At 639 San Anselmo Avenue, the dining room is 12 feet wide and seats about 34 people at chrome-framed orange chairs and pale Formica tables. Out front, a new parklet holds roughly 50. Its corners are angled so drivers and pedestrians can see each other at the crosswalk, and a retractable waterproof canopy is on the way. The new burger counter in Hilda's old space has more seats on the street than inside.
Two restaurant rooms that closed in 2024 and 2025 have reopened under new names, and both came with parklets. Meanwhile the town's own outdoor space on the avenue, the concrete plaza over Building Bridge 2 at Creek Park, has been mostly fenced off since 2022 and has no reopening date. Until the plaza opens, local businesses are building and paying for the avenue's open-air seating one parking space at a time.
The seat count, block by block
| Address | What's there now | What it replaced | Seating reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| 625 San Anselmo Ave. | Tụ Tập, Vietnamese restaurant and bar | Kientz Hall, in a 57-year-old former bakery | 114 downstairs, 48 on the rooftop, plus a front parklet |
| 639 San Anselmo Ave. | Tasty Delicious, burgers and shakes | Hilda's Coffee Shop | About 34 inside, roughly 50 on the parklet |
| Building Bridge 2 plaza | Fenced concrete platform | Pandemic-era picnic tables and wood chips | None open to the public |
The figures come from the Marin Independent Journal's opening coverage of Tụ Tập and its report on Tasty Delicious. All of the new seating sits inside private buildings or on parklets in the curb lane.
What came back at 625
Kientz Hall turned the old bakery building into a contemporary Mediterranean restaurant, then closed in late 2024. Tụ Tập opened in the same space this summer. Hospitality consultant Adam Block, a Sleepy Hollow resident, leads the project. Bill Upson of Real Restaurants, the Sausalito group behind Buckeye Roadhouse and Bungalow 44, is an investor, and Justine Kelly is executive chef. Kelly grew up in San Anselmo and spent 18 years working with Charles Phan of the Slanted Door restaurants. She told the Marin IJ that she knew from her early 20s that if she ever opened a restaurant, "it would be in San Anselmo because my heart is there."
The name is the Vietnamese word for "gathering," and the building is laid out to match. Inside is a series of separate rooms. The front room has indigo velvet booths, the middle room has a walnut chef's counter facing woks over live fire, and the skylit back room keeps a few seats for reservations, though the restaurant is meant mainly for walk-ins. The rooftop faces Mount Tamalpais. It is fully weatherized, with retractable glass panels and a louvered roof that opens and closes at the push of a button.
The parklet out front has a custom faux-bamboo steel railing and a retractable awning repurposed from the Kientz Hall roof. Kelly opened with about 22 dishes and plans to grow the menu to around 35. Early highlights include bò lá lốt, hand-chopped rib-eye wrapped in betel leaf, and a five-spice duck fried rice with aji amarillo. Opening hours were 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 5 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, with the bar expected to stay open later on weekends.
What came back at 639
Tụ Tập reinvented its room. Tasty Delicious kept Hilda's history on the walls. The Marin IJ traced the town's burger-and-shake lineage from Jeep's Drive-In and Hilda's Coffee Shop in the late 1950s and early '60s to Bubba's Diner in the mid-'90s. Bubba's original clock now hangs near the kitchen, and Hilda's old sign sits next to the bathroom door.
"We built this for the community, honoring what came before us but at the same time, blazing our own path."
Operations manager Ryan Soifer said that to the IJ. The team also includes managing partner Pat Townsley, owner of Creekside Pizza & Taproom across the street, and chef and general manager Jackson Palmer. Palmer spent months testing burger blends in a cast-iron skillet at Creekside before the new flat-top went in, and he settled on a custom 80-20 Black Angus mix. Burgers run $10 to $14, fries start at $5 and a 12-ounce shake is $6. The soft-serve is made with milk from Valley Ford Cheese & Creamery's Jersey herd.
The room needed real work first. When Hilda's closed last fall, years of deferred maintenance meant major upgrades to meet current building, health and accessibility codes. San Anselmo architect Bill O'Callaghan handled that work along with the San Francisco builder Cookline. As of the IJ's report, the restaurant planned daily hours of 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. starting Oct. 5. Hand-cut, twice-fried fries are due in late October, and a coffee-shop breakfast with Hilda's pancakes is planned for later this year.
How the plaza ended up behind a fence
The parklets on this block are new, but the idea started on the bridge. Here is how the town's own outdoor space went from open to fenced, based on reporting from the Marin IJ and a June county news release:
- 2020. During the pandemic, the town leased Building Bridge 2 and put out picnic tables and wood chips. Several nearby parking spaces became parklets.
- 2022. The county ended the lease, saying the structure could be unstable. Most of the surface was fenced. The parklets and some sidewalk tables stayed.
- Early 2026. FEMA said it would not approve removing the bridge. The town renewed its lease in February, and county supervisors canceled the bridge project in May.
- June 17, 2026. The town and the Marin County Flood Control District announced that the plaza would not open for Live on the Avenue. A structural evaluation found that the bridge's substructure needed repair and reinforcement first.
- August 2026. At a special meeting, the Town Council unanimously chose a terraced concept from RHAA Landscape Architects of Mill Valley. It would replace the concrete with paths, shaded seating, stone walls, wooden decks and greenery sloping up to the park's redwood grove. A donor covered RHAA's $83,000 cost to revise the plans.
In the June release, Mayor Steve Burdo said the news would "be disappointing to many residents, businesses, and others who have been looking forward to seeing this space reopen after being closed for so long." Town Manager Dave Donery later told the IJ that the structural work and the larger Creek Park project could be finished by early 2028, "pending successful fundraising." We found no later public update on a repair start date or an interim reopening. Public comment at the August meeting was split. Some speakers said the council was moving too fast, others disagreed, and some asked for the parking to come back.
Who pays for the curb
Until then, curbside seating on the avenue is privately built. A parklet in San Anselmo needs an encroachment permit, and the town requires an application before anyone builds a new parklet or changes an existing one. The town's fee schedule, effective July 1, 2026, lists a $950 application fee for a private parklet and a fee of $2,520 per space.
Those fees cover the permit side. The design and construction are on each business, too. Tasty Delicious built its parklet with angled corners for crosswalk visibility, and Tụ Tập reused its predecessor's awning. The town's own plan for public outdoor seating covers more ground, since the RHAA terraces would join the avenue to the Creek Park redwoods. During the August meeting, council members asked about maintenance, accessibility, protecting redwood roots, and keeping rodents away if people eat there. A public park built on top of a flood-control bridge has to answer those questions before it opens.
The plaza is one piece of a larger list. On Oct. 2, the IJ reported that the town's five-year capital plan totals $20 million through 2031. It covers paving, pedestrian and cycling work, new signals on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at Broadmoor and Sais avenues, improvements to the Memorial Park courts, and design work for the Robson Carriage House.
The next few weeks on the avenue
The avenue's next big crowd will gather on the sidewalks and parklets. Visit Marin lists the Goblins' BOOtacular for Friday, Oct. 23, at 5 p.m., with trick-or-treating at participating businesses along San Anselmo Avenue. The week before, a local calendar lists a volunteer cleanup of downtown and the creek on Oct. 17.
For breakfast or lunch, head toward Red Hill. Pretti Platters opened May 19 at 810 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., in the freestanding building that used to house Auryn Thai Cuisine. Its hours at opening were 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. Hilda's pancakes, if they arrive on schedule at 639, will cover the downtown morning before the year is out.
The plaza has been fenced since 2022, and San Anselmo Avenue has spent those years adding street seating. Matt Knight and Justin O'Reilly track how blocks like the 600 block change, from storefront reuse and parklet rules to a capital plan that runs through 2031. If you're weighing how downtown's next few years could affect a property you own nearby, Knight | O'Reilly can walk you through it. Request a confidential market consultation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
