Walk San Anselmo Avenue between Bank Street and Tunstead this fall and the shopfronts are telling a story you can read block by block. A rooftop is being framed above 625. Butcher paper has come down at a corner storefront where a Michelin-starred baker is measuring for ovens. A sixty-year-old coffee shop that closed last year has a new set of keys. One town over on Magnolia, a coffee cart is holding the space warm for a chef most recently associated with a Moroccan restaurant in San Francisco.
None of these projects are being run by outsiders looking for a Marin address to plant a flag. Look at the names on the leases and the pattern is unmistakable: the people opening restaurants in the Ross Valley this fall either grew up here, live here now, or are returning to a corner they helped build the first time around.
The pattern hiding in plain sight
The easy way to write about a cluster of openings is as a list. Four new places, here is what each one serves, go try them. That framing misses what is actually happening on this stretch of Central Marin. Downtown San Anselmo has not seen this many high-pedigree operators arrive in a single season in years, and the through-line is not the cuisine, the price point, or the design vocabulary. It is the biography of the operator. Every one of these projects is a homecoming of some kind, and that changes what the food scene here is likely to feel like a year from now.
625 San Anselmo Ave: Tụ Tập takes over Kientz Hall
The most visible project on the Avenue is Tụ Tập, a new Vietnamese restaurant due to open this summer in San Anselmo in the former location of Kientz Hall, bringing a buzzy modern Vietnamese restaurant to Marin County from a group of Bay Area restaurant industry veterans that includes a former longtime Slanted Door chef. The address is 625 San Anselmo Ave, and the plan is significantly more ambitious than what that corner has held before.
Executive chef and partner Justine Kelly, who worked at the Slanted Door for 18 years and also grew up in San Anselmo, will lead the kitchen at Tụ Tập, which is taking over a space with a large rooftop patio boasting views of Mount Tamalpais at 625 San Anselmo Ave. Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group, which includes Bix in San Francisco and Buckeye Roadhouse and Picco in Marin, is also a partner. Owner Adam Block has owned and helped broker deals for dozens of prominent restaurants in the Bay Area and abroad, including Thomas Keller's Per Se, and was a former partner and CFO at Farmshop in Larkspur and Santa Monica. Block lives in San Anselmo, and called the project "kind of a homecoming."
What is coming out of the kitchen matters, too. Kelly has described the menu as "spins on classic Vietnamese" dishes, with a mesquite grill as well as a raw bar program and weekend dim sum-inspired brunch with both Chinese and Vietnamese dishes, including dumplings and pho. There is also a personal dimension worth understanding before you sit down. Kelly has said her main inspiration is famed Slanted Door chef-owner Charles Phan, whom she knew for 30 years and who died last year, calling the project "an homage to him and his legacy moving forward."
A few things to keep in mind as it opens:
- Address: 625 San Anselmo Ave, in the former Kientz Hall space
- Rooftop bar: full cocktail program with Mount Tam views
- Weekend brunch: dim sum format blending Chinese and Vietnamese
- Grab-and-go: dumplings and meal kits, tying into Kelly's experience as co-founder and executive chef at Sun Basket
Maison Nico picks the Avenue for its first expansion outside San Francisco
A few doors down, another operator with serious credentials is finishing a build-out. Maison Nico, ranked among the Bay Area's best bakeries and French restaurants, will launch its first expansion outside of the city this year, opening its second location in downtown San Anselmo. The chef, Michelin-starred chef and owner Nicolas Delaroque, is not a stranger to Marin. Earlier in his career he worked at Le Garage in Sausalito. He also brought home an Elegance Prize at the 2025 Pâté en Croûte World Championship in Lyon.
The San Anselmo shop is not a copy of the Jackson Square original. A location in downtown San Anselmo is slated to open in October, and will offer laminated pastries along with new items such as sourdough loaves, baguettes and ice cream. Co-owner Andrea Delaroque has explained that the larger space will allow Maison Nico to fulfill more orders, that there are plans to start making ice cream, which Nico had been thinking about for a decade, and that new baked goods will include baguettes and naturally leavened loaves for sandwiches. She has framed the concept for the new space as "things like jambon beurre and other things you can just pick up, like walking down the street in Paris."
For a downtown that already has strong coffee and pastry options, adding a laminated-croissant program from a Michelin-starred kitchen with a European-style grab-and-go counter is a real shift in what a weekday morning on the Avenue can look like.
Hilda's, again, from a family that already runs downtown
The most emotionally significant of the fall projects is not new at all. Hilda's Coffee Shop is coming back. After more than sixty years as a San Anselmo staple, Hilda's closed in late 2025 and is set to reopen in 2026 under new ownership from the team behind Creekside Pizza. The plan keeps the heart intact while sharpening the menu around breakfast, brunch, and burgers.
This is the through-line getting clearest. The Creekside team has run pizza in downtown San Anselmo for years. Taking on Hilda's is not a chain acquisition or a private-equity relaunch. It is a local operator agreeing to be the caretaker of an institution that a lot of longtime residents grew up eating at. The menu focus, breakfast and brunch and burgers, is deliberately unfussy. Compare that against the ambition of Tụ Tập's rooftop or Maison Nico's Paris-Brest and you get a downtown that is broadening on both ends at once.
One street over, in Larkspur, Feerma is holding its own space warm
The pattern extends into Larkspur as well. On Magnolia Avenue, Feerma, a modern North African-Mediterranean eatery founded by Borhen Hammami, former owner of the Michelin-recommended Moroccan restaurant Berber in San Francisco, is replacing Don Antonio's on Magnolia Avenue. Construction is still underway. While under construction, the Ferma Love coffee cart is offering unique add-ons such as pistachio milk and black sesame, with a planned opening for the full restaurant in summer 2026.
The coffee cart detail is worth pausing on. Instead of a shuttered storefront for six months, Hammami has put a functioning micro-business on the sidewalk to keep the corner active and build a customer base before the full concept opens. It is a small choice that says something about how these operators are thinking about the community they are joining.
What a Saturday on the Avenue might look like this fall
The practical question, if you already live here, is what changes about your weekend. A plausible fall Saturday once these openings are all running:
- Start at Maison Nico for a croissant and an espresso. Grab a jambon beurre for later.
- Farmers' market at the Sunday morning slot if you are shifting a day, otherwise the Marin Country Mart Farmers Market in Larkspur for produce.
- A late-morning walk from the Avenue down to Creek Park, then back for a bench lunch with the sandwich you picked up earlier.
- Coffee reset at Hilda's, with the counter seats intact and a burger already on the whiteboard for dinner arguments later.
- Sunset drink on the Tụ Tập rooftop, Mount Tam turning pink, followed by mesquite-grilled dinner downstairs.
- Detour to the Feerma Love cart during the week if you want black sesame in your latte.
None of this requires a car after the first mile. That is the point.
Why the operators keep choosing this stretch
The economics of opening a rooftop restaurant, a Michelin-starred bakery, and a legacy diner revival on the same six blocks are not obvious on paper. Downtown San Anselmo does not have the foot traffic of Fillmore Street or the tourism of Sausalito's waterfront. What it has is operators who already know the community and are choosing to bet their names on it.
Kelly grew up in San Anselmo. Block lives in San Anselmo. Delaroque has an early-career connection to Marin. The Creekside team is already downtown. Hammami is opening in a Larkspur space with a coffee cart running out front while he builds. The reason four significant projects are landing on this stretch in the same season is that the operators are not commuting in. They are opening restaurants in their own neighborhood, and that changes the quality of attention each project is likely to get once the ribbons are cut.
For residents, the takeaway is straightforward. The Avenue you knew last year is going to feel meaningfully different by the holidays. A rooftop that did not exist. A French bakery counter that did not exist. A sixty-year-old room brought back by people who never left. If you have been treating downtown as a place to run errands rather than a place to spend an evening, fall 2026 is the season to change that habit.
If you own a home in Central Marin and want to talk about how a shift like this reshapes the daily rhythm of the neighborhood, or if you are thinking about a move within the Ross Valley, Marks Realty Group is happy to sit down over coffee. Book an appointment when you are ready.
