Walk the Camarillo Certified Farmers Market on a Saturday morning and you're standing at 2220 Ventura Boulevard, in the same lot that's hosted this market every week for years, buying tamales and organic eggs from vendors the regulars know by name. Drive down the same boulevard later that same day and you're at 375 W. Ventura Boulevard, ordering souvlaki at a restaurant that didn't exist six months ago. Same street. Same city. Two very different versions of "going out in Camarillo."
That gap is the story this fall. The civic rhythm of Old Town, the market, the car shows, the Halloween trick-or-treat, still belongs almost entirely to the two or three blocks that have always been Old Town. But the biggest restaurant openings of the year didn't happen there. They happened further down the boulevard, at the Camarillo Town Center and the Premium Outlets. If you've been telling out-of-town guests "we'll eat in Old Town" without checking which stretch of Ventura Boulevard you actually mean, this is worth sorting out before the season's remaining events land on your calendar.
The Calendar That Still Belongs to the Historic Blocks
Three things keep the original core of Old Town running on a predictable clock, and all three share nearly the same address.
The farmers market sets up every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon at 2220 Ventura Boulevard, rain or shine, and it's run entirely by volunteers. What most people driving past don't know is where the money goes: proceeds fund free grief and bereavement counseling through Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice, a program that reaches nearly 400 grieving family members a year, including students, at no cost to them. That's not a footnote on a flyer. It's the reason the market has stuck around long enough to become a habit rather than a novelty.
The vendor lineup changes more than a casual visitor would guess. Swedish Saturdays Candy Company recently joined the market, bringing imported Swedish candy built on the old "lördagsgodis" tradition of saving sweets for one day a week. Bonito's, a coffee vendor sourcing from Nicaragua, has been building a following at its table. And My Sage Gourmet, a longtime seller of garden-grown organic seasoning blends, has announced she's stepping back from her regular Saturday spot after years at the market. If you've bought her seasonings before, it's worth catching her table while she's still setting up.
A few blocks over, at Studio Channel Islands Art Center, 2222 Ventura Boulevard, the fourth Friday of the month means something different: the Camarillo Old Town Friday Night Car Cruise. The 2026 season runs March through October, and only two dates remain, September 25 and October 23, both from 4 to 7 p.m. Expect north of 200 classic and collector cars parked along the boulevard, plus vendors and face painting, and if you want dinner without a wait, most of the Old Town eateries offer pre-order and takeout specifically built around cruise nights.
Boo Fest Turns 13, and the Window Got Shorter
Old Town's biggest single-day event is Halloween itself, or rather the Saturday before it. The 13th Annual Boo Fest lands on October 31 this year, presented free by the Camarillo Merchant Association, with trick-or-treating up and down what the organizers call the "Booooulevard," a costume contest split into Family, Adult, Youth, and Pet categories, and a free carnival at Chapel City Church on the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Arneill Road.
Here's the detail a first-time attendee wouldn't catch: this year's event runs from noon to 3 p.m., a full hour shorter than the 12 to 4 p.m. window the 11th and 12th annual editions used. The event hasn't shrunk in scope. It's still free, still merchant-run, still spread across the same stretch of storefronts. But if you're planning around last year's schedule, you'll want to update it, because showing up at 3:30 this year means showing up after it's over.
The New Restaurants Didn't All Open Where You'd Expect
This is where the boulevard's identity actually splits. Some of this year's newer names did open inside the historic core. Azafran, a Mexican restaurant serving fresh, made-to-order dishes, opened in Old Town within the past year and has already built a following for its weekly specials. Twisted Oak Tavern occupies the 1916 Lewis & Son's Building right at the edge of Old Town, just off the 101's Lewis exit, serving scratch-kitchen tavern food and local craft beer in a space that's carried the neighborhood's history through several transformations. House of Bamboo has also added to the growing cluster of sit-down spots inside the original blocks.
But the two most talked-about openings of 2026 landed outside that footprint entirely. Stephen's Grill, a Greek and Mediterranean restaurant that built a following at its original Ventura location on East Main Street, opened its second location at 375 W. Ventura Boulevard in the Camarillo Town Center, in the space that used to be Souplantation. It held its grand opening on Sunday, May 3, serving brunch from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. before shifting into its full lunch and dinner menu of souvlaki, gyros, steaks, and Mediterranean pasta. And Latitude 34, a California fusion restaurant from a chef with two decades of experience across restaurants, resorts, and golf courses, opened inside the Camarillo Premium Outlets at 660 Ventura Boulevard, offering both indoor and outdoor dining plus a semi-private room for events.
Neither of those two addresses sits inside what longtime residents would point to on a map and call Old Town. They sit further down the same boulevard, inside a shopping center and an outlet mall, connected to the historic core by the street name alone and nothing else. A market vendor lot at 2220, a former Souplantation at 375, an outlet restaurant suite at 660. Three different addresses, three different feels, one street.
Here's how the stretch actually breaks down right now:
| Stretch of Ventura Boulevard | Anchor address | What opened or changed this year | What recurs here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old Town core | 2220 to 2222 Ventura Blvd | Azafran, Twisted Oak Tavern, House of Bamboo | Saturday Farmers Market, Fourth Friday Car Cruise, Boo Fest |
| Camarillo Town Center | 375 W. Ventura Blvd | Stephen's Grill, opened May 3 | — |
| Camarillo Premium Outlets | 660 Ventura Blvd (Latitude 34's suite) | Latitude 34 | Free trick-or-treating at participating stores, October 31 |
That last line is worth sitting with. The Premium Outlets run their own free Halloween trick-or-treat event on the same day, October 31, that Old Town holds Boo Fest. Two separate, unaffiliated Halloween events, both free, both on the same afternoon, at opposite ends of the same boulevard. If you have young kids and limited daylight, you're choosing between them, not doing both, because a costume contest at Chapel City Church and a round of store-to-store trick-or-treating at the outlets are not the same stop on the same walk.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
None of this is a complaint about growth. Camarillo's boulevard is doing what busy boulevards do, spreading its restaurant base beyond a two-block core that was probably always too small to hold everything a growing city wants to eat. Institution Ale Co, which runs sister taprooms in Camarillo and Santa Barbara, just held its Oktoberfest on September 12, and the rest of the city's bar and restaurant scene keeps its own weekly rhythm going too. Ric's Restaurant and Sports Lounge runs a regular trivia night, and Hiatus Craft House hosted a Fall Mixology Workshop earlier this month with a guest bartender from Firefly Bartending, built around the distillery's own spirits. That kind of steady, low-key programming is exactly what makes a neighborhood feel lived-in rather than just visited.
The practical takeaway is simpler than any of that: when someone says "let's grab dinner in Old Town" this fall, ask which Old Town they mean. The historic blocks still hold the market, the car cruise, and Boo Fest, the events that have defined the neighborhood's calendar for over a decade. But if the plan involves Stephen's Grill or Latitude 34, you're driving to a different stretch of the same street, and that's worth knowing before you're circling for parking in the wrong lot.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of Ventura Boulevard is actually worth, given how much the surrounding business mix has shifted this year, CallVenturaHome knows this market at the block level. Reach out and let's talk about what Old Town's growth means for your own address on it.
