When San Anselmo Avenue closes for its weekend open-air concerts, most storefronts along the strip go quiet for the evening. This spring, one didn't. A construction site at 625 San Anselmo Avenue, the old Kientz Hall building, drew hundreds of people through its doors during those closures, just to see what was going in before it opened. That kind of turnout for an unfinished restaurant is unusual for a town this size, and it turned out to be a preview of something bigger than one opening.
Two restaurants from established San Francisco chefs are landing in downtown San Anselmo this year, and the detail worth paying attention to isn't that they're arriving. It's that neither one is a scaled-down version of the original. One is a full personal reinvention by a chef who grew up two blocks away. The other is, by its own chef's account, the more capable version of a concept that outgrew its San Francisco home. That is a different story than "another restaurant opened downtown," and it says something specific about what this stretch of Marin now offers that the city couldn't.
The one that's already open
Tụ Tập opened its doors on July 29 at 625 San Anselmo Avenue, the space that pulled in all those curious tour groups during the spring construction phase. The chef behind it, Justine Kelly, grew up in San Anselmo and spent more than 17 years working under Charles Phan at the Slanted Door before stepping away to co-found the meal kit company Sun Basket. This is her first restaurant as chef-partner, and by her own account she had turned down the idea of opening a restaurant for years until the offer put her hometown on the table.
The menu draws on her years of Vietnamese cooking experience: clay-pot dishes, live-fire grilling, and a raw bar built around ingredients sourced from Northern California producers. Her partners include Adam Block, who lives in San Anselmo, and Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group, whose portfolio includes Bix in San Francisco and the Buckeye Roadhouse in Mill Valley. The space itself is two stories, with a year-round rooftop lounge that looks out toward Mt. Tamalpais and Mt. Baldy, a view that used to require driving somewhere else to get.
For its first three weeks, Tụ Tập took walk-ins only. It now accepts reservations through OpenTable, a small but telling sign that the opening rush has settled into something more like a regular Tuesday-night rhythm.
The one arriving in October
Maison Nico, the French pastry shop that built a following at San Francisco's Jackson Square, is set to open its second location in downtown San Anselmo this October. Chef Nicolas Delaroque, who trained under David Kinch at Manresa before opening his own restaurant and later reshaping it into Maison Nico in 2020, is behind both locations.
Here is the detail that changes how to think about this opening. The San Anselmo shop will offer items the original San Francisco location cannot: sourdough loaves, baguettes, and housemade ice cream, additions that require baking and freezer space the compact Jackson Square shop was never built to hold. One local report places the new location somewhere along the Tunstead Avenue corridor, in the space that used to hold Jack's Pharmacy, though the exact address has not been confirmed by Delaroque himself. What is confirmed, from Delaroque's own co-owner, is that they'd outgrown the San Francisco space for years and needed room to add baking, viennoiserie, and pâté-making under one roof. San Anselmo is where they found it.
In other words, this isn't a smaller copy of the San Francisco original arriving in Marin. It's the version of Maison Nico the San Francisco space was too small to become.
What two openings say that one wouldn't
Kelly went home. Delaroque went looking for the room his own concept needed and found it in a downtown built for foot traffic rather than a satellite office park. Neither decision required San Anselmo to be cheaper or easier than San Francisco. Both required it to be a place where a proven idea could become a bigger idea, whether that meant a personal one or a physical one.
For a downtown where restaurant conversation has mostly centered on longtime standbys, that's a meaningful shift in who is choosing to build here, and what they're choosing to build. It also means the two most-watched openings of the year won't function as San Francisco's overflow. They'll offer things that, as of this fall, only exist in San Anselmo.
For anyone keeping track, here's where things stand:
- Open now: Tụ Tập, 625 San Anselmo Avenue, dinner and rooftop bar, reservations available on OpenTable.
- Opening October: Maison Nico's second location, expected along the Tunstead Avenue corridor, with bread and ice cream not available at the San Francisco original.
Walk San Anselmo Avenue on a weekend this fall and both stories are visible at once. One storefront is already busy on a Tuesday night. The other still has butcher paper on the windows, with an opening date close enough to plan around.
For a longer look at what shapes daily life in this part of Marin beyond its restaurant scene, our San Anselmo neighborhood guide covers the rest of what makes the town what it is. And if you're curious what it means when a downtown starts attracting this kind of investment, the Kristie Martinelli Team has spent years watching these blocks change and is glad to talk through what it means for you.
