Something happens between the last Live on the Avenue weekend and the first rain: San Anselmo Avenue changes character. The street reopens to cars, the summer crowds thin, and the places you have been meaning to try are suddenly quiet enough to walk into. This year that window is worth paying attention to, because the roster of new openings behind those front doors is unusually serious for a town of this size.
The through-line is not that San Anselmo has more restaurants. It is that the people opening them chose here first, not second. A satellite location is a brand extension. A primary address is a commitment, and the résumés arriving downtown this year read like commitments.
The Kientz Hall building, reintroduced
The most talked-about opening is at 625 San Anselmo Avenue, in the former Kientz Hall space. Tu Tap has moved into that address, and the team behind it is worth paying attention to: a refined Vietnamese restaurant centered on gathering, connection, and beautifully crafted food, with a rooftop bar and Mount Tam views. The kitchen, led by a team behind Slanted Door and Real Restaurants, blends traditional Vietnamese flavors with French influence and Northern California ingredients through wok cooking and claypot preparations.
The Slanted Door pedigree matters here in a way that is easy to underestimate. The people who built one of the most influential Vietnamese restaurants in the country did not open a second Slanted Door in Marin. They opened something new, and they opened it on the Avenue rather than in a shopping-center pad. Locals watching the buildout described the July opening as the leading edge of a shiny new era for downtown.
If you live within walking distance, the rooftop is the reason to go on a clear evening. If you live farther out in Sleepy Hollow or up toward Fairfax, treat it as the anchor of a downtown night that includes a walk before and a coffee after.
Near Red Hill: a menu that does not match the building
A few minutes north, in the freestanding building near Red Hill Shopping Center that used to house Auryn Thai, something quieter has been happening. Four longtime friends debuted Pretti Platters on May 19, 2026, and enlisted a chef friend with fine-dining credentials to develop the menu.
The menu is where this one gets interesting. The lunch-leaning options include a little gems and watermelon radish salad with grilled chicken thigh or Bodega Bay smoked salmon, toasts with whipped truffle ricotta and roasted wild mushrooms, and a Parisian-style croque monsieur with Gruyère and Black Forest ham. The dinner-weight side pushes further, with Monterey Bay charbroiled branzino in Meyer lemon beurre blanc, steak frites au poivre, a 16-ounce bone-in heritage pork chop with celery root purée, and Kaluga Reserve caviar served with warm housemade roti.
Caviar next to Red Hill is not what the building's history predicted. The point is not the caviar. The point is that the operators are treating the Red Hill end of town as a place worth cooking for at that level, which is a small but real vote of confidence in the residential blocks around it.
The last weekends of the street festival
Downtown's summer programming has a hard stop this year, and if you have been meaning to catch a night, the runway is short.
| Date | What is on |
|---|---|
| Aug 29 | Live on the Avenue Star Wars Night in Creek Park with the 501st Golden Gate Garrison, A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back on the big screen, plus Swami 3 at Town Hall Plaza |
| Sep 4 | Momotombo plus Jon Chi and the Pacific Syndicate |
| Sep 5 | Comedy Night in Creek Park plus Jinx Jones and the King Tones |
| Sep 11 | Moonalice plus Talley Up |
| Sep 12 | Final night with El Cajon in Creek Park and F.A.T. Betty at Town Hall Plaza |
The full 2026 series runs Friday and Saturday evenings from June 20 through September 12, with music and programming from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. and an Avenue street closure from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. After that Saturday, the street goes back to traffic until next summer. For residents who default to skipping the busier July nights, the last three weekends tend to be the sweet spot: still the full production, thinner crowds, and dinner reservations you can actually get.
A walking tour that only runs three more times this year
The lower-profile programming worth blocking off is the Historical Commission's downtown walking tour, which is free and depart from Creek Park. The docent-led tour explores the historic Hub, the railroad's impact on town, and the evolving businesses and architecture of San Anselmo Avenue. The remaining 2026 dates are August 8, September 12, and October 10.
If you have lived here for years and always meant to learn why the streets bend the way they do at the Hub, this is the pretext. The October 10 tour lands in what is usually the first crisp weekend of the season, which is not a bad way to reset your relationship with a downtown you already think you know.
A Michelin footnote most locals missed
Insalata's has been on Sir Francis Drake long enough that it registers as furniture rather than news. That is worth revising this year. Insalata's was recognized as a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide USA. Across California, seven newly added affordable restaurants pushed the number of Bib Gourmand tables to 117.
Bib Gourmand is Michelin's designation for good quality at good value, and the interesting reading is not the star chase. It is that a Marin restaurant that has been here for decades is being reintroduced to a national audience at the same moment a new wave of operators is choosing the town. Those two things reinforce each other. The dinner you can walk to tonight is being credentialed by the same guide that credentialed the new arrivals.
Chef Heidi Krahling's kitchen leans on Middle Eastern flavors, with specialties including a potato-leek soup made green with watercress purée and grilled lamb skewers with cumin-yogurt on flatbread. If you have not been in a while, the takeout counter in the back is still one of the more underrated weekday dinners in central Marin.
Under construction, worth watching
Two smaller storylines are unfolding quietly on the Avenue.
Hilda's Coffee Shop is under new ownership and a complete remodel, with demolition completed and new design plans queued for a January build-out by a team of local pros. Hilda's has been a fixture for long enough that the remodel is genuinely a local event, and the January timing means the reopening will bracket the quiet post-holiday stretch when locals need somewhere new to sit.
The second is Creek Park Plaza, which is scheduled to return in 2026 after an extended project timeline. The plaza is what Live on the Avenue depends on for the Town Hall side of the programming, so its completion is more than cosmetic for how downtown works the rest of the year.
The pattern is not that San Anselmo suddenly has more places to eat. It is that the operators showing up have chosen the town as a primary address, and the town has chosen to program its own street hard enough to hold their attention.
A shortlist for the next six weeks
If you want the compressed version:
- Weeknight dinner you have not tried: Tu Tap at 625 San Anselmo Avenue, then a walk down to Creek Park.
- Weekend brunch that goes long: Pretti Platters near Red Hill, ideally on a day you have nowhere to be by 2 p.m.
- A Saturday you should not skip: September 12, the closing night of Live on the Avenue, followed by the final walking tour on October 10.
- A quieter reintroduction: Insalata's, reread through the lens of the 2026 Michelin Guide.
None of this requires leaving town, and most of it requires nothing more than knowing when to show up.
If a downtown you can walk to is a bigger part of why you live in San Anselmo than you expected, that is worth talking about the next time you think about your home. Smith & Co. has been paying attention to how the streets around the Avenue are changing, and how those changes show up in what buyers ask about when they tour homes here. When you are ready to look at what that means for your own house, schedule a free consultation.
