The New Tenants on San Anselmo Avenue Kept Something From the Old Ones

Out front of 625 San Anselmo Avenue, the parklet's retractable awning is the same one that used to cover the Kientz Hall roof. Behind the new sapele double doors, the cocktail bar sits on Kientz Hall's base, still clad in century-old wainscoting salvaged from a New York church. It now has a copper top. The building spent 57 years as a bakery before Kientz Hall remade it, and since July it has been Tụ Tập. Marin Independent Journal reported that the owners built the new restaurant on top of the old pieces rather than tearing them out.

The same thing happened at several other addresses. Since the summer of 2025, the town's coffee shop, its Italian cafe, a former drugstore and one of its two hometown grocery stores have all changed hands. Most of the buyers already run a business in Marin, and nearly every one held on to part of the old place: a name, a bar top, or a tie to whoever came before.

What changed hands, and who took it

A rooftop built on someone else's bones

Tụ Tập is the biggest of these projects. It's also the clearest case of building on what was already there. In Vietnamese the name means "gathering." The restaurant is laid out as a series of separate rooms seating 114 downstairs, with another 48 seats on a fully weatherized rooftop that looks out at Mount Tamalpais. Up top, retractable glass panels and a louvered roof open and close at the push of a button.

The people involved are as local as the reused fixtures. Owner Adam Block lives in Sleepy Hollow. Investor Bill Upson co-founded Real Restaurants, the Sausalito group behind Buckeye Roadhouse, Bungalow 44, Bar Bocce and Picco. Executive chef Justine Kelly grew up in San Anselmo and spent 18 years working with the late Charles Phan of the Slanted Door. Margaret Ruiz of Strand Design, a San Anselmo firm, helped with the interior. She also co-owns Bar Voyage, just down the avenue.

Kelly told the Marin IJ that the town had been her choice for years before she ever planned to open anything:

"From my early 20s, I did know that if I were to open one someday, it would be in San Anselmo because my heart is there."

The dish she singled out at opening was bò lá lốt: whole rib-eye, sliced and chopped by hand, seasoned, wrapped in betel leaf and grilled. She told the IJ that restaurants rarely serve it because it takes so much work. The current dinner menu lists it along with duck fried rice and coconut-ginger chicken. The rooftop has its own menu of oysters, hamachi crudo, country pâté and cocktails. The restaurant mostly serves walk-ins and holds a small number of seats in the back room for reservations.

Hilda's went to someone who grew up eating there

Up the avenue at 639, the handoff was more personal. Hilda's Coffee Shop closed in September 2025 after 60 years, when longtime owner Sue Kirton retired from the family business. The space went to Pat Townsley, who owns Creekside Pizza & Taproom. According to the Marin IJ's 2025 food-scene roundup, he said he planned to keep the coffee shop's small-town feel while refining the menu. "As a Marin native, I fell in love with Hilda's as a kid," he told the paper.

The result is Tasty Delicious, a burger-and-shake shop that opened in the last week of September. The Marin IJ traced the idea back through San Anselmo's diner history, starting with Jeep's Drive-In and Hilda's in the late 1950s and early '60s, then Bubba's Diner in the mid-'90s. Operations manager Ryan Soifer described the project to the paper as "honoring what came before us but at the same time, blazing our own path." Chef and general manager Jackson Palmer is a Mill Valley native who cooked in San Francisco fine-dining kitchens, State Bird Provisions among them, and most recently worked at Creekside. A San Anselmo couple put up the money for the revival and helped coordinate it.

The physical space got a full overhaul. Townsley had finished demolition by the end of 2025, and the IJ reported that the space needed a lot of deferred-maintenance work to meet current codes. What carried over is the burger counter, a use that has been on this stretch of town in one form or another for close to 70 years.

411 went to a chef with 25 years of Ross Valley regulars

At 411 San Anselmo Avenue, D.G. Cafe closed in July 2025. By October, Marco Franceschini had opened Marco's Gastronomia there, an Italian deli. Franceschini lives in San Rafael, and the IJ noted that he built his local following over two and a half decades at Trattoria Fresco in Ross.

Like the others, he came with a following already built. After 25 years cooking in Ross, he now cooks for the same Ross Valley diners from San Anselmo Avenue.

Why the old owners handed off locally

The grocery deal on Red Hill shows most clearly why these businesses changed hands the way they did. In June 2026, Mollie Stone's Markets announced it was buying United Markets, a family business with stores in San Anselmo and San Rafael. United owner Kelly Smith told the Marin IJ that running two stores had gotten harder:

"We just don't have the buying power to get the same pricing that somebody with more stores is able to get and make different deals."

She said the Stones were her first choice "because they're community-minded and they take care of their employees, and because they're union, and because they're family-owned and local." Mollie Stone's already ran stores in Sausalito and Greenbrae. Mike Stone told the paper the company would keep the United Markets name and concept "for now" and make any changes gradually, starting by asking customers what they wanted.

SFGATE reported that ownership was set to transfer June 28 and that both stores would keep the United name. The United Markets website still uses it and lists the San Anselmo store at 100 Red Hill Avenue, open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Smith's reasoning fits every other address on the list. A business that has been running for decades reaches the point where one owner can't easily keep it going alone. The buyer that steps in is a nearby operator with more scale: Creekside's owner, a group with half a dozen Marin restaurants, a chain with eight Bay Area stores. Because those buyers already have customers in Marin, it makes sense for them to keep the name, the bar top or the counter.

Next: the old drugstore on Tunstead

The next one on the list is a block off the avenue. Jack's Drug Store and Jack's Medical Supplies filled 121 Tunstead Avenue from 1962 until 2022. The building is now being turned into a bakery and cafe for Maison Nico, the San Francisco pastry business run by Nicolas Delaroque and his wife.

Delaroque has a history in town too. 7x7 noted that he helped open L'Appart in San Anselmo. In San Francisco, Maison Nico is known for croissants and Paris-Brest, plus savory dishes baked in pastry such as beef Wellington and duck pithivier. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the bigger Marin space would let the couple take more orders and add baguettes, naturally leavened sandwich loaves and house-made ice cream.

In September, the Planning Commission approved a permit for Maison Nico to sell bottled wine to take home, the Marin IJ reported. According to a staff report by community development director Heidi Scoble, sales will be limited to a wine display about six feet wide and a wine club, with a small selection of organic, biodynamic and small-production wines from California and France. The site was already zoned for beer and wine served on the premises.

There's no opening date yet. In late September a spokesperson said renovations were expected to wrap up in early November and that no opening date had been set. A Maison Nico job posting for a baker at the Tunstead address says Marin production is expected to start in late 2026. For now, the old Jack's storefront is still under renovation.

That makes five storefronts that changed hands in a little over a year. If Maison Nico opens on schedule, the Jack's building will have gone four years without a tenant between the drugstore and the bakery. The other four went from one local owner to the next with much shorter gaps.

When a building that has been part of your routine for decades gets a new tenant, it's natural to want to know who bought it and why. Those are the stories I like hearing, too. Whether you're curious about the history of one of these addresses or thinking about the long-held place you own yourself, Rob Sullivan is glad to sit down over a coffee on the avenue and talk it through. Let's Connect.