Van Nuys Quietly Became A Two-Farmers-Market Neighborhood This Year

Ask a longtime Van Nuys resident where they get their Sunday produce and most will say "the Encino market." They mean the one at 17400 Victory Boulevard, the sprawling Sunday morning fixture with the fish stall and the two bakeries and the crepe guy who's been there for years. Except that address isn't Encino. It's Van Nuys, tucked against the Sepulveda Basin on the Van Nuys side of Victory Boulevard. The market has been wearing the wrong name for decades, and until this spring, it was also the only game in town on a Sunday morning.

That changed in April.

The Market Wearing the Wrong Name

The ONEgeneration Encino Farmers Market has run out of the same Victory Boulevard lot for years, open every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. with free parking and no offseason. Over 30 California farms rotate through depending on the season, alongside a food court that covers crepes, gourmet tamales, coffee, and a fishmonger, plus vendors selling handmade soap and cut flowers. Live entertainment from local cultural groups is a regular Sunday feature, and on select weeks there's a bounce house for kids.

The nonprofit angle is easy to miss if you're just there for the peaches. ONEgeneration runs senior services across the San Fernando Valley, including homebound meals and transportation for frail seniors, and a share of every vendor's sales goes back into those programs. So the market that everyone calls "the Encino one" has quietly funded Van Nuys senior services for years while sitting inside Van Nuys zip code 91406, a few blocks from White Oak and Balboa.

A Second Sunday Shows Up at Valley College

Then, starting Sunday, April 21, 2026, a new market opened a short drive east: stalls set up on the southwest corner of Burbank Boulevard and Fulton Avenue, on the edge of the LA Valley College campus, running Sunday mornings from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Van Nuys Neighborhood Council flagged the launch in its community calendar, which is usually where you'd hear about it first, since a brand-new weekly market doesn't show up on the big listing sites right away.

The Valley College market sits just over the boundary line in Valley Glen rather than inside Van Nuys proper, but for anyone whose Sunday already starts at the Victory Boulevard market, it's close enough to fold into the same morning without much extra driving.

Here's how the two compare side by side:

Two markets on the same morning, a few minutes apart, is not something Van Nuys residents have had to plan around before. Most Sundays for the last several years meant one option, or none, depending on how far you were willing to drive toward Studio City or Sherman Oaks for a second stop.

What A Two-Market Sunday Actually Looks Like

If you want to treat this as an actual routine instead of a one-off, the order matters more than it seems. The Victory Boulevard market gets busy early and stays busy until it closes at 1, while the newer Valley College market doesn't open until 9, which gives you a natural sequence:

1. Start at the Victory Boulevard market by 8 or 8:30, while the produce selection is still deep and the parking lot isn't full.
2. Grab breakfast from the food court instead of planning a sit-down meal. The prepared food stalls are built for exactly this.
3. Head toward Burbank and Fulton by mid-morning, once the newer market has had time to set up and settle into its rhythm.
4. Treat the second stop as a shorter, lighter pass rather than a full grocery run. It's still a young market and the vendor lineup will likely grow through the rest of 2026.

This isn't a walking loop. The two locations are a drive apart, not a stroll, so plan for that rather than expecting a pedestrian circuit.

The Rest Of The Day Runs Through Sherman Way

Once the market bags are in the car, Sherman Way is where a Van Nuys Sunday tends to keep going, and it's been quietly adding reasons to stick around for the afternoon and evening.

MacLeod Ale Brewing Co. is the reason this corridor has any craft beer reputation at all. Alastair and Jennifer Boase, a Sherman Oaks couple with a shared background in bagpiping of all things, opened the brewery on Calvert Street in 2014 in a converted auto warehouse, wedged between an auto body shop and what was then a vacant building. They built their reputation on traditional British cask ales served at cellar temperature instead of the ice-cold, carbonation-heavy styles most American breweries were chasing at the time. It worked. MacLeod's is open Sundays from noon to midnight, with house-made pizza and the same easygoing, dog-friendly taproom that made it a destination in an industrial pocket nobody expected one to survive in.

Closer to the Sherman Way and Van Nuys Boulevard intersection, the storefronts have been turning over. Chris N Eddy's, the smashed-slider spot that built a following out of a Hollywood pop-up, is moving into the former Menchie's space inside Sherman Square. A few doors down, Sun's Wok and Mongolian BBQ is taking over the old Toasted Bun location at 14445 Sherman Way, bringing build-your-own bowls and a hot buffet grill to a stretch that's mostly known for auto shops and quick-service chains. San Fernando Coffee Company is also opening a new location along Sherman Way, giving the corridor a coffee option that isn't a drive-through chain.

None of this required new construction. These are all existing storefronts changing hands, which is a pretty good sign that the corridor's foot traffic was already there and the supply is just starting to catch up to it.

If you're looking for dinner after a market morning, Anju House on the Korean side of the neighborhood has built a loyal following with a menu that goes well beyond the usual barbecue, plus a patio with heaters that makes it a year-round option. Karas USA covers Mexican and Peruvian in one small, dependable spot that regulars treat as a default rather than a special occasion.

Why This Matters If You Already Call Van Nuys Home

The version of Van Nuys that shows up in most write-ups treats it as a pass-through neighborhood, somewhere between the airport and the 405, worth mentioning for its industrial zoning and not much else. That version misses what's actually been true for years. The market that put Van Nuys on the Sunday morning map has been operating under someone else's name the whole time. The brewery that gave the neighborhood its first real destination address opened on an unglamorous side street precisely because nobody else wanted it. And the restaurants filling Sherman Way's storefronts this year are stepping into spaces that already had customers walking past them every day.

What changed in 2026 isn't the neighborhood's character. It's that the pieces are finally sitting close enough together, on the same morning, to notice. A second Sunday market means residents don't have to choose one stop or drive toward a more famous zip code to round out the day. The Sherman Way turnover means there's finally somewhere to eat afterward that isn't a chain. None of it required Van Nuys to become something else. It just required enough of these pieces to land in the same calendar year for people to look up and realize the neighborhood had been building its own Sunday all along.

If you're weighing what a home in this part of the Valley is actually worth, day to day life like this is the context that doesn't show up in a listing photo. Team Amalia-K has spent years working Sherman Oaks and the greater San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys included, and can walk you through what a specific block or street is really like to live on. Get your instant home valuation or reach out to start a conversation about what's next.