Larkspur's Business of the Year Isn't Where Its Next Restaurant Is Opening
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
This year the Larkspur Chamber of Commerce handed its Business of the Year award to a restaurant that has been serving risotto out of the same downtown storefront for more than two decades. In the same stretch of months, one of the newest names in Larkspur dining, a Greek concept with San Francisco roots, opened a mile away in a shopping center built around a completely different rhythm. Both are true. Both are Larkspur. And the gap between them tells you something about how this town actually runs that no single "best of" list captures.
Restaurant Picco, on Magnolia Avenue, took home the 2026 Business of the Year honor along with a Spirit of Marin Award, recognition for a restaurant that has called Larkspur home for more than twenty years. Meanwhile Souvla, one of the newer restaurants to round out the Mart's food lineup, is now listed alongside Picco itself on current Larkspur dining guides. One award celebrates staying power. One opening represents turnover. Neither cancels the other out, and that's the part worth understanding if you live here.
Downtown Larkspur runs on a different kind of math than most restaurant corridors. Picco has spent more than twenty years in the same brick-and-redwood dining room, building a menu that leans market-driven and Cal-Italian, with risotto made fresh every half hour and a Wednesday ritual that pairs an eight-ounce burger, double-ground in-house from New York steak, brisket, bone marrow, and chuck roll, with a rotating selection of Barolo by the glass. That kind of weekly consistency is what a chamber of commerce rewards. It's also what makes a downtown feel like a downtown rather than a rotating set of storefronts.
Picco isn't operating alone. A few doors down, Internos Wine & Beer Bar was opened by Larkspur resident Adnan Abudaken and his co-owner Tony Martinez, who had previously run a bar of the same name in San Francisco before bringing the concept home to Magnolia Avenue. Left Bank Brasserie has poured French wine and run its Parisian-style bar on Magnolia for more than thirty years. The Silver Peso, the town's character bar, occupies a building that first opened in 1905 as a blacksmith shop. Perry's on Magnolia carries the Union Street original's 1969 lineage under a canopy of redwoods. Newer arrivals like Tavola Rustica, a Cal-Italian spot with a back patio built around a water feature, have folded into that same corridor rather than displacing it.
Add the Lark Theater, Emporio Rulli's pastry case, Equator Coffees, Rustic Bakery, Farm House Local, and a Boichik Bagels outpost that landed downtown with a full lineup of lox and schmears, and you get a corridor where change happens by addition, not replacement. Nobody on Magnolia Avenue is rotating out a tenant every season. That is precisely what the Chamber's award was recognizing.
Marin Country Mart runs on the opposite clock. It sits on Sir Francis Drake, between the Larkspur Ferry Terminal and the SMART train station, and its identity has always been built on turnover rather than tenure. Varley, the women's activewear label, opened a new storefront at the Mart this summer as part of a run of store openings across its retail footprint. Souvla's arrival rounded out a food lineup that already includes Hog Island Oyster Co. and Farmshop, whose beehive-oven Neapolitan pizzas and avocado hummus have made it a fixture for weekend people-watching.
The Mart's calendar moves at the same pace as its retail roster. This month alone brought a U.S. Open Finals watch party on September 12 and 13, an artisan tasting event called Perfect Pairings on September 16, and an Ariel Gordon trunk show on September 19, with a Sant M Venetian Slipper trunk show already on the books for October 25. None of these are annual traditions. They're this season's programming, built to be replaced by next season's.
Underneath the rotating events is one weekly constant: the Saturday farmers market, running 9am to 2pm year round, rain or shine, with more than twenty-five local vendors including Alexandre Family Farm, Anna's Seafood, and Country Line Harvest, plus complimentary children's programming and live music from 11am to 2pm. Sunday afternoons bring food trucks to the same tented area overlooking the bay. Parking is free, and so is weekend parking at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, a short walk over the pedestrian bridge for anyone who'd rather bike or take the ferry in from San Francisco than drive.
Line the two corridors up side by side and the difference isn't quality, it's rhythm.
Neither model is trying to be the other. That's the point.
If Larkspur only had one commercial center, it would eventually have to decide what kind of place it wanted to be: a legacy dining corridor or a shopping and events destination. Because it has both, connected by a short stretch of Magnolia Avenue and Sir Francis Drake, it never has to choose. A resident can walk to Picco on a Tuesday night for the same gnocchi with sausage that's been on the menu for years, then bike to the Mart on Saturday morning for produce from Alexandre Family Farm and a Saturday farmers market that didn't exist in that form when Picco first opened. Both trips happen in the same town, in the same week, without either one reading as a substitute for the other.
That's a rare setup for a town of Larkspur's size. Most small commercial districts have to pick a lane: either the legacy Main Street that resists change, or the newer retail hub that thrives on it. Larkspur has kept both running at once, close enough together that residents move between them without treating the choice as a decision at all.
For anyone deciding how to spend the next few days in town, the calendar splits cleanly along the lines above. Downtown, Picco's Wednesday burger and Barolo pairing is still running, and Left Bank's alfresco tables and the Silver Peso's pool tables are open on their usual schedule. At the Mart, the Perfect Pairings tasting lands on September 16, the Ariel Gordon trunk show follows on September 19, and the Saturday farmers market runs its normal 9am to 2pm hours this weekend with the usual lineup of produce vendors and live music starting at 11am. Sunday afternoon brings the food trucks back to the same tented area.
Neither corridor is trying to out-program the other this month. They're each doing what they've always done, on their own schedule, for the same town.
Living in a place like Larkspur means noticing details like these long before they ever show up on a spreadsheet. If a shift in your own address, downsizing, relocating, or simply reconsidering what your Larkspur home should do for you next, is somewhere on your mind, Krystow & Kemp has spent years reading exactly this kind of neighborhood texture across Marin. A conversation costs nothing. Request a complimentary home valuation and bespoke listing consultation whenever the timing feels right.
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