Your Guide to New Ventura Boulevard Restaurants in Sherman Oaks

Drive Ventura Boulevard from Kester to Van Nuys on a Tuesday evening and you will pass at least four storefronts that did not exist, in their current form, a year ago. Not scattered across the Valley. Not spread across separate shopping centers. The same nine blocks that shut down every October for the Sherman Oaks Street Fair.

That clustering is the part worth paying attention to. Restaurants open and close on Ventura Boulevard constantly, that is not news. What is worth noting is that four of this year's most talked-about additions, a sushi retailer, a burger concept, an Indian kitchen, and a rebuilt fast-food landmark, all sit inside a stretch short enough to walk in under twenty minutes. If you have been putting off exploring what changed, you can cover most of it on foot.

The Same Nine Blocks

Here is what landed on this stretch of Ventura Boulevard over the past year, and where each one sits relative to the others.

The Sherman Oaks Street Fair has run its footprint along roughly the same nine blocks of Ventura Boulevard between Van Nuys and Kester in recent editions, drawing crowds that have topped 100,000 visitors in past years. That means the fair's usual route already passes within a few storefronts of every business on this list. If the 2026 route holds to that pattern, residents heading out for the fair on October 18 will be walking past a corridor that looks meaningfully different than it did twelve months ago.

Sushi Row's Newest Addition Isn't a Restaurant, Exactly

Ventura Boulevard's stretch through Sherman Oaks has carried the nickname Sushi Row for years, thanks to one of the highest concentrations of sushi restaurants anywhere in the country, including longtime names like Sushi Nozawa and Asanebo. So it is worth noticing that the newest and largest name joining that lineup is not another sit-down omakase spot. It is a 7,200-square-foot marketplace.

Yama Sushi Marketplace is opening its fourth location, and its biggest yet, at 15300 Ventura Boulevard, in the space that most recently held Public School 818 gastropub. The company, which traces back to a fish broker named Kenzo Yamada who opened the original Yama Seafood in San Gabriel in 1984, currently runs locations in San Gabriel, West LA, and Koreatown. Sherman Oaks becomes the fourth, and the first built around a full liquor license.

CEO Scott Kohno explained the pull of the location to a reporter covering the deal:

"It's a very iconic location, the number of people at that intersection is tremendous because it is right next to the freeways."

The larger footprint is intentional. Kohno has said the extra space allows Yama to add a dedicated drink station serving craft sake alongside Japanese whiskey, vodka, and gin, a step up from the beer and wine pours typical of grab-and-go sushi counters. For a corridor already saturated with dinner-reservation sushi, that is a different kind of bet: fast, retail-style sashimi trays and bento boxes with a cocktail program attached, aimed at the after-work crowd and catering orders rather than the tasting-menu regulars two doors down.

The Building That Almost Stayed Empty

A few blocks east, at the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard and Hesby, sits a building with a longer history than any restaurant currently open on the boulevard. For more than sixty years it operated as a Googie-style coffee shop, designed by architects Armet and Davis, the same firm behind much of the midcentury coffee-shop style that once defined Southern California roadside dining. The building sat closed for six years after its last tenant left. In 2020, the City of Los Angeles designated it Historic-Cultural Monument #1215, protecting the structure but leaving its future uncertain.

That future arrived on December 4, 2025, when the building reopened as a Chick-fil-A, rebuilt from the original architectural plans with help from architect Alan Hess and designer Miranda Lee. The zigzag booths, the swooping roofline, the details that existed mostly in old photographs came back as close to their original form as the restoration team could manage.

The person running it lives in the neighborhood. Owner-operator Brad Boerneke has called Sherman Oaks home for years and went through a two-year franchisee interview process before landing the location, one that drew 1,500 job applications for the roughly 90 positions the restaurant created. It is a fast-food opening, but it is also the return of a building that generations of Valley residents remember, restored rather than replaced.

What Closed to Make Room

Two of this year's additions are notable as much for what they replaced as for what they brought.

Burger She Wrote opened its second location at 14245 Ventura Boulevard this spring, expanding out from its original Fairfax spot on Beverly Boulevard. The concept, founded in 2021 by professional skateboarder Don "Nuge" Nguyen and restaurateur Steven Arroyo, centers on smash burgers made with 100% American Wagyu beef on Kings Hawaiian buns, a style Nguyen has traced back to the smash burgers of his hometown, Oklahoma City. It is a small detail, but one worth knowing if you are wondering why a Sherman Oaks burger counter tastes the way it does.

A few doors down, Aromas Indian Cuisine is preparing to move into 14350 Ventura Boulevard, a space that had cycled through two prior tenants, Billa Indian Cuisine and SanSai Japanese Grill, before sitting vacant. Led by Jaspal Singh and Jaspreet Bindra, the new restaurant plans a menu built around classic Indian dishes, street food, and fusion items, though an exact opening date had not been set as of this year's filings. One storefront absorbing what used to be two separate restaurants is its own small signal about how tenants on this stretch are sizing their spaces differently than they did a few years ago.

Marking October 18 on the Calendar

The Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce has confirmed the 34th annual Sherman Oaks Street Fair for Sunday, October 18, 2026, running the length of Ventura Boulevard from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. In recent years the fair has featured close to 200 vendors, live music, a beer and wine garden, and a car show, spread across roughly nine blocks between Van Nuys and Kester.

By the time that Sunday arrives, most of what is listed above should be open. Burger She Wrote and the rebuilt Chick-fil-A already are. Yama Sushi Marketplace is targeting a late-summer debut, which puts it on track to be serving by fair weekend. Aromas Indian Cuisine remains the wildcard, but even a soft opening before October would mean fairgoers walk past all four within the same afternoon.

None of this requires planning a special trip. It is the same walk down Ventura Boulevard that Sherman Oaks residents have made for years, just with a few more reasons to stop along the way.

For those keeping an eye on how the neighborhood itself is changing, not just its storefronts, Lori Morrissey tracks what is happening across Encino, Sherman Oaks, and the surrounding San Fernando Valley. If you are curious what your own corner of the boulevard is worth these days, reach out for a Free Home Valuation.