Mill Valley beer backyard to open second location – Marin Independent Journal

After closing in 2022, the historic Villa restaurant — lengthy a backdrop for promenade dates, anniversaries and birthday dinners — sat empty for 3 years, slowly deteriorating as actual property builders eyed the positioning.

The sprawling constructing, with its vaulted ceilings and sweeping views of Annadel State Park, appeared destined for demolition. Then a trio of Mill Valley restaurateurs noticed promise within the 64-year-old complicated, even in its superior state of disrepair.

After a 12 months of planning and one other of painstaking reconstruction, The Junction is slated to open in May as a family-friendly gathering place for craft beer, upscale pizza and cocktails, together with the identical sweeping views that made the hilltop a favourite for generations of Sonoma County diners.

“Everyone who comes by has a story to tell us. People remember this place,” stated Liz Fiedler, who, along with her husband, Dez, and enterprise accomplice Jimmy Simpson, is getting ready for the restaurant’s opening.

Looking to the longer term

The Fiedlers, who misplaced their dwelling in Santa Rosa through the 2017 North Bay wildfires, opened the unique Junction in Mill Valley in 2020, taking up a equally distressed property on the fringe of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

“It was a partial junkyard,” Liz Fiedler stated of the 5,000-square-foot website, which had been stuffed with outdated vehicles and particles from a former auto restore store. After clearing the property and constructing an expansive outside patio, The Junction (which was as soon as an precise practice depot) rapidly turned a pandemic-era oasis on the intersection of close by mountain climbing and biking trails. A 3,000-square-foot indoor taproom has since made it a favourite Mill Valley meet-up spot.

That — and the pizza.

In Mill Valley, the Fiedlers partnered with Jeff Krupman of San Francisco’s PizzaHacker to create a menu of crisp, blistered pies with names like The Ohio (pepperoni, pepperoncini, mozzarella and provolone) and Yo Vinnie! (housemade sausage, pickled peppers, marinated onions, mozzarella and Grana Padano). The Santa Rosa location will function an analogous lineup, together with a number of new salads, wings and fried rooster.

Though the positioning is presently a busy development zone, the restaurant continues to be recognizable. Pine siding now covers the outside partitions, and the previous floor-to-ceiling home windows have been changed with glass partitions that broaden the view and permit outside entry. A brand new 4,000-square-foot beer backyard will embrace a play space, dwell music stage and loads of room for canine, youngsters and teams.

A cavernous eating room that seats 150 connects to an open bar space and recreation room with shuffleboard, pool tables and classic Skee-Ball — no screens, stated Fiedler, simply old style video games. A strong beer program with 30 faucets and a bottle store will accompany the meals menu, and in contrast to the Mill Valley location, Santa Rosa can even have a full bar.

Lost and located

The Villa property got here onto the Fiedlers’ radar virtually by chance.

The couple had been on the lookout for a second location once they occurred to drive previous the distinct retro-geometric Villa signal in the future. Curious, they walked up the hill to take a better look. The uncommon setting and panoramic views have been a straightforward promote. They contacted the house owners, who have been hoping to promote to a different restaurateur, and finally purchased the three.5-acre property, edging out actual property builders.

“We love Mill Valley and we love Santa Rosa,” Fiedler stated. “We want this to be a really family-friendly place where everyone can come and hang out.”

And the signal will keep.

A style of historical past

Long earlier than it turned The Junction, the hilltop restaurant had already lived a number of lives.

Originally opened in 1962 as The Hilltopper, the restaurant was a mid-century vacation spot for continental eating, a catchall time period on the time for European-inspired delicacies. Dishes like lobster thermidor, abalone steaks and sole meunière have been served for underneath $4.

Gaspare Bernardo took over the restaurant in 1976 and ran it as an Italian restaurant for practically 50 years earlier than retiring in 2022. The Villa turned his life’s work.

Decades earlier than farm-to-table menus and Wine Country delicacies took maintain, white-tablecloth Italian eating was one thing of an anomaly in rural Sonoma County. Throughout its run, the Villa caught to Italian-American staples like spaghetti and meatballs, linguine with clams, lasagna, ravioli and veal scaloppine. Tableside Caesar salad was a signature.

Whether Caesar salad will return to the brand new menu stays to be seen. (It in all probability will, as a result of who doesn’t love a Caesar?) But the brand new house owners do plan to protect components of the Villa’s character, together with the distinctive entrance doorways with half-moon cut-outs, the vaulted ceilings and the outdated signal on the backside of the hill that welcomed generations of Santa Rosa diners.

“This space is so amazing,” Fiedler stated. “You just want to sit and have a drink in the sun.”

Now the landmark property is getting ready for one more chapter — and a brand new era of Santa Rosans climbing the oak-lined hill for dinner, drinks and the view.