New Restaurants SF

July 24, 2026

Tụ Tập, San Anselmo: The Slanted Door's Longtime Chef Opens Her First Restaurant Wednesday, Honoring Charles Phan

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One SF/Bay Area opening a day, chosen and checked. Today: San Anselmo's turn, as the chef who ran Charles Phan's Slanted Door kitchens for more than 17 years opens her first restaurant on July 29, with a wood-fired grill, a Mt. Tamalpais rooftop, and a menu that pointedly leaves Phan's shaking beef alone.

When anyone asked Justine Kelly if she would ever open her own restaurant, she said no, often with expletives. Running a restaurant was too daunting. The one exception was her hometown. Kelly grew up in San Anselmo and spent more than 17 years as chef de cuisine and then corporate chef of Charles Phan's Slanted Door group, the restaurant that reinvented Vietnamese food in America. Phan died of cardiac arrest in January 2025 at 62. Before Kelly committed to the project, she asked Phan's family, who still run the Slanted Door, for their blessing. (SF Chronicle)

The name, Tụ Tập, means "gathering" in Vietnamese, and the menu is Kelly's take on the classics she learned from the "aunties," the relatives and friends of the Phan family at the Slanted Door who made the stocks and mother sauces. She draws one line: Phan's shaking beef is off-limits. "That would be like stealing from him and not just learning from him and taking it in my own direction," she told the Chronicle. Her bò lá lốt instead hand-chops ribeye rather than grinding it, grills it in leaf-wrapped bundles with shallots and fish sauce, and serves it with nước chấm. A kampachi collar, marinated in turmeric, garlic, and fish sauce, goes on the grill, a byproduct of the whole fish she butchers for a crudo with kumquat and Thai basil. Starters run $12 to $26. (SF Chronicle, Culinary Agents)

The centerpiece entree is lemongrass rotisserie chicken, brined three days with shallots and Thai chile, then turned for three hours on an almond- and oak-fired spit and served by the half or whole with smashed cucumbers. Entrees are $28 to $40. Up on the 48-seat rooftop, with its Mount Tamalpais sightline, there is a copper-topped raw bar and snacks from $7 to $18. (SF Chronicle)

Co-owner Adam Block, a veteran who has owned and brokered deals for dozens of Bay Area restaurants, oversaw the build in the former Kientz Hall, which closed in late 2024. The two-story dining room seats 114, with salvaged mahogany church pews in the bar, antique ceiling panels repurposed as wall art, a 15-foot sculpture woven from reclaimed wine barrels, and dark blue walls hand-painted with florals. Wine director Chaylee Priete is a veteran of Greens and the Slanted Door, where she led the wine program for 10 years; lead bartender Steven Singleton builds each cocktail around a single ingredient from a Marin County farm, like a Bee's Knees with local honey and wildflower-steeped gin. Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group is also a partner. (SF Chronicle, Marin County Visitor)

Why this opening matters: the chef who ran the kitchen of the restaurant that defined modern Vietnamese food in America is finally opening her own, in the town where she grew up, as a tribute to the mentor she lost. Tụ Tập opens Wednesday, July 29, at 625 San Anselmo Ave., San Anselmo. The website still reads "coming soon" with a newsletter signup, so reservations are not live yet; watch tutapmarin.com. (SF Chronicle, tutapmarin.com)

Opening today. Two recent picks reach their opening day this Friday: Saam (415 Brannan, SoMa), Bangkok Michelin chef Thitid Tassanakajohn's first U.S. dinner service, and Notte Divino (37 Caledonia, Sausalito), the reopened Osteria Divino with its opening-night tribute to the late Elizabeth Nebot and jazz running to 2 a.m. (Hoodline, Marin IJ)

Also opening.

That’s the reading for this issue.