San Anselmo Avenue Promised Three New Restaurants This Summer. So Far, One Has Delivered.

Walk San Anselmo Avenue on a Friday evening in mid-August and you'll pass three storefronts that made regional food news earlier this year. One has a line out the door. One is quietly serving a handful of tables without a working reservation system. One still has paper in the windows. A few steps away, Creek Park is exactly where the calendar said it would be, filling with lawn chairs for a free concert that has not missed a Friday since June 20.

That gap between what got announced and what's actually open is the real story on the avenue right now. It is not a complaint about slow contractors. It is a pattern, and once you see it, it explains a lot about how this particular downtown works.

What's Actually Serving Food Right Now

Only one of this year's three headline restaurant openings has, in fact, opened.

Pretti Platters debuted on May 19 in the one-story freestanding building near Red Hill Shopping Center that formerly housed Auryn Thai Cuisine. The Press Democrat covered the opening: four longtime friends who bonded over their Thai heritage, joined by a chef friend with fine-dining credentials, running a menu that moves from a little gems and watermelon radish salad through a croque monsieur and a 16-ounce bone-in heritage pork chop, with caviar and housemade roti available if you want it. Co-owner Fah Intapura picks up produce from a friend's farm on her drive in. It is open, serving both brunch and dinner crowds, and it did what it said it would do on roughly the timeline it said it would do it.

Tu Tap, on the main run of the avenue, is a different story. The restaurant moved into the former Kientz Hall space at 625 San Anselmo Avenue with real pedigree behind it: chef Justine Kelly spent 18 years at The Slanted Door before that restaurant's Ferry Building location closed, and her partner on this project is Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group. The concept is elevated Vietnamese and Asian fusion with a rooftop bar aimed at Mount Tamalpais. Tu Tap was originally aiming for a March opening. As of early August it was still in soft-open mode, serving limited tables on a first-come, first-served basis while staff worked in new kitchen equipment, with a formal reservation system rumored to launch within days.

The Avenue's Report Card

Here's where the three headline openings actually stand as of mid-August:

Three restaurants, three very different results, all announced within months of each other.

Where the Timeline Really Slipped

Maison Nico is the clearest case of a promise outrunning a construction schedule. Chef Nicolas Delaroque, a Michelin-starred owner known for his Jackson Square bakery and pâté en croûte, confirmed the San Anselmo expansion in a 7x7 profile published in January, which described the opening as planned for late spring or early summer. Around the same time, his wife and co-owner Andrea Delaroque told Yahoo News, in a piece syndicated from the San Francisco Chronicle, that they hoped to open "this summer." Summer is nearly over and the storefront has not opened. Recent word among Bay Area food circles points to a September timeline instead.

Hilda's Coffee Shop is the more instructive case, because the slippage there is measured in months, not weeks. The diner closed in September 2025 after more than sixty years in business, done in by aging plumbing, electrical, and flooring, declining post-pandemic traffic, and new downtown parking meters that, by the new ownership's own account, crushed the shop's summer morning business. Pat Townsley, owner of Creekside Pizza & Taproom at 638 San Anselmo Avenue, purchased the business and set out to rebuild it. Back in March, the student paper at Archie Williams High School reported that Townsley expected the building ready by mid-May, with an opening timed about a week before Live on the Avenue began on June 20.

That didn't happen. By this month, Creekside's own updates describe demolition as complete but the next phase, full build-out, targeted for January. A project once expected to reopen before summer started is now planned for the following winter.

Townsley has been candid about why the space needs so much work, and about what he's trying to protect. As he told the student paper:

"There are very few breakfast places for this small town community, and I think that's what I want to preserve."

The plan keeps Hilda's original chef, keeps the German-style pancakes that generations of San Anselmo kids grew up on, and adds a hot chicken sandwich and extended evening hours, but none of that helps anyone hoping for a Saturday morning table before next year.

Why the Old Buildings Take This Long

The common thread across Tu Tap and Hilda's is not incompetence. It's the buildings themselves. Getting Hilda's back open required permits from the Health Department, the Town of San Anselmo, and the Central Marin Sanitary District, plus new electrical, plumbing, and framing work to bring a building that had been operating under decades of grandfathered conditions up to current Environmental Health Services and ADA standards. That is a very different lift than opening in a new-construction space with modern systems already in place.

This is the same character-heavy commercial stock that makes San Anselmo Avenue worth walking down in the first place. The trade-off is that when a legacy space changes hands, the calendar the new owner announces at the ribbon-cutting party is rarely the calendar the building delivers.

The One Thing That Hasn't Slipped At All

While three restaurants have run into varying degrees of construction reality, the town-run concert series has hit every date on schedule since June 20. Live on the Avenue runs free, every Friday and Saturday, with dates already locked in through mid-September, split across two stages: Creek Park Amphitheater, a redwood grove setting with lawn seating, and Town Hall Plaza, right in the pedestrian flow of downtown.

The lineup through Labor Day and into September includes:

• August 29: Movie Night at Creek Park, Swami 3 at Town Hall Plaza
• September 4: Momotombo SF at Creek Park, Jon Chi & the Pacific Syndicate at Town Hall Plaza
• September 5: Comedy in the Park at Creek Park, Jinx Jones & the King Tones at Town Hall Plaza
• September 12: El Cajon and Le Minivans at Creek Park, F.A.T. Betty at Town Hall Plaza

A Beatles tribute night at Creek Park earlier this summer reportedly drew more than 800 people, with proceeds benefiting the San Anselmo Arts Commission. That's the kind of turnout a private restaurant buildout can only hope to match once it actually opens its doors.

Creek Park itself is easy to take for granted, but it's worth knowing what it took to get here. The Town spent years reimagining the one-acre park in partnership with Marin County's flood mitigation project, work that was slowed by the pandemic but ultimately gave the county a reason to clear the old buildings in front of the park and open up the plaza space that now hosts these Friday nights.

What This Means If You're Walking the Avenue This Month

If you want a realistic plan for the next few weekends: Pretti Platters is your reliable dinner or brunch table right now. Tu Tap is worth a walk-in visit if you're flexible on seating, with the rooftop bar likely to feel more like its intended self once the reservation system is fully live. Maison Nico is still a wait-and-see. And if you're craving Hilda's, the town's temporary stand-ins, Ryan Scott's Boutique Food Trailer on weekends and M.H. Bread & Butter, are worth knowing about until that January build-out turns into an actual reopening.

Whatever else changes on this stretch of avenue between now and next spring, Friday and Saturday nights at Creek Park and Town Hall Plaza are the one plan you can make weeks in advance and trust.

If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of San Anselmo Avenue is actually worth, given how much the neighborhood is changing right now, John Hendricks can walk you through it. Schedule a local market consultation to talk specifics.