Why Tụ Tập Opened on Schedule and Hilda's Reopening Now Points to January

Two storefronts on San Anselmo Avenue started very public renovations within months of each other. One reopened on the exact timeline its owners promised. The other set a June target that has since moved, and the people behind it are now planning a build-out that begins in January.

That gap has less to do with money or ambition and more to do with what a sixty-year-old diner building actually requires before a health inspector will let anyone cook breakfast in it again.

The Building at 639 San Anselmo Ave Never Stopped Being a Problem

Hilda's Coffee Shop opened across the street from its current address, named by original owner Tor Nielsen after his wife. Darleen and Brian Young bought it in 1978. Their daughter, Sue Kirton, took over in 2006 and ran it until September 2025, when the building's plumbing, electrical, flooring, and windows had degraded past the point of a patch job. Some of the kitchen staff had been there twenty years or more, which is part of why Kirton's decision to close took as long as it did.

Pat Townsley, the owner of Creekside Pizza & Taproom, bought the business afterward. According to his own account on Creekside's site, the biggest holdup wasn't design or money. It was permits: the Marin County Health Department, the Town of San Anselmo, and the Central Marin Sanitary District all had to sign off before contractors could touch the electrical, plumbing, and framing that had been running on borrowed time for years.

The original target was to reopen about a week before Live on the Avenue's June 20 kickoff, with a new name and a slightly smaller, sharper menu. That date came and went. Demolition finished, but as of Creekside's own update in early September, the project is now in a new design phase aimed at a January build-out, a full seven months past the original plan.

Three Blocks Away, Tụ Tập Opened on Its Announced Date

At 625 San Anselmo Ave, the former Kientz Hall became something almost nobody in town expected: a two-story Vietnamese restaurant seating upward of 160 across its dining room, chef's counter, and a rooftop deck facing Mt. Tamalpais and Mt. Baldy. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the project as "due to open in July" back in May, and it opened July 29, on schedule, with only a short stretch of walk-in-only seating before reservations came back online.

The kitchen is led by Justine Kelly, who grew up in San Anselmo and spent 18 years cooking under Charles Phan at the Slanted Door before deciding this was the one restaurant she'd actually run herself. Her partners are Adam Block, a restaurant industry veteran who has helped broker deals for places like Thomas Keller's Per Se, and Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group, which also runs Bix in San Francisco and Buckeye Roadhouse and Picco closer to home. The menu leans on clay-pot dishes and live-fire grilling, and the Chronicle's write-up noted that during construction, Block gave tours of the raw space to crowds who'd gathered for the weekend concerts that already close the avenue to cars.

Two Renovations, One Avenue

The difference isn't ambition. Hilda's had to prove to three separate agencies that a building running on decades of grandfathered wiring and plumbing could meet 2026 code before anyone could legally serve a plate of eggs in it. Tụ Tập's team hasn't reported that same category of infrastructure fight, which let them move straight from lease to design to opening night.

What Actually Carries Over at Hilda's

Townsley has been clear that the goal isn't reinvention. In his words:

"There are very few breakfast places for this small town community, and I think that's what I want to preserve."

What he's kept:

• The previous chef, still on staff
• The German-style pancakes, unchanged
• Morning-through-lunch service, plus new evening hours running until 10 p.m.

What's new:

• A nighttime menu built around burgers and a hot chicken sandwich
• A smaller, tighter overall menu than the old Hilda's ran

The plan keeps the counter-seat, walk-in feel that made the original a regular stop for generations of families, while extending the building's hours well past what the old diner ever offered.

What's Filling In Around Both of Them

Downtown San Anselmo picked up its first metered parking system sometime in the past year, a two-hour limit enforced daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and paid through a mobile app. It's worth mentioning here because the new meters were part of what pushed Hilda's toward its final closure, cutting into the summer morning trade that had kept the diner afloat for years.

A few blocks toward Red Hill, the space that used to house Ayurn Thai and more recently operated as Pretti Platters is rumored to be shedding its red tag and returning as a Thai restaurant, though nothing is confirmed yet. Out in the valley toward Point Reyes, the Paper Mill Saloon just wrapped a nearly three-year remodel and reopened with live music and its old-school tavern feel intact, a longtime stop for the bikers and day-trippers who use that road.

Live on the Avenue Keeps Being the Unofficial Deadline

Every downtown opening this year seems to measure itself against the same summer concert series. Hilda's original reopening was timed to land a week before Live on the Avenue's June 20 kickoff. Tụ Tập's crowds started forming during those same Friday and Saturday nights, when the avenue closes to cars and foot traffic fills the block between shows.

It's an informal clock, not an official one, but it's the one both projects were racing against this year. One made it. The other is still working through the permits that decide when a sixty-year-old kitchen gets to reopen.

If you're weighing what a stretch of downtown like San Anselmo Avenue actually means for day-to-day life here, our San Anselmo neighborhood guide and our piece on everyday life, cafes, and trails in town go deeper into the rhythm of the avenue year-round.

Team O'Brien lives and works in these towns, and we're always happy to talk through what's changing on a specific street or in a specific neighborhood, whether or not you're thinking about a move. Reach out to Team O'Brien anytime you want a local read on what's actually happening around Marin.