On a Friday around 7:30, the sidewalk outside Popular fills up fast. The seventh concept from Tel Aviv Restaurant Group opened on Ventura Boulevard earlier this year, and Executive Chef Dor Priezler's Mediterranean fusion menu, heavy on branzino and sumac yogurt, has kept the four thousand square foot dining room and eight seat bar running close to full most weekends. A few doors down, Pialon has settled into its own rhythm, small Mediterranean plates under eighteen dollars, a courtyard that fills with the after work crowd by six.
Drive ten minutes and you land on a quiet stretch of Moorpark Street, one block off Ventura near the Balboa off ramp, where a gate sits closed most days. Behind it: an eight room adobe built by the de la Ossa family, a two story limestone building put up by a French Basque rancher, a natural spring that has run continuously since before any of the streets around it had names. Most people who've eaten at Popular this year have never walked through that gate.
That's the actual story of Encino this season. Not that the restaurant scene got better, though it did. It's that the newest thing on the boulevard and the oldest thing in the neighborhood are close enough to visit in the same afternoon, and almost nobody is doing it.
What actually opened on Ventura
Popular sits at 18047 Ventura Boulevard, and the pedigree matters here. Tel Aviv Restaurant Group has built six other concepts before this one, and Popular is their bet that Encino can support the same seafood forward, cocktail heavy format that works closer to the coast. The menu leans into dishes built for a table to share: a fish cigar wrapped in crisp pastry with branzino, herbs, and lemon zest, a baklava filled with savory cheese instead of the usual honey and nuts. The space itself was designed to hold a crowd, with a full bar, an outdoor patio, and enough room that a Friday night waitlist doesn't feel like an accident.
Pialon takes the opposite approach. Every dish on the menu runs eighteen dollars or under, which makes it an easy stop for a weeknight dinner rather than an occasion. The format is built around small Mediterranean plates meant to be passed around a table, and the courtyard seating gives it a different feel from the more polished room at Popular a few blocks away.
Together they represent something Encino hasn't had in a while: two new full service Mediterranean restaurants opening within months of each other, both anchored on Ventura, both clearly built for repeat visits rather than one-time novelty. If you've lived here for a few years, you remember when a new sit-down restaurant on this stretch was rare enough to be an event. This year it happened twice.
The gate you've probably never walked through
Los Encinos State Historic Park has been sitting on Moorpark Street since it became a state park in 1949, and most of what makes it worth a visit predates the park designation by more than a century. The site was originally the village of Siutcanga, home to Chumash, Tongva, and Tataviam people who used the natural spring on the property as a year round water source long before the 1769 Portola expedition passed through and gave the valley its name.
The buildings still standing today trace the property's later owners. The eight room de la Ossa Adobe dates back to the rancho era. The Garnier building, a two story structure built from limestone, was put up by Eugene Garnier, a French Basque rancher who also built the pond on the property in 1874, still fed by the same spring. A blacksmith shop rounds out the grounds.
None of this is hidden information. The park is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday. What's easy to miss is that it's a genuine walk back into the valley's pre-development history, sitting quietly a short drive from a restaurant with an eight-seat bar and a waitlist.
Heritage Days, and why the calendar matters
The park runs a recurring program called Heritage Days, typically the third Sunday of the month, from 1 to 3 in the afternoon. It's free, and it's the closest thing the park has to an open house, with docents walking visitors through the adobe and the Garnier building and the grounds around the spring and pond.
The remaining 2026 dates are:
- September 20
- October 18
- November 22
- December 20
That's four more chances this year to see the inside of buildings most Encino residents drive past without a second look. Compare that to the wait for a Friday table at Popular, and the contrast says something about where attention in this neighborhood tends to go. New restaurants get discovered within weeks. A two-hour free program at a 77-year-old state park, sitting on a site that's been continuously used for thousands of years, apparently needs a reminder.
The other Sunday fixture
If Heritage Days is the overlooked stop, the Encino Farmers Market is the one that's been hiding in plain sight for years. Run by ONEgeneration, it operates every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine, with more than thirty farmers from across Central and Southern California, twenty five food vendors, and a rotating group of local crafters. It accepts EBT and WIC, which keeps it genuinely accessible rather than a boutique stop.
What sets it apart from a typical neighborhood market is where the money goes. A percentage of every dollar spent supports ONEgeneration's senior services, including meal delivery for homebound older adults in the community. It's easy to walk through a Sunday market for the produce and miss that the transaction is also funding something local and specific. The market has been running long enough that it predates both new restaurants on Ventura by years, and it will likely still be running long after this particular restaurant cycle turns over again.
Putting a weekend together
None of this requires an itinerary, but the shape of a good Encino weekend has quietly changed this year. A Sunday morning at the farmers market, produce for the week and a coffee from one of the food vendors, still holds. What's new is that a Sunday afternoon in September, October, November, or December now has a second option that didn't exist as a habit before: walk into Los Encinos State Historic Park during Heritage Days, spend an hour with the adobe and the spring, and end the day with dinner at Pialon or a reservation at Popular if you planned ahead.
That loop, market in the morning, history in the afternoon, dinner on the boulevard, uses three things that all sit within a short drive of each other and none of which existed together in this form even eighteen months ago. Two of the three are brand new. One of them has been there since before the city grew up around it.
If you're the kind of Encino resident who already has strong opinions about where to eat on Ventura, consider this the nudge to close the loop. The gate on Moorpark Street opens more often than most people think, and the next chance is September 20.
For residents thinking further ahead, whether that's a future move within Encino or questions about what a specific pocket of the neighborhood is worth right now, Lynna Hall is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
