When BOA Steakhouse chose the Scottsdale Waterfront and Din Tai Fung picked Fashion Square, nobody was surprised. Those are the addresses restaurant groups fight over. So when two of the most talked-about openings near DC Ranch skipped Old Town, skipped Kierland, and landed instead on the grocery-anchored strip mall at Pima Road and Thompson Peak Parkway, the choice deserved a second look.
The answer has less to do with foot traffic studies and more to do with who already lives there.
The Lineup That Hasn't Needed to Change
Ask a longtime DC Ranch or Silverleaf resident where to eat and the list comes fast. Fleming's Prime Steakhouse for a birthday or a closing dinner. Grimaldi's when the kids vote on pizza. Jalapeño Inferno for Sonoran Mexican, ordered by habit rather than menu. The Herb Box for a weekday lunch that doesn't require a reservation. Eggstasy on Saturday morning, where the wait is the point. Vic & Ola's, open since 2019, for the kind of evening that calls for homemade pasta and a patio with string lights, its name a tribute to Sicilian and Calabrian grandparents who married in 1931 and whose photos still line the menu.
That lineup has been stable for years. Which is exactly why the last ten months are worth paying attention to.
One Neighbor, Three Leases
The two newest arrivals on Market Street both trace back to Tom Kaufman, a DC Ranch resident and the founder of Kaufman Hospitality. Kaufman has operated The Living Room Wine Bar on Market Street for roughly a decade. By November 2025 he had also brought in Elvira's DC Ranch, and in the former Liberty Station Tavern space directly across from The Living Room, he opened Tomu-San Sushi. As of that same month, all three restaurants on that stretch belonged to the same operator, and that operator's commute to work is a walk, not a drive.
He has said as much publicly. Speaking to scottsdale.com about his decision to bring an omakase concept to a neighborhood strip mall, Kaufman explained his logic simply:
"I reside within the DC Ranch community, and I feel like I really understand the flavor profiles of the customer and know how to turn them into regulars."
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A restaurateur who leases one storefront on a strip is a tenant reacting to whatever traffic shows up. A restaurateur who leases three has a stake in how the entire block feels after dark, whether people linger over a second glass of wine or head home after the check arrives. Kaufman's decade-long relationship with Whitestone REIT, the landlord that has owned Market Street since 2013, gave him the standing to make that bet in a way a first-time tenant couldn't.
What Actually Changed
Elvira's has the longer backstory. The restaurant began in 1927, when Elvira Rivera opened her first kitchen in Nogales, Sonora. Her grandson, Chef Ruben Monroy, relocated the concept to Tubac in 2010, where it spent fifteen years drawing diners willing to make a ninety-minute drive from Phoenix. The DC Ranch location is a collaboration between Monroy and Kaufman, and it means a restaurant with nearly a century of family history is now a five-minute drive from home for most of DC Ranch instead of a day trip.
Tomu-San is the more ambitious swing. The kitchen is led by Executive Chef Christopher George, who spent twenty years at Roy's before taking the role. The menu runs from classic nigiri and sashimi to charcoal-kissed proteins and Wagyu, with a beverage program built around Japanese whiskies and sake flights. For a more structured evening, the restaurant offers omakase seating at the counter, a multi-course progression where each dish arrives in sequence. Reservations are available directly through tomusansushi.com.
Tomu-San Sushi
- Address: 20825 N. Pima Road, Suite 100
- Hours: Sunday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- Happy hour: daily, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.
Two blocks away, a quieter change happened first. Light Heart Coffee opened its second Scottsdale location on Market Street in May 2025, filling a morning gap the strip had been missing. Between a nearly century-old family kitchen, a chef-driven sushi counter, and a coffee shop with enough draw to justify a second location, Market Street now has a credible answer for most occasions a DC Ranch resident faces without leaving the neighborhood.
The Landlord Changed Hands Too
Market Street's trajectory as a property is its own story. Whitestone REIT bought the 241,280-square-foot center in 2013 for $37.4 million, or $156 per square foot, when it was 80 percent occupied. By a January 2020 leasing announcement that added Vic & Ola's and its sister event venue, The Copper Club, occupancy had climbed to 96.8 percent. That climb from four-fifths full to nearly capacity over roughly seven years is the kind of number that tells you a shopping center found its identity, not just its tenants.
Whitestone is no longer making those decisions entirely on its own. In July 2026, Whitestone REIT was acquired by Ares Real Estate funds. For residents, that ownership change is the detail worth watching rather than worrying about. Whoever leases the next vacancy on Market Street will be inheriting foot traffic that didn't exist two years ago, built by a resident-operator's expanding footprint rather than a landlord's marketing plan. Whether Ares keeps building on that or takes the center in a different direction is the open question for the next round of leasing announcements.
What This Means for a Wednesday Night
None of this requires a resident to do anything differently this week, but it does change the math on a few common questions. Want sushi without driving to Old Town or North Scottsdale's restaurant corridors? Tomu-San puts an omakase counter at the corner of Pima and Thompson Peak Parkway. Hosting out-of-town family who want something more storied than a chain? Elvira's carries a hundred years of family recipe behind it. Need a coffee run before a 7 a.m. tee time at Grayhawk or The Silverleaf Golf Course? Light Heart is now a two-location brand instead of a one-off.
The bigger shift is less about any single menu and more about what it signals. A neighborhood commercial strip that spent years defined by its steady, dependable anchors is now also home to a chef who left a twenty-year post at Roy's and a family restaurant with roots in 1920s Sonora. That's not the kind of change that shows up in a market report. It shows up in where the reservation lines start forming on a Friday night.
For residents who are watching what Market Street's rising profile means for property values nearby, or who own a home in DC Ranch or Silverleaf and are curious what a stronger commercial core does for a rental listing, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks both sides of it. Neighbors Luxury works across North Scottsdale's neighborhoods every day, and if you're weighing whether your DC Ranch or Silverleaf property could perform as a short-term rental in a market this active, request a free vacation rental property analysis and get numbers specific to your address, not just the neighborhood average.
