. Third. A sit-down restaurant built around a two-hour meal is being replaced by a bakery built around a five-minute stop.

That pattern shows up elsewhere on the same few blocks. When Wursthall, the German beer hall that had anchored the corner of B Street and Baldwin Avenue for seven years, closed at the end of last year, what moved in wasn't another beer hall. Whisper, a Korean fusion brunch spot from chef Nick Yoon, opened there in January serving dishes like galbi eggs Benedict. Downstairs, the cocktail bar Wunderbar had operated as Wursthall's below-ground companion. When the lease changed hands, nobody was sure the bar would survive the transition. It reopened after a two month hiatus with the same staff. "It's still the same team, same concept and same service," general manager Xian Choy said of the bar's return, adding that the break gave them room to refresh the drink menu with a rotating monthly cocktail.

The rest of this year's arrivals follow the same shape. A brunch concept from a former Sweet Maple chef took over the old Wursthall space in January. A second location of a Palo Alto Mexican restaurant opened on Baldwin Avenue in February with a deep tequila list built for a long lunch, not a quick counter order, which is the one exception to the pattern worth noting. A Half Moon Bay breakfast spot moved its full menu into the Brickline building on B Street in March. A San Francisco salad chain took over the old B Street Books storefront the same month, building bowls to order until 9 p.m. Set those against Pineapple King's plan for 145 E. Third, and the tilt toward grab-and-go, daytime, commuter-friendly formats becomes hard to miss.

What changed under the street, not just the storefronts

None of this happened in a vacuum. B Street was converted into a pedestrian mall in late 2021, and downtown has measured the effect since. Foot traffic rose 20 percent between 2024 and 2025 alone, and is up 120 percent since 2023, according to reporting from Palo Alto Online. Caltrain ridership at the downtown station has followed a similar climb, roughly doubling since 2023 to an average of 1,658 riders a day in 2025.

That's a lot more people passing through on foot or stepping off a train platform, and comparatively fewer of them arriving by car to sit down for an hour and a half. A bakery that sells a croissant egg tart in ninety seconds captures that kind of traffic in a way a hot pot restaurant, which depends on parties willing to linger over shared pots, never could. Shabuway wasn't a bad restaurant. It just wasn't built for the street that grew up around it.

The same forces have claimed names that had nothing to do with dinner service. Sushi Sam closed. Draeger's Market, a grocery fixture for years, shut down to make way for a mixed-use development, with the Marin County chain Woodlands Market announced as its eventual replacement on the ground floor. B Street Books left for Burlingame Avenue entirely, citing rising rents. Longtime anchors are being priced or squeezed out at a rate that outpaces what's replacing them storefront for storefront, and what does replace them increasingly serves someone moving through downtown rather than settling in for a while.

The block right now, before and after

What this actually changes if you're already here

None of this means downtown San Mateo is losing its dinner options entirely. Roma Antica's arrival is proof a full sit-down concept can still find a home here, and it's opening with regular dinner service seven nights a week. But if you've noticed your own routine shifting, grabbing something quick before catching the 8:12 rather than planning a table for two on a Tuesday, you're not imagining a personal habit. You're responding to the same commuter volume the city's own foot traffic numbers are tracking.

It also means the next storefront to go dark on this stretch, whichever one it turns out to be, is more likely to reopen as something you can eat standing up than as its own direct replacement. Central Park's Japanese Garden and Rose Garden, both still open through the ongoing 18 to 24 month renovation of the park's central lawn and playgrounds, remain the anchor for a slower kind of downtown afternoon. The avenues around them are increasingly built for people passing through on their way to somewhere else.

Whether that trade suits you probably depends on how you actually use downtown, whether it's a place you linger or a place you pass through twice a day on the way to the train. Either way, E. Third Avenue in December will look different from E. Third Avenue in September, and the difference will be a lot more informative than a simple count of restaurants opened versus closed.

If you're watching downtown San Mateo change and wondering what it means for your own address, whether that's the value of a home a few blocks off E. Third or what a move into this kind of walkable, transit-fed downtown might look like for your family, Jerylann Mateo has spent two decades tracking exactly these shifts across the Peninsula. Let's Connect.