Hilda's Old Corner on San Anselmo Avenue Is Serving Again, and the Pancakes Are Still to Come

Where do you get Hilda's pancakes on San Anselmo Avenue now? For about 60 years, Hilda's Coffee Shop at 639 San Anselmo Ave. was the answer. Today the same address serves a burger, a shake and a basket of twisted fries. It opened in late September with 4 to 9 p.m. hours, and since October 5 the doors have opened at 11 a.m.

Tasty Delicious was built to honor Hilda's, and you can see it in the room. The breakfast service that made Hilda's a morning habit is the one piece still missing. For now the corner is a lunch and dinner counter, and mornings there haven't come back yet.

Six decades of diners, in order

The people behind Tasty Delicious chose a long lineage to follow. Jeep's Drive-In and Hilda's date to the late 1950s and early '60s, and Bubba's Diner arrived in the mid-'90s. The Marin Independent Journal put their combined history at nearly a century.

Here is how the corner got from there to here:

1. 1960. Hilda's opens. Creekside Pizza & Taproom, whose owner now runs the space, tells the story this way: Tor Nielsen's German-style pancakes were the draw, and he named the shop after his wife, Hilda. Local lore holds that the first Hilda's sat across the street, in the space that later became Bubba's.
2. About 18 years later. The Nielsens sell to Darleen and Brian Young.
3. 1994. Bubba's Diner opens at 566 San Anselmo Ave., according to Patch.
4. 2006. The Youngs' daughter, Sue, takes over as operator.
5. September 2025. Hilda's closes after 60 years in business when longtime owner Sue Kirton retires, as the Marin IJ reported in its year-end food roundup.
6. December 2025. Pat Townsley of Creekside Pizza & Taproom has finished demolition and is planning a January build-out. "As a Marin native, I fell in love with Hilda's as a kid," he told the IJ.
7. Late September 2026. Tasty Delicious opens with 4 to 9 p.m. hours. Daily hours of 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. begin October 5.

The building needed real work in between. When Hilda's closed, years of deferred maintenance had to be fixed to meet current building, health and accessibility codes. San Anselmo architect Bill O'Callaghan and the San Francisco firm Cookline, which also worked on Mamahuhu in Mill Valley, handled the infrastructure. That rebuild helps explain why an opening once aimed at summer 2026 arrived at the end of September.

The history is on the walls

Walk in and the past is easy to find. The room is only 12 feet wide and seats about 34, so every detail sits within a few steps of the counter.

• Bubba's original clock hangs near the kitchen.
• Hilda's old sign sits beside the bathroom door.
• A mural of old San Anselmo by San Rafael artist Stella Prichard runs along one wall. Inside the bathroom, drawings show town landmarks, people and woodland creatures.
• The diner counter is faced in forest green tile from Clé, a San Rafael company. Orange diner chairs with chrome frames, pale Formica tabletops and a deep green banquette backed in a '70s floral print fill out the room.

The interiors are by Ann Lowengart of Ann Lowengart Interiors, a local resident. According to the IJ, she shared on Instagram that her brief was a 1960s- and '70s-era burger joint that feels like Inverness.

"We built this for the community, honoring what came before us but at the same time, blazing our own path," operations manager Ryan Soifer told the Marin IJ. The clock and the sign handle the honoring. The menu is where the new path shows.

The menu points to the afternoon

Chef and general manager Jackson Palmer grew up in Mill Valley. He trained at Johnson & Wales and cooked in San Francisco fine-dining kitchens, including State Bird Provisions, before moving to casual pub and burger spots in Colorado and then Creekside. Before the flat-top went in, he spent months testing burger blends across the street at Creekside, two patties at a time in a cast-iron skillet. He settled on a custom 80-20 Black Angus blend.

Three burgers anchor the board. The Tasty has caramelized onions, pickles, American cheese and Tasty sauce. The Backyard adds lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard and raw onion. The Bubba's Burger, named for the diner down the street, is a smash burger with jalapeños and firecracker sauce. A black-bean patty can replace the beef on any burger, and gluten-free buns are available. The soft-serve is made with high-butterfat milk from Valley Ford Cheese & Creamery's Jersey herd, and the shakes get a splash of Clover whole milk.

The team set out to keep prices low enough for a frequent visit. Burgers ran $10 to $14 at opening. The restaurant's current menu lists:

Two things have already changed since the September opening story. At opening, the IJ said the hand-cut, twice-fried fries would arrive in late October, and they're now on the menu. The restaurant also runs monthly specials it calls Wild Tales and posts them on Instagram.

Every one of those dishes fits a lunch or dinner order. None of them is the reason people lined up at Hilda's.

Where the pancakes stand

Breakfast was part of the plan from the start. Creekside's 2025 page on the rebuild promised an improved breakfast menu "featuring Hilda's legendary pancakes," served 7 to 11 a.m., with lunch from 11. At opening, the IJ said a coffee-shop-style breakfast with Hilda's pancakes was planned for later this year.

The restaurant's own FAQ is plainer. "Give us a moment. You want it. We want it. There's lots to figure out. Once we get the lunch & dinner rhythm perfect, we'll get on this." It gives no date.

Here is the gap between the plan and the corner today:

Hours at a new restaurant tend to shift during its first months, so call 415-419-5227 before planning around them.

Two storefronts, one owner, both sides of the street

The corner works as a pair. Creekside Pizza & Taproom sits at 638 San Anselmo Ave., directly across from Tasty Delicious, and opens daily at noon. Pat Townsley, Creekside's owner, is Tasty Delicious's managing partner, and the chef developed the burger in Creekside's kitchen. Between them, the two storefronts cover burgers and shakes on one side and pizza and craft beer on the other, from late morning into the evening.

The sidewalk changed too. A new street-side parklet holds roughly 50 guests, more than the 34 seats inside. Its corners are angled so drivers and pedestrians can see each other at the crosswalk. Until the canopy arrives, a wet November evening will push most of the crowd indoors.

The space can also be booked. The FAQ offers full buyouts or semi-private setups for birthdays, team parties and fundraisers, and asks for four weeks' notice for larger events.

What else is coming downtown

Tasty Delicious is not the only project reshaping downtown San Anselmo. In August, the Town Council chose a terraced plaza design for Creek Park, with pedestrian paths, shaded seating, stone walls, wood decks and greenery, the Marin IJ reported. Mayor Steve Burdo praised the project's progress, and councilmember Tarrell Kullaway called the design durable and a good fit for the town. Town Manager Dave Donery said the plaza's structural work and wider construction could be finished by early 2028, if fundraising succeeds.

I'm watching for those pancakes too, and I'd love to hear what you ordered at Hilda's over the years. If you're weighing a move within San Anselmo, or wondering which nearby blocks fit the way you like to spend your mornings, Alexandra Cowley is happy to walk the Avenue with you and talk it through. Let's Connect.