Experimental Beers, Paletas, and Lattes Are Fueling Downtown San Jose’s Renaissance

San Jose is a cradle of firsts. In 1777, it became the first Spanish settlement in California. Nearly a century later, in 1849, the city was designated as California’s inaugural capital. And then again, in 1881, San Jose made history as the first electrified city west of the Rocky Mountains. 

Today, the city is mostly quiet suburbs with hardly a trace of its historical significance and social prowess. Downtown San Jose (DTSJ) in particular has long been dethroned as the promising core of the American West. 

That’s starting to change.

Right now, DTSJ is experiencing a full-on renaissance. Though it already houses a few museums and hosts annual public events like Christmas in the Park and the San Jose Summer Jazz Fest, there’s a movement of fresh, locally minded energy led by artists, entrepreneurs, and community advocates who are reshaping what’s possible in the city’s sleepy epicenter. From San Pedro Square Market on one end to the theater- and art-focused SoFA district on the other,

DTSJ might actually have solved the post-pandemic downtown conundrum faster than San Francisco and Oakland. 

Last year, there were 25 million visits to downtown: a 1.4 million increase from the previous year. The city is attempting to get more people to live and spend time downtown with newly-implemented policies, too. This includes increasing the fine on blighted buildings, transforming the Signia by Hilton hotel into student housing, and permanently closing San Pedro and Post streets to establish pedestrian malls. And it’s working: DTSJ suddenly feels re-activated.

The Rise and Fall of a Neighborhood

DTSJ was once the hub of a thriving metropolis. Unfortunately, the city made a series of fumbles that all but killed downtown. City planners overly focused on rapid expansion: From 1950 to 2000, San Jose grew from 17 to 180 square miles. The city’s population grew eight-fold.

In the midst of this suburban sprawl, downtown wasn’t simply neglected, but actively destroyed. In the mid-century, hundreds of homes and businesses were demolished to make way for highways, which divided neighborhoods and made direct access difficult, particularly for pedestrians. The car-centric streets practically required the use of vehicles to get around — a universal death knell for any potentially vibrant, foot-trafficked area.

The downfall was compounded when the city council incentivized large-scale retail development away from the city’s core, even though San Jose’s appeal up to that point had revolved around downtown’s shopping district. In 1956, San Jose’s first shopping center, Valley Fair, opened with their first tenant, Macy’s. This kicked off the exodus of major department stores downtown, like JCPenney, which moved to the shopping centers sprouting up around the city through the 60s and 70s. Valley Fair eventually developed into a full-blown mall in the late 80s, followed by the ritzy Santana Row in the early aughts, further decentralizing San Jose and siphoning pedestrians away from downtown’s retail.

The impacts of these decisions can still be felt today. The majority of shops and consumers never returned downtown. For decades, downtown business owners missed out on the action, watching it all from across Interstate 280.

DTSJ Strikes Back

Change is afoot. There is no better time than right now to experience the range of entertainment, dining, and culture that DTSJ is cultivating.

On a Saturday night, you’ll see lines spanning blocks and hungry San Joseans grubbing at streetside taco trucks. The bar scene is diverse: You can meet up for a casual boardgame night at Guildhouse or pop into Still OG for a vinyl-spinning dance party. If you’re looking for a fancy splurge, walk through the curtains at the back of Still OG to enter Alter Ego — a classy speakeasy with highlights like cocktails garnished with a smoke-filled bubble and caviar-topped Dungeness crab tostadas. Aside from adult-only bars, the city also runs Viva Parks, which organizes family-friendly activities like watching movies under the stars and painting lessons in the park.

A new generation of local business owners are breathing life back into the area with collaborative grassroots efforts, curated pop-ups, Latin house music festivals, and more. This rebirth consists of trendy, funky restaurants and businesses that are inspired and reflective of the city’s diverse community. Within a one-mile radius from city hall, you can get porchetta bánh mì at Mommy’s Bánh Mì, avocado Ferrero Rocher popsicles at Paleta Planeta, stuffed dosas at ID Company, or a loaf of ube-coconut sourdough at Milk Belly Bakery. Take your pick.

One such place is Fox Tale Fermentation Project. In 2022, couple Wendy and Felipe Bravo opened Fox Tale as part of DTSJ’s initial surge of creative newcomers. The avant-garde brewery focuses on fermented vegetarian bites and experimental beers and wine. Currently on tap, you’ll find a lager brewed with malted blue corn; a tea-inspired sangria made with an effervescent fruit shrub; and a mocktail sour made with grand fir tip syrup and wild cherry bark.

“We felt there needed to be more in downtown,” says Wendy. “There wasn’t anything like what [Fox Tale] had to offer.” Since their arrival, Fox Tale has continued to push forward the area’s dining scene with experimental dishes like cultured cashew queso-loaded nachos and mac and cheese topped with a cacao and black sesame chili oil.

They’ve had their share of battles with the city, though. Fox Tale is located on one of downtown’s busiest streets and is located directly next to a bus stop with no accessible place to receive supply shipments. The closest loading zone is around the block and across the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s light rail tracks. 

“It took us three and a half years to get [the city] to hear us out about literally just loading and unloading,” says Wendy.

In an effort to maximize their centrally located space, Fox Tale hosts a monthly art gallery, open mic comedy nights, and live musical performances. Like so many who are currently leading DTSJ’s reclamation, it’s about more than serving food and beverages — it’s about keeping the city’s spirit alive. Preserving the neighborhood is an essential ingredient at Fox Tale. In fact, Felipe grew up in the community, and he’s not alone as a hometown neighborhood advocate.

Steven Huynh also aspires to give back to the place he was raised in. In 2023, Huynh introduced Goodtime Bar, one of the few natural wine bars in the South Bay. Chef Alex Whiteman goes beyond traditional bar bites to craft a menu on par with fine dining restaurants in wealthy nearby cities like Saratoga. There’s salsa verde oxtails, tom yum bucatini, and Japanese curry-stuffed arancini. Located in Fountain Alley — a quaint strip of cool businesses that includes Fox Tale and Nashville hot chicken purveyors Scratch Cookery — Goodtime have been a driving force in DTSJ’s comeback. 

“It felt right to take a chance and open in downtown,” says Huynh.

Rather than allowing Silicon Valley to be solely defined as the home of soulless, AI-generated ideas, innovators like Huynh and the Bravos are rewiring DTSJ’s possibilities for human connection. Business owners like Frank Nguyen of Academic Coffee have thrived on cross-collaborative efforts. Since opening his cafe in DTSJ nine years ago, he’s been brewing up unique lattes like banana cream pie and fish sauce caramel. And not just for his own shop: Nguyen has mastered the value of intercommunal support. His niche is in wholesaling to other DTSJ restaurants, bars, and cafes and helping them craft their coffee menus. Nguyen mentions that having a DTSJ network has been essential. 

“We [leveraged] local businesses to fuel our own business and it created a little ecosystem that way,” says Nguyen. During the pandemic, Nguyen founded SJ SHIP Kits to get unused restaurant goods to community members in need. At other times, local businesses have relied on each other to share supplies like containers and towels.

With so much synergy, there’s major potential for what’s to come next. But there are also signs of a decayed past that still require further solutions. “We have tons of abandoned buildings that have just sat there for a long time,” says Fox Tale’s Wendy. “The buildings that are available, the rent is honestly ridiculous.”

The juxtaposition of lively, remodeled buildings beside desolate ones captures the two ends of downtown’s incomplete spectrum. On one street corner, there’s Eos & Nyx, an opulent restaurant with a two-floor liquor carousel that serves Academic’s espresso with vanilla liqueur and goji berries. The interior resembles what you'd imagine Steve Wozniak's mansion might look like. And yet, only a few steps away, there’s an abandoned 1950’s-themed burger joint.

DTSJ’s Future

Major hurdles preventing even more businesses from establishing themselves in the area have revolved around some of the region’s strictest permitting requirements and exorbitant prices in one of the nation’s most affluent zip codes. The San Jose Downtown Association was established in 1986 to help combat some of those issues by assisting businesses with the process of opening and staying afloat downtown. 

Nate LeBlanc, economic development director of the program, points to other challenges. “The downtown business environment is defined by hospitality businesses — it’s an economy where every business is in competition with each other because they’re all doing the same thing, which is selling food and drinks. The spectre of fear above everything that’s happening, especially in marginalized communities, is not helping,” says LeBlanc.

It’s not easy being a newcomer in an established scene, yet there’s enough space for new foodmakers to thrive with creative takes. Luis Salazar, co-owner of Paleta Planeta, started his business from his parents’ garage in 2021 and opened a shop downtown last year. “The San Jose Downtown Association helped us get building permits,” says Salazar, who slings original paleta flavors like blueberry horchata and Gansito. He credits LeBlanc with helping his business “cut through the red tape put up by the city.”

LeBlanc further assists the development of local retail vendors like Salazar through SJMade’s Moment pop-up retail shops around downtown. There are currently 11 new businesses working out of four storefronts, he says. The small businesses are largely owned by women and otherwise marginalized community members who “needed a bit of support.” Their rent is subsidized and though the spaces are temporary and rotate, it’s meant to give each one more exposure in the increasingly bustling downtown.

Even with these improvements, though, San Jose has a long way to go. As LeBlanc puts it, “We need to get well past normal to be a world-class city.” The city has had trouble defining what it wants to be: a cultural bastion, tech empire, suburban sprawl, or all of the above. But the community members in DTSJ seem to have their own vision in mind to become a growing destination.

“We need more businesses that drive families downtown, " says Salazar, “It won't just be a place where there’s bars or a scene for adults. It’ll be a scene for everybody.”