Walk San Anselmo Avenue on a weekday evening this September and the paper is still up in the front windows at 639 San Anselmo Ave, the address that spent more than sixty years as Hilda's Coffee Shop. A block and a half away, the rooftop at Tu Tap has a line for the bar. Down by Red Hill, a dining room that didn't get a single write-up before it opened is running a lunch service with a wait. The restaurant everyone in town has been asking about for a year still isn't serving food. Tu Tap and Pretti Platters are both already serving.
That gap between what got the headlines and what's actually plating dinner is the real story on the Avenue this fall.
The Address Everyone Actually Talks About
Tu Tap opened July 29 at 625 San Anselmo Ave, in the space that used to be Kientz Hall, and it arrived with the kind of resume that gets covered by the San Francisco Chronicle before the paint dries. Executive chef Justine Kelly grew up in San Anselmo and spent eighteen years working under Charles Phan at the Slanted Door before signing on here. Her partner in the project is Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group, which also runs Buckeye Roadhouse and Picco elsewhere in Marin. The build-out kept the rooftop patio, and the sightline to Mount Tamalpais from up there is the detail most people mention first.
The renovation itself became a small local event before the doors opened. During the weekends San Anselmo Avenue closed for open-air concerts earlier in the year, the Chronicle reported that hundreds of people took the informal tours co-owner Adam Block offered of the space under construction. That's a lot of curiosity for a restaurant that hadn't served a single plate yet, and it's part of why Tu Tap's actual opening date matters: it's the one big 2026 arrival that people can now walk into on a Tuesday night rather than just read about.
The Name on Everyone's List That Isn't Serving Yet
Maison Nico is the other headline, and it still isn't open. Chef Nicolas Delaroque, who won the Elegance Prize at the 2025 Pâté en Croûte World Championship in Lyon, runs the original Maison Nico in San Francisco's Jackson Square, in the same space where his Michelin-starred restaurant Nico operated before closing in 2019. Early reporting on the San Anselmo expansion put the opening at "this summer." A February piece pegged it for late spring or early summer. By late July, the timeline had moved again. The Chronicle's coverage of Maison Nico's newest San Francisco outpost, a small counter inside the Transamerica Pyramid, noted in passing that the San Anselmo location is now slated to open in October.
The order of events in that coverage is worth a second look. The pocket-sized Transamerica counter, announced after San Anselmo, opened first. The bigger Marin buildout, the one meant to finally give the bakery room for bread ovens and housemade ice cream, is still the one everyone's waiting on. If October holds, it'll be open by the time this piece is a few weeks old. If it slips again, it joins a pattern that's now familiar on this stretch of the Avenue.
The Diner Still Waiting for Its Reopening Date
The Hilda's rebuild has carried three different target dates so far, each one later than the last.
As AWHSPitch reported, the diner opened in 1960, named by original owner Tor Nielsen for his wife. The Young family bought it in 1978 and ran it until 2006, when their daughter Sue Kirton took over. Kirton kept it going until September 2025, when the building's condition finally caught up with it. Pat Townsley, who owns Creekside Pizza & Taproom nearby, bought the business and didn't mince words about what he found. "This building was substandard in every way," he told student reporters at the time. "It's a health and safety concern."
The first public timeline, reported that spring, had the remodeled space ready by mid-May and open about a week before San Anselmo's Live on the Avenue concert series kicked off on June 20. That date came and went. By early summer, Creekside's own site had revised the target to "Summer 2026," a looser promise than the one tied to a specific concert series. Summer came and went too. The most recent update, posted on Creekside's own Heard on the Street page roughly three weeks ago, says demolition is finished and the team is now planning a January build-out. The target has moved from a date tied to a June concert series to a winter construction schedule, and the team behind the project has shared each new date on its own channels. Older buildings often bring plumbing, electrical, and code work that takes longer than first planned, and Townsley has pointed to permitting with the health department, the Town of San Anselmo, and the Central Marin Sanitary District as the biggest hurdle.
None of this means Hilda's won't reopen well. Townsley has said he's keeping the previous chef and the German-style pancakes on the eventual menu, and the plan is to extend hours into the evening with a separate night menu. But anyone circling a date on the calendar based on what they read in the spring is circling the wrong one.
Where To Actually Eat While You Wait
Pretti Platters didn't get any of the coverage the other two did, and it's been open since May 19. Four longtime friends who bonded over their Thai heritage nearly two decades ago took over the freestanding building near Red Hill Shopping Center that used to house Auryn Thai Cuisine. Co-owner Fah Intapura brought in a chef friend with fine-dining credentials to build a menu that runs from brunch staples to dishes that read more like dinner: Monterey Bay branzino with Meyer lemon beurre blanc, steak frites au poivre with chimichurri, a bone-in heritage pork chop with celery root puree, even caviar with housemade roti if you want to make a Tuesday feel like something else. It opened on schedule, without a rooftop or a Michelin pedigree attached to it, and it's been serving the neighborhood the whole time the other two names were still generating anticipation.
The Rest of the Block Is Also Moving, Just Slower
The Avenue's changes aren't only happening inside storefronts. On August 11, San Anselmo's Town Council voted unanimously to move forward with Creek Park Plaza, the project locals have been calling BB2 through years of public meetings, design contests, and outreach sessions. It's a real decision after a long process, but the town has been clear that nothing happens to the physical structure until summer 2027. It's another example of a date on this street that sounds close and isn't.
For something that's actually happening this fall, the San Anselmo Historical Commission runs a free walking tour most months, led by Dick Miner and other commission members. It covers the town's historic Hub, the role the railroad played in shaping downtown, and how the Avenue's businesses and architecture have changed over time. The next date is October 10, meeting at Creek Park at 9 a.m. and ending at the Historical Museum. No reservation required.
Taken together, the Avenue's 2026 calendar has run in almost the opposite order from what the coverage suggested back in January. The restaurants with the biggest names attached took the longest to open or still haven't. Tu Tap is feeding people after drawing plenty of attention; Pretti Platters, which opened quietly, is doing the same. If you're deciding where to eat on the Avenue this week, that's worth knowing before you drive past a storefront that's still just a sign.
If you're watching this stretch of San Anselmo for reasons beyond dinner, whether that's a move into the neighborhood or just keeping an eye on how the town is changing, Suzanne Hughes tracks these shifts as part of knowing Marin block by block, not just headline by headline.
