Walk down San Anselmo Avenue this month and the story the town's food scene has been telling itself since spring turns out to be backward. The restaurant treated as the neighborhood's biggest gamble, a rooftop bar with a Slanted Door pedigree taking over a building that had sat empty for months, opened exactly when it said it would. Meanwhile the two projects that felt like safer bets, a beloved bakery's local expansion and a sixty-year diner's remodel, have both slipped their own deadlines by months. If you've been planning a fall dinner or a Saturday coffee run around what you read back in the spring, some of that information is already out of date.
The rooftop that actually opened on July 29
Tụ Tập took over the former Kientz Hall space at 625 San Anselmo Ave, and by the time it opened its doors on July 29, most of downtown had already seen the inside. During the months of renovation, hundreds of people toured the space when San Anselmo Avenue closed for weekend open-air concerts, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of the opening. That kind of pre-opening foot traffic is unusual for a restaurant that hadn't served a single plate yet.
The pull is chef Justine Kelly, who grew up in San Anselmo and spent more than 17 years working under the late Charles Phan at the Slanted Door before co-founding the meal kit company Sun Basket. Her business partner is Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group, whose portfolio includes Bix in San Francisco and Buckeye Roadhouse in Marin. The menu is built around Vietnamese classics, clay-pot dishes and live-fire grilling using ingredients sourced from Northern California producers, served in a two-story space with a rooftop patio looking toward Mount Tamalpais. For its first three weeks, the restaurant limited itself to walk-in seating only before opening up OpenTable reservations, and it's been taking them ever since.
Of everything on this list, Tụ Tập is the one item where the date you might have read months ago and the date it actually happened are the same date.
Maison Nico's San Anselmo bakery now has an October target
Maison Nico is a different story. In January, co-owner Andrea Delaroque told the Chronicle she hoped the San Anselmo location, the French bakery's first expansion outside San Francisco, would open "this summer." Other coverage through the spring repeated that same mid-2026 window. Neither turned out to be right.
By late July, when the Chronicle reported on Maison Nico's newest San Francisco outpost inside the Transamerica Pyramid, the same article carried an update on San Anselmo: the location is now slated to open in October. That moves the timeline from summer into fall, which is a normal turn for a build-out of this size.
What's coming, once it does open, sounds worth the wait. Beyond the laminated pastries and pistachio Paris-Brest that made the original Jackson Square location one of the Bay Area's most-regarded bakeries, the San Anselmo shop is expected to add sourdough loaves, baguettes and house-made ice cream, items chef Nicolas Delaroque has reportedly wanted to make for a decade but never had the space for. If you've been checking for a "we're open" sign since summer, October is the number to hold onto now, not June or July.
Hilda's next chapter is still taking shape
Hilda's Coffee Shop closed in September 2025 after more than 60 years as a San Anselmo institution, and its reopening timeline has stretched further than Maison Nico's. Pat Townsley, who owns Creekside Pizza & Taproom, bought the business and initially hoped to go from demolition to doors-open in under six months. A student newspaper report from earlier this year had the timeline at a "ribbon cutting in May," with the goal of opening about a week before the town's Live on the Avenue concert series began on June 20.
Neither of those held. Creekside's own September "Heard On The Street" update says demolition is complete and the team is now planning a January build-out. The building had to be brought up to current code, and the team has said that work takes time.
The plan for what replaces Hilda's hasn't changed even if the date has. Townsley intends to keep the previous chef and the German-style pancakes that made the diner a local fixture, while extending hours into the evening with a new hot chicken sandwich and burger menu, according to Creekside's own reporting on the project. In the meantime, the company has been pointing regulars toward Ryan Scott's Boutique Food Trailer, which runs weekends alongside the community playground, and M.H. Bread & Butter for a breakfast fix while the old building sits gutted.
One opening nobody was watching closely landed first
Not every delayed timeline belongs to a big media rollout. Pretti Platters is the story that moved fastest with the least fanfare. Four longtime friends who bonded over shared Thai heritage decided to open a restaurant together, and on May 19 they did exactly that, taking over the freestanding building near the Red Hill Shopping Center that had previously housed Auryn Thai Cuisine.
The menu leans into brunch-forward, dinner-capable territory: little gem and watermelon radish salads, toast topped with whipped truffle ricotta and roasted wild mushrooms, a Parisian-style croque monsieur, and a heritage pork chop with celery root puree, alongside more ambitious plates like charbroiled branzino and steak frites au poivre. Co-owner Fah Intapura told the Marin Independent Journal that the group enlisted a chef friend with fine-dining credentials to shape the menu. There was no months-long teaser campaign here, no walk-throughs during concert nights. It simply opened when the friends said it would.
The one calendar that isn't sliding
While restaurant timelines have bent in both directions this year, the town's own event calendar hasn't moved at all. Live on the Avenue, San Anselmo's free outdoor concert series in Creek Park and Town Hall Plaza, wrapped its 2026 run on September 12 after a summer of Friday and Saturday night shows. The town's Business Community Breakfast Meet-Up, an informal, open gathering for anyone connected to downtown commerce, met again on September 24.
October brings a run of dated, confirmed events straight from the town and Creekside's own community calendar:
- October 10: the final 2026 docent-led historical walking tour of "the Hub," covering the railroad's impact on San Anselmo and the evolving architecture along the way
- October 17: the annual Downtown and Creek Volunteer Clean-Up Day, with crews clearing leaves and debris from San Anselmo Avenue and the storm drains feeding San Anselmo Creek ahead of the rainy season
- October 23: the Downtown Halloween Goblins' BooTacular
Unlike the restaurant openings this year, none of these dates have slipped. They're run by the town and by Creekside directly, and both have kept to what they published.
What this actually means for a weekend plan
If you're deciding where to eat or what to do downtown this fall, the practical read is straightforward. Tụ Tập and Pretti Platters are open right now, no asterisks. Maison Nico is a real October target, not a maybe. Hilda's replacement is a January project, and the food trailer and M.H. Bread & Butter are the honest stand-ins until then. And the town's own fall calendar, from the October 10 walking tour through the October 23 BooTacular, is the one set of dates on this list you can put directly into your phone without checking back for an update.
For everything else happening around San Anselmo this season, from what's new on the Avenue to the town's own events calendar, Erin's Home Connections keeps a close eye on the neighborhood because it's where we work too.
