San Jose: 5 restaurants — French Vietnamese, Mexican, Cambodian and more — taking over key downtown spots

Five restaurants — three relocation businesses and two brand-new ones — are taking over prime downtown San Jose spots along or near San Fernando Street.

A prominent space at First and San Fernando streets will soon be home to Elyse, the upscale French Vietnamese restaurant that has been looking for a new site as redevelopment looms for its current Second Street spot. Elyse is taking over the former location of another upscale restaurant, Nemea, the Greek taverna that opened in 2013 but had been closed during the pandemic.

Next door will be Angkor Chef, the first brick-and-mortar restaurant for chef Channy Laux, a native of Cambodia. The founder of Angkor Cambodian Food, a maker of sauces, marinades and seasonings, she will now be offering a full menu of tastes of her homeland.

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A few doors down, in the former Pizza Flora space, will be Angelou’s Mexican Grill, another relocation prompted by housing development. The popular taqueria, which maintained long and late business hours on North Second Street all through the pandemic — to the appreciation of downtown employees and residents — is expected to move in around July 1. This location will sport a full bar.

A block away, at another prime corner — Second and San Fernando streets — Mas Pizza, which had been operating not too many blocks away, is taking over the massive space held by the long-shuttered Mumbai Local restaurant and nightclub. At that corner, owner Jose Castillo envisions expanding the pizza concept into an upscale sports bar.

A few blocks away at San Fernando and San Pedro streets, Castillo and partners have just opened El Cabron Kitchen & Cantina after an ambitious renovation of the space formerly occupied by Tony DiMaggio’s and Pizza Chicago.