The DC Ranch Neighbor Who Quietly Owns Three of Market Street's Best Tables

Most of the leases on Market Street belong to companies you would have to look up to recognize. Three of the best tables on that strip belong to a man who eats dinner two minutes from where he lives, because he actually lives in DC Ranch.

If you have been in this neighborhood more than a season, you already know the fixed points. Fleming's is where you go when there is something to celebrate. Grimaldi's is pizza night. The line outside Eggstasy on a Saturday morning is just part of the deal. None of that has changed, and none of it needed to. What has changed is the part of Market Street that used to feel like an afterthought, the storefronts that turned over every year or two, the corner that spent a stretch as Liberty Station Tavern and then sat waiting for someone to figure out what came next.

That someone turned out to be Tom Kaufman, the founder of Kaufman Hospitality and a DC Ranch resident. As of late 2025, he operates three of Market Street's restaurants: The Living Room Wine Bar, Elvira's DC Ranch, and the newly opened Tomu-San Sushi. When he told scottsdale.com why he built his newest concept here instead of Old Town or anywhere else in the Valley, he didn't talk about foot traffic studies or lease terms.

"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 is a different kind of commitment than the one restaurant, one operator arrangement most shopping centers run on. When a restaurateur holds a single lease on a strip, he is a tenant with an opening date and a P&L to manage. When he holds three, on the same three-block stretch, he has a stake in how the whole corner feels on a random Tuesday, not just how his own dining room performs on a Friday.

Three Addresses, One Name on the Paperwork

Here is what that concentration actually looks like on the ground:

• The Living Room Wine Bar anchors the strip with a patio that wraps around toward Market Street, a fire pit for cooler evenings, and a self-pour wine wall carrying roughly 30 selections out of a list that runs past 200 bottles.
• Elvira's DC Ranch sits next door, part of the same footprint Kaufman built his reputation on before expanding.
• Tomu-San Sushi is the newest addition, opened in the closing months of 2025 in the former Liberty Station Tavern space, directly across the street from The Living Room and next door to Elvira's.

Three storefronts within easy walking distance of each other, under one operator, is not how most neighborhood retail centers work. Market Street itself is owned by Whitestone REIT, which controls roughly 37 acres and 15 buildings across the center. Kaufman doesn't own the real estate. He owns the experience inside three of its most visible tenant spaces, and that gives him more reason than most operators to make sure the block reads as a destination rather than a collection of separate leases.

Who's Cooking at the New Spot

Tomu-San's kitchen is led by Christopher George, who spent 20 years at Roy's before taking this role. That background shows up on the menu in dishes built around technique rather than novelty: nigiri and sashimi served straight, a hamachi kama (grilled yellowtail collar) that reportedly sells out on busy nights, and a signature roll called the TFK, built from Miyazaki wagyu striploin, lobster, and panko-crusted asparagus. Kaufman created that roll himself, which tells you something about how hands-on his involvement with the food has been, not just the real estate.

The room leans into ritual as much as ingredients. Guests are greeted with oshibori, the warm hand towel that opens a traditional Japanese meal, and the patio is built with glass-topped natural wood tables positioned so diners are slightly set back from the sidewalk but still visible to it. For anyone who wants a longer evening, there's an omakase counter where the chef sets the pace of the meal course by course.

None of this required DC Ranch residents to drive to Old Town or further into North Scottsdale for a sit-down sushi experience with any weight behind it. It is now sitting inside the same 37-acre center where you already park for Safeway.

The Morning Half of the Story

While the evening rotation was getting rebuilt, a smaller but related shift happened two doors down. Light Heart Coffee opened its second Scottsdale location on Market Street in May 2025, at 20875 N. Pima Road. Its original shop on Shea Boulevard sells drinks and pastries. This one has a full kitchen, which means it functions less like a coffee stop and more like a real breakfast option, something the strip's roster of steakhouses, pizzerias, and sushi counters wasn't built to cover.

Put those two threads together and the pattern is clearer than either fact on its own suggests. One resident-operator methodically filling in the evening lineup, and a second business filling the morning gap that was left standing. Neither happened by accident of timing. Both happened because someone noticed what Market Street was missing and built for it.

What This Adds Up To

The easy version of this story is "new sushi restaurant opens in DC Ranch," and if that's all you needed to know, you already have it. The more useful version is that Market Street's improvement over the past year hasn't been random tenant turnover working itself out. It has been concentrated in the hands of someone who has a personal stake in whether the block feels alive on a weeknight, because he is one of the people who would notice if it didn't.

That kind of local investment tends to show up in small, cumulative ways rather than one big announcement. It's the same logic behind why the Sunday Farmers Market North Scottsdale sets up at the DC Ranch Village Health Club on Thompson Peak Parkway rather than trying to compete with the bigger Saturday market near Jomax Road, and why the Gateway Trailhead, the busiest entry point into the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, sits close enough to walk to from parts of the neighborhood. DC Ranch has never needed a reason to leave. What changed this year is that the reasons to stay just got a little more specific.

If you're weighing where a home in this neighborhood actually fits your week, from morning coffee at Light Heart to a sushi counter you can walk to on a Tuesday, Annie Cole has spent 26 years watching Market Street evolve up close and can walk you through what daily life here really looks like, block by block.