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By Kate Bradshaw

Middle Plaza in Menlo Park will be home to a new restaurant from Ettan’s Ayesha Thapar. Courtesy Onysko Photography.

The first restaurant at Stanford’s new Middle Plaza development in Menlo Park has been announced.

It will be Eylan, an “encore” to restaurateur Ayesha Thapar’s Cal-Indian fusion restaurant Ettan in Palo Alto, according to a recent press statement.

The restaurant will be the latest in a series by Thapar, an Atherton resident and restaurateur who teamed up with chef Srijith Gopinathan to create Ettan in Palo Alto in February 2020, bringing Indian and Californian cuisine together in an elevated fashion.

“El Camino is going through a complete revival with developments like this infusing a vibrance to Menlo Park with new and exciting dining and retail options,” Thapar said in a statement.

Last month, they opened Copra in San Francisco, which pays homage to the cuisine of Gopinathan’s childhood on the southern coast of India. Those dishes highlight seafood, coconut, and harder-to-find dishes from South India, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

It’s not yet clear how many restaurants will open at the new Middle Plaza development (the Peninsula Foodist’s request for more information had not been returned as of publication time), but the 8.4-acre development also includes housing, primarily for Stanford faculty and staff, office space and retail shops.

The new development is slated to bring in a number of ultra high-end jewelry and watch vendors, including a shop by local jeweler Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry, plus a Bulgari boutique and watchmakers including MB&F, H. Moser & Cie. and Roger Dubuis alongside others yet to be named, according to a press release.

These businesses are expected to open sometime in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Middle Plaza, 400a El Camino Real, Menlo Park, 650-519-7555.

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