Ettan

Ettan opened February 21, 2020, at 518 Bryant Street in downtown Palo Alto. Restaurateur Ayesha Thapar and chef Srijith Gopinathan built a large multilevel Cal-Indian room that pulls coastal Kerala accents into a shared-plates format for the Peninsula tech corridor. Gopinathan’s earlier two Michelin stars at Taj Campton Place are part of the pedigree story critics still cite. Ettan is the bigger, more social Peninsula chapter.

Michelin Guide listings highlight stuffed kulchas (including peas and ricotta with kale chutney), black-pepper cauliflower with Asian pear, and crisped branzino. The San Francisco Chronicle’s best-of coverage has pointed at the room’s scale, an Ettan salad, elevated butter chicken, and spicy wings as crowd-pleasers in a space Architectural Digest also noted.

Book when you are already on the Peninsula and want a reservation-night Indian table. Use Copra when the night is Fillmore instead. Confirm lunch and dinner hours; early coverage mentioned Monday closures that may have shifted.

Michelin and Chronicle chatter converge on kulchas, vegetable plates with California produce logic, seafood, and a room built for groups as much as couples. Diners praise polished service and a menu that reads more Californian-Indian than buffet North Indian. Friction: special-occasion pricing, a large room that can feel busy, and a card that assumes sharing.

OpenTable and local reviews track booking demand around Stanford and downtown Palo Alto calendars. Vegetarians do well on kulchas and vegetable shares; meat and seafood still anchor many critic write-ups.

KHAAR a few miles south in Sunnyvale is a Northeast regional education project. Ettan is polished Cal-Indian hospitality. Different jobs on the same Peninsula map.