Drive down Pima Road on any given evening and Market Street still looks the way it has for years. Fleming's valet still runs the same corner. The fire pit still glows on The Living Room's wraparound patio. But walk into the space that used to be Liberty Station, directly across from that patio, and you'll find something that didn't exist on this strip eight months ago: a sushi counter where the chef narrates each course as it lands.
That single seat is a small detail. What it represents is not.
The Five Restaurants That Define a Week on Market Street
Ask a longtime DC Ranch resident how they use Market Street and the answers fall into a predictable rhythm. A short list of restaurants, each one covering a different occasion.
| If you want... | Where residents go | Who's behind it |
|---|---|---|
| A steak dinner for a celebration | Fleming's Prime Steakhouse | National chain, part of Bloomin' Brands |
| Pizza night with the kids | Grimaldi's Pizzeria | National franchise |
| Modern Mexican with tableside presentation | Elvira's | Kaufman Hospitality, opened early 2025 |
| A glass of wine after work | The Living Room Wine Bar | Kaufman Hospitality, opened 2014 |
| A counter seat and a chef's tasting menu | Tomu-San Sushi | Kaufman Hospitality, opened December 2025 |
Look at that last column. Three of the five occasions that define a week of dinners on Market Street now run through a single operator. That is the part worth sitting with. Market Street built its reputation on national brands with proven formats, the kind of restaurants a landlord signs because they de-risk a lease. Somewhere in the last two years, a local operator quietly took over the anchor position across the street from itself, twice.
One Operator, Three Storefronts, and a Pace That Changed
The operator is Tom Kaufman, founder of Kaufman Hospitality, and he is also a DC Ranch resident. He opened The Living Room in 2014 and ran it as his only Market Street concept for roughly eleven years. Then the pace changed. Elvira's opened at Market Street in early 2025, bringing a Nogales-founded Mexican restaurant known for tableside molcajete presentations. Ten months later, Tomu-San Sushi opened on December 3, 2025, taking over the 2,798-square-foot former Liberty Station tavern space directly across from The Living Room.
Eleven years for the first expansion. Ten months for the second. That is not a gradual buildout. That is someone who decided, in a fairly short window, to consolidate a meaningful share of Market Street's dinner options under one kitchen philosophy.
Kaufman has talked about why in terms that sound less like a landlord's pitch and more like a neighbor's logic.
"I knew it had to be here at Market Street."
He said it about choosing the former Liberty Station space specifically, and the reasoning he gave alongside it was straightforward: he lives in the community and believes he understands what its residents actually want to eat.
The Seat That Wasn't There Eight Months Ago
The practical difference for residents isn't philosophical. It's that Market Street didn't have an omakase counter before Tomu-San opened, and now it does. Executive Chef Christopher George, who spent 20 years at Roy's before taking the role, runs a rotating daily menu that spans classic nigiri and sashimi through charcoal-kissed proteins and Wagyu, with a beverage program built around Japanese whiskies and hand-selected sake flights.
Before this, a resident who wanted that kind of counter experience, chef-guided, course by course, without a menu to browse, had to drive into Old Town or further. Now it's a walk or a short golf cart ride from most of DC Ranch. The patio seating carries over the same design instinct as the dining room: recessed just enough from the street to feel private, close enough that you can still watch Market Street go by.
Before You Go: Happy Hour Is Fixed, the Rest of the Clock Isn't
Here's a detail worth knowing before you plan an evening around it. Tomu-San's happy hour runs daily from 4:30 to 6 p.m., with fire-kissed rolls and cocktails priced for a weeknight stop rather than a special occasion.
What's less consistent is the rest of the schedule. Coverage from around the opening described full-day service starting at 11 a.m. Tomu-San's current Yelp listing shows a different pattern: doors open at 4 p.m. on weekdays and Sunday, with Friday and Saturday extending to a 10 p.m. close. If your plan involves a lunch stop rather than dinner, call ahead. A restaurant eight months into its run is still a restaurant that adjusts its hours to match how the neighborhood actually shows up, and right now the posted schedule has moved since opening.
What's Still Empty on the Strip
Market Street isn't finished changing. Commercial listing data from April 2026 showed two retail spaces still available for lease at the center, totaling 2,161 square feet within a 242,459-square-foot property spread across 37 acres and 15 buildings. Whitestone REIT owns the center and controls who fills those spaces next.
Two openings from one operator in under a year, plus open square footage still on the market, suggests the mix on Market Street is still being written. If the pattern of the last year holds, the next tenant announcement is worth paying attention to, not because it changes anything drastically overnight, but because on a strip this size, a single new lease can shift where a few hundred households eat dinner on a Tuesday.
For now, the honest read is this: Market Street looks the same from the parking lot, and the roster underneath it has quietly consolidated around a resident who has spent a decade building toward exactly this moment.
If you're weighing what a home near this kind of neighborhood center is actually worth, not just what the last comparable sale said, Jay Macklin and the team have spent years reading DC Ranch block by block. Request a Private Market Valuation when you're ready for a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground here, not a generic estimate.
