Why Three of Market Street's Best Restaurants Share the Same Owner

"I reside within the DC Ranch community, and I feel like I really understand the flavor profiles of the customer and know how to turn them into regulars."

That's Tom Kaufman, talking about why he keeps opening restaurants at Market Street instead of anywhere else in the Valley. Most people who eat at Elvira's on a Friday night or grab a glass of wine at The Living Room don't think about who owns the building or the concept. They think about the guacamole, the patio, whether the table by the fountain is open. But if you've eaten at more than one of Market Street's anchor restaurants over the past decade, there's a decent chance you've been a regular at Kaufman's places without ever clocking the connection.

He opened Elvira's DC Ranch first, bringing a modern take on Mexican food to the corner of Pima and Thompson Peak. Five years later came The Living Room Wine Bar, built as a deliberate departure from the typical wine-bar formula. Then, in November 2025, he opened a third concept directly across the street from The Living Room: Tomu-San Sushi, tucked into the space that used to house Liberty Station Tavern. Three restaurants, one owner, all within a few hundred feet of each other on the same stretch of sidewalk.

The Roster You Already Know

Market Street's dining lineup reads like a list most DC Ranch residents could recite without checking a menu board. Alongside Kaufman's three spots, the strip currently includes Fleming's Prime Steakhouse, Grimaldi's Pizzeria, Vic & Ola's Italian, All American Modern Sports Grill, Eggstasy, Pescada, Jalapeno Inferno, and The Herb Box, anchored by a Safeway grocery store that's been there since Whitestone REIT first acquired the property in 2013.

What's easy to miss is how much of that lineup's personality traces back to one person's decisions rather than a corporate leasing algorithm assigning tenants by category. A shopping center built purely on lease economics ends up with whatever chain happens to want the square footage that quarter. Market Street's food scene, by contrast, has three of its most talked-about tables answering to a guy who lives close enough to walk to all of them.

The Newest Address on the Kaufman Map

Tomu-San Sushi occupies 2,798 square feet at 20825 N Pima Road, and it's the most ambitious of Kaufman's three concepts by a wide margin. He brought in Christopher George, a chef with two decades at Roy's, to run the kitchen. The signature TFK roll, built around Wagyu beef striploin, lobster, and panko-crusted asparagus, was actually created by Kaufman himself rather than the chef, which tells you something about how hands-on this project is for him compared to a typical restaurateur who signs the lease and steps back.

The room leans into bamboo accents and warm wood, with a sushi bar that lets you watch the prep work and a patio seating area facing the street. Lunch service runs daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., built for the midday crowd working out of the office space above and around Market Street, and there's a separate happy hour window built around fire-kissed rolls and sake flights.

Reaction since opening has been genuinely mixed, which is worth saying plainly instead of pretending every new restaurant on Market Street lands perfectly. Some diners describe it as their new favorite sushi spot in the area and specifically call out the hamachi collar and the wagyu yakitori. Others have flagged inconsistent food quality and higher prices than they expected for a neighborhood spot, including complaints about drink pricing. That split isn't unusual for a restaurant less than a year old still working out its rhythm, but it's the honest picture rather than the press-release version.

What Changes When the Landlord Changes

Here's the part that hasn't made it into most of the coverage of Tomu-San's opening: Market Street's ownership just changed hands. Whitestone REIT, the company that has owned and shaped Market Street since 2013, was acquired by Ares Management, with the deal announced in April 2026 and closing that July.

For over a decade, Whitestone's approach to Market Street was built around what the company called "e-commerce resistant" tenants, meaning restaurants, services, and local businesses that people show up for in person rather than order online. Kaufman himself described his relationship with Whitestone as an "amazing decade-long partnership," and that continuity is exactly why he's been comfortable expanding his footprint on the same block three times over.

Ares now controls that decision-making. Nothing in the public record suggests an immediate shift in how Market Street operates, but a change in ownership at this scale is the kind of thing that eventually shows up in which businesses get renewed leases, which vacancies get filled and with what, and how much appetite there is for another Kaufman-style long-term bet on a single strip. Residents who've watched Market Street's food scene sharpen over the past two years, largely because one operator kept doubling down on the same few hundred feet of real estate, are watching a new ownership group inherit that momentum at the exact moment it's paying off.

The Pattern Worth Watching

None of this means Market Street is about to change overnight. Safeway is still the anchor. Fleming's, Grimaldi's, and the rest of the established roster aren't going anywhere. But the story of why Market Street's dining scene feels more cohesive than a typical shopping center isn't really about the restaurants themselves. It's about one person who lives in the neighborhood, keeps betting on the same block, and has spent a decade building that bet on a landlord relationship that just got handed to someone new.

If you eat regularly at Elvira's, The Living Room, or Tomu-San, you're already part of the reason that bet has paid off. Whether the next chapter of Market Street looks the same under Ares as it did under Whitestone is the open question worth keeping an eye on, especially if you've got a favorite table you'd hate to lose.

If you're curious how these kinds of local shifts tend to ripple into home values and neighborhood demand in DC Ranch, Brent Votroubek has spent years watching North Scottsdale's communities up close. Let's Connect.