On a recent Friday at 11:30 in the morning, the doors at 226 F Street opened for business for the first time in more than a year. Inside the old Davis City Hall building, at the corner of Third and F, two restaurants started serving at once: Pier 50 Sushi on the Third Street side, and its sister concept, Fukumi Chaya x Momo Katsu, tucked into the smaller F Street storefront next door. The 2,500-square-foot patio out front, long regarded as the best outdoor dining setup downtown had to offer, stayed closed. The new owners cleaned it up but aren't using it for seating yet.
That patio sitting empty on opening day is a small detail, but it says something about how long this particular corner has been dark. And it isn't the only downtown storefront that just came back to life. Two blocks away on D Street, a different vacancy is closing on its own, much faster, timeline.
A Building That's Had Three Restaurants Since 2020
The City Hall building has a longer restaurant history than most people downtown probably remember. Bistro 33 was the first tenant after the city moved out, and it became a pandemic casualty, closing in March 2020. Mamma Eatery took over the space after that, running an Italian menu until it shut down on Father's Day, June 15, 2025. From there, the building sat vacant for a little over a year.
That's when Fukumi Restaurant Group, run by husband-and-wife owners Han and Sylbi Song, signed the lease. Sylbi Song had told a local reporter she hoped to open within six to nine months. It ended up taking closer to that upper bound. Sutter Properties Group brokered the deal on behalf of Engstrom Properties, the West Sacramento firm that owns the building, and the 7,373-square-foot space is now split between the two new concepts: Pier 50's made-to-order, all-you-can-eat sushi on one side, and Fukumi Chaya's Hakata-style ramen and katsu, developed with Momo Katsu, on the other.
Fukumi already runs Pier 50 locations at Market Square near Arden Fair and in Folsom's Palladio, plus a Fukumi Chaya x Momo Katsu in Folsom. Davis is the newest addition to that group.
Here's how the two storefronts stack up against each other:
| Storefront | Last tenant closed | Vacant for | New tenant | Reopened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 226 F St (old City Hall) | Mamma Eatery, June 15, 2025 | About 15 months | Pier 50 Sushi / Fukumi Chaya x Momo Katsu | Early September 2026 |
| 113 D St | Taffach Ethiopian Cuisine, late July 2026 | About 6 to 7 weeks | Munchie Man | Targeting mid-to-late September 2026 |
Both storefronts land in the same month. One took fifteen times longer to fill than the other.
The Six-Week Turnaround Two Blocks Away
Taffach Ethiopian Cuisine served its final meal on a Thursday in late July, after the property at 113 D Street sold. Within days, word got out about what would replace it: Munchie Man, a new concept from owner Christopher Fairman, targeting a mid-to-late September opening with renovation and hiring already underway.
Fairman has spent close to two decades in Sacramento-area hospitality. He was general manager at The Shack in East Sacramento, helped open Pazza Notte in Midtown, and managed bar operations at Sky River Casino before deciding to build something of his own. He describes Munchie Man as a funky bistro take on California cuisine, with a menu shaped by travel to Mexico City, Japan, and Toronto, plus dishes borrowed from meals shared at friends' homes. The name and its mascot go back to 2023, when Fairman started running pop-up dinners under the Munchie Man name. He spent close to three years looking for the right permanent space before landing on D Street.
Two storefronts, two very different clocks. One sat empty through a lease negotiation, a build-out, and more than a year of downtown regulars wondering what was coming. The other turned over in about the time it takes to plan a wedding.
What Filled In While Nobody Was Watching
These aren't the only changes downtown has absorbed this year. Camellia Coffee Roasters, a Sacramento-based roaster founded in 2016 by Ryan Harden and Rob Watson, took over the former Peet's Coffee space at 231 East Street after Peet's closed there at the end of January. The new café opened toward the end of May. Peet's still operates its other Davis location at The Marketplace, so the brand didn't leave town entirely, it just handed off one storefront.
NaYa Dessert Café, a San Francisco-based Thai-inspired dessert concept, moved into the former Farmers Kitchen space at 620 Fourth Street earlier this year, opening in mid-January. It's run locally by franchisee Paige Rosebrook, a longtime Davis resident who decided to bring the café home after one too many drives to San Francisco just for dessert.
Add those two to the City Hall building and D Street, and downtown has quietly cycled through four storefronts in under a year, on top of everything else that's opened at the Davis Collection and elsewhere in town.
Why This Particular September
The timing lines up with a few things beyond restaurant leases. The Davis Farmers Market is in its 50th anniversary year, and while the big August 1 celebration in Central Park already happened, the market's fall schedule just shifted back to its cooler-weather hours, running Wednesdays from 3 to 6 p.m. starting September 2, in place of the extended Picnic in the Park hours it kept all summer. The market's campus counterpart, the UC Davis Farmers Market on the Student Community Center's south patio, turns 20 this year and marks the milestone with its own celebration on October 14.
That same week, thousands of new and returning students are arriving for fall quarter. UC Davis's on-campus Aggie Orientation runs September 16 through 18 for transfer and first-year students, with the new academic year officially starting September 21. Downtown Davis has historically used that window to introduce incoming students to its shops and restaurants, which means the same storefronts that just reopened are about to get their first look from thousands of people who've never set foot in them before.
Beyond move-in week, downtown's fall calendar fills in fast:
- A Taste of Davis & Yolo, September 27, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Davis Odd Fellows Lodge, a fundraiser for the Lodge, Meals on Wheels Yolo County, and STEAC, featuring pours and bites from Buckhorn Meat Co., Great Bear Vineyards, Turkovich Family Wines, and other local purveyors
- Join the Harvest, Reds Edition, October 10, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Great Bear Vineyards, with grape picking, grape stomping, and a farm-to-fork lunch
- Foxy's Fall Century Ride, October 17, hosted by the Davis Bike Club, starting and finishing at the Veterans Memorial Center with 100-mile, 100K, and 50K route options through Yolo County farmland
- Davis Jazz Beat Festival, its 14th year, running October 23 and 24 at the John Natsoulas Gallery with additional programming spilling into Davis Commons
- Yolo Wine & Food Affair, October 24, pouring from eleven Yolo County wineries
- Zombie Bike Parade Halloween Festival, October 31 at Community Park, the costumed bike procession that's become a Davis Halloween tradition, with a Co-op block party and a Zombie Halloween Party at Dunloe Brewing the Friday before
None of these events are new. What's new is that they're all landing on a downtown that just finished clearing its two most-talked-about vacancies in the same handful of weeks.
If you've walked past 226 F Street wondering what was ever going to move into that building, or noticed the D Street storefront sitting dark since late July, the answer to both is the same: this month. It's not often that a downtown's slowest-moving vacancy and its newest one resolve at the same time, but that's exactly what's happening on these two blocks right now.
Downtown Davis changes in small pieces most of the year and then, every so often, several pieces move at once. This is one of those stretches. If you're keeping an eye on what a home near all of this is worth these days, the Loney & Worley Team puts together a free home valuation whenever you're curious, no pressure, no obligation, just a clear answer from people who know this stretch of Davis well.
