Where do you eat before a play that starts at six?
That question didn't used to matter much in Redwood City, because for years there wasn't a real answer. You picked something on Broadway, ate quickly, and drove the mile or so out to Red Morton Park before the lawn filled in. This year the question has an actual answer, and it changes depending on which Friday or Saturday you're asking about. San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's Free Shakespeare in the Park closes out its three-weekend Redwood City run next weekend at Red Morton Park, and the strip of restaurants you'd pass on the way there looks nothing like it did last August.
Two Stages, About a Mile Apart
Redwood City's summer nightlife has always run on two separate tracks that happen to sit close enough to confuse people into thinking they're the same place. One track is Courthouse Square, the plaza on Broadway that anchors downtown's restaurant row and hosts the city's Friday concert series. The other is Red Morton Park, a mile or so from the Caltrain station, where SF Shakespeare Festival has staged its free summer production since 2012, after years of performing on the grounds of Sequoia High School.
This year's production is Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Katja Rivera, with Elizabeth Carter as Cleopatra and Jeremy Ohta Lee as Antony. It's the festival's 44th season of free outdoor Shakespeare, and Redwood City gets three weekends of it: August 15 and 16, August 22 and 23, and the closing performances next Saturday and Sunday, August 29 and 30, all at 6pm. No tickets, no reservations, ninety minutes with no intermission. Bring a blanket or a folding chair and you're in.
The point that gets lost in most "what to do this weekend" roundups is that these two nodes, Broadway and Red Morton, aren't the same walk. If you're eating downtown, you're a mile from the lawn where the show happens. That mile is exactly why the dinner choice ahead of next weekend's closing shows matters more than it used to. A year ago, the stretch between the two didn't have much worth stopping for. Now it does.
The Corridor That Didn't Exist Last Summer
Start with the newest arrival. Reef Zaman soft-opened June 29 in the old Sizzler space, serving flame-grilled Mediterranean dishes like branzino, lamb chops, and kebabs. It comes from Los Angeles restaurateur Faris Alqabass, who also runs Yemeni Restaurant in New York and Mandi House in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with Chef Mohammed Al-Omari, who trained just down the street at Mazra, running the kitchen.
Mazra itself is worth mentioning for a different reason. The Broadway kebab and shawarma spot went dark after a kitchen fire in June 2024 and didn't reopen until that October, a four-month gap that would have quietly ended a lot of restaurants. It's still there now, which is the kind of detail that tells you more about a business district than any list of new openings does.
A few blocks over on Middlefield Road, the turnover has been faster and less forgiving. Dasbierhauz, the beer garden that arrived in Redwood City in 2024, poured its last pint at 830 Middlefield the final Tuesday of June, closing after a co-owner said his business partner had moved away. That space isn't staying empty. Gangsan, a Korean restaurant, is moving in with a menu built around galbijjim, seolleongtang, and sizzling bibimbap. Two years is not a long run for a restaurant to hold a corner, and it's worth remembering the next time a new sign goes up somewhere you liked: this corridor is still finding its shape, not settling into one.
Two more additions round out the walk. Bay Burgers opened its first real storefront on Woodside Road this past March, after two years as a pop-up that started with a Blackstone griddle at Hoover Park and grew into a tent that sold out most weekends. Chef-owner Xavier Pereznegron runs it with rotating specials, smashburgers, and milkshakes. And Limón, the Peruvian restaurant that opened its Redwood City location in October 2024, has become one more reason the fifteen-minute walk from Courthouse Square now covers three distinct cuisines instead of one.
If you'd rather browse than eat before the show, Fireside Books and More on Broadway, the city's independent bookstore since it opened in February 2025, is a five-minute stop on the same stretch. Owners Andrew Johnson and Taylor Kubota built the shop around the idea of a downtown where you eat somewhere good, then wander into a bookstore, which is more or less the exact pattern next weekend rewards.
The Schedule Between Now and Labor Day
The closing weekend of Shakespeare overlaps with the tail end of two other free series that have been running downtown since May. Music on the Square, the city's Friday night concert series at Courthouse Square, is marking its 20th anniversary this year and runs through September 4, which means there's one more Friday show after next weekend closes out Shakespeare. ART on the Square, the companion arts market that pairs with four of those Friday concerts, holds its final 2026 date on Friday, August 28, with a Bowie tribute band closing out the season.
Here's how the last stretch actually lines up:
- Friday, August 28: ART on the Square and Music on the Square, both at Courthouse Square, 5 to 8:30pm
- Saturday, August 29 and Sunday, August 30: Free Shakespeare in the Park's final performances of Antony and Cleopatra, Red Morton Park, 6pm
- Friday, September 4: The season's last Music on the Square Friday
If you're planning around the Shakespeare shows specifically, parking near Red Morton Park is available in the lots serving the Veterans Center on St. Francis Street and Vera Avenue, along the National Guard and Bechet Field lots off Valota Road, and at the Community Activities Building lot off Roosevelt Avenue, in addition to street parking on St. Francis, Madison, and Vera.
Why the Split Is Worth Noticing
None of this changes anything about home values or market timing, and that's sort of the point. What it does show is a downtown that's absorbing new restaurant capacity, a rotating cast of small businesses, and a full summer events calendar without losing the run of either. A neighborhood that can lose a two-year-old beer garden and have a Korean restaurant lined up within weeks isn't standing still, and a park a mile from downtown that's hosted the same free Shakespeare production since 2012 isn't going anywhere either. Both of those things are true of Redwood City right now, and neither shows up on a listing page.
If you already live here, next weekend is a reasonable excuse to close out August the way the city apparently intends: dinner on Broadway, a walk past a bookstore that didn't exist two summers ago, then a blanket on the lawn at Red Morton Park for the last two performances of the season.
If you're thinking about what a stretch like this means for a home you already own here, or for one you've had your eye on nearby, Carmen Miranda has spent decades watching how neighborhoods like this one actually change. Let's Connect.
