On a Saturday morning in Larkspur, it is entirely possible to order a latte from a coffee cart on Magnolia Avenue, walk a stretch of paved creek path without crossing a major road, buy peaches from a farm stand, watch someone's kid learn mahjong, and end up in Greenbrae in time for a bakery that has been selling the same wedding cake recipe since 1914. None of that requires a car. Most of it does not even require checking a map, because the map is the thing getting this wrong.
Greenbrae and Larkspur read like two separate places. Different names, different feel off the highway exit, a Sir Francis Drake Boulevard that seems to divide one from the other. But this year's crop of local openings, most of them sitting within a few blocks of the Corte Madera Creek Path, makes a different argument: this is one neighborhood that answers to two names.
Three Doors, One Path
Walk the creek path long enough and you keep arriving at the same three doors.
- Remillard Park, on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Larkspur, is the creek path's bay-facing trailhead, with views of windsurfers and a pond where ducks and turtles have taken up residence. It sits close enough to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal that locals treat a ferry-then-trail combination as a normal Saturday, not a special trip. Marin Country Mart, home of the neighborhood's Saturday market, sits on that same stretch of Sir Francis Drake, between the ferry terminal and the SMART train station.
- Niven Park, a quieter creek entrance off Drakes Landing Road, carries a Greenbrae address even though it's maintained by the City of Larkspur. That overlap is not a filing error. It's just how this stretch of Marin has always worked. Bon Air Center, the shopping hub at Highway 101 and Sir Francis Drake, is an easy walk from here.
- A third loop, built around Doherty Drive, runs alongside Magnolia Avenue, the same block where a small coffee cart has been pulling espresso shots since February.
These segments don't physically connect. The path near the ferry terminal and the path continuing further west are far enough apart that regulars link them with a stretch of South Eliseo Drive rather than one unbroken ribbon of pavement. That gap is sort of the point. Greenbrae and Larkspur were never going to be a single continuous trail system. What they became instead is a set of short walks that each lead somewhere worth going, and this year more of those somewheres have something new behind the door.
The Cart Is Open. The Restaurant Is Still a Question Mark.
On Magnolia Avenue, restaurateur Borhen Hammami and his wife Afaq are working through a version of the same lesson: some doors take longer to open than the calendar promised. Hammami built his name at Berber, the Michelin BiB Gourmand-listed Moroccan restaurant in San Francisco. His next project, Feerma, is a North African and Mediterranean grill and bar planned for 455 Magnolia Avenue.
The full restaurant isn't open yet. What has been running since mid-February is Feerma Love, a coffee cart in front of the construction site, according to Redwood Bark, pouring drinks like a black sesame latte and an orange blossom latte brewed from Land and Water Coffee beans out of Santa Rosa, paired with pastries from Tarts de Feybesse.
Early word framed the full dining room as a summer opening. That timeline has since moved. By May, a customer reviewing the cart online said staff were pointing to later this year for the restaurant itself, not summer. As of this writing in early August, downtown Larkspur is still getting its Mediterranean fix from a cart, not a dining room. Anyone circling a date on the calendar should treat it as a placeholder until the tables actually show up.
What's Actually Running on Schedule at the Mart
A few blocks away, near the ferry terminal, Marin Country Mart's calendar isn't slipping anywhere. The Saturday Farmers' Market runs 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through the end of August this year, with vendors regulars already know by name: Alexandre Family Farm, Frog Hollow Farm, and Country Line Harvest, alongside food trucks like Wafflemania and Ethel's Bagels. Live music runs from 11 to 2, and children's programming starts at 9:30, so the market functions as a meeting place as much as a shopping trip.
The Mart's other standing appointment is quieter. Every Sunday, instructors from MarinMahjong.com run a beginner lesson from 11 a.m. to noon, followed by open play until 3, no lesson required if you already know the tiles. And from June 19 through the end of October, the Mart runs a Saturday movie night, giving the same plaza two entirely different identities depending on which day you show up.
Bon Air's Math: A Bakery from 1914 Next to Whatever Opens This Year
Bon Air Center, the Greenbrae shopping hub at Highway 101 and Sir Francis Drake, has been standing since 1952, which makes it older than nearly everything else mentioned so far, including the ferry terminal parking structure most people complain about. The center's roughly 50 tenants mix eras in a way that would look accidental anywhere else. Victoria Pastry has been making the same St. Honore and wedding cakes since 1914, thirty-eight years before Bon Air broke ground to house it. This year, Bon Air's own leasing materials list a new arrival too: a dumpling-and-cocktail spot described as a neighborhood gathering place, originally slated for an early-summer opening.
Put those two facts side by side and the neighborhood's real character shows up. This isn't a place trading an old identity for a new one. It's a place where a bakery older than the shopping center itself and a bar that only exists this year share a parking lot and a customer base, and neither one gets treated as the odd one out.
The Loop, Written Out
If you wanted to string all of this into one Saturday, here's roughly what it looks like on the ground:
- Start at Remillard Park on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, coffee in hand if you picked it up at the Mart.
- Walk the paved segment toward the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, watching for windsurfers and the pond's resident turtles.
- Cut over to Marin Country Mart for the Saturday market, still running through the end of August, or the Sunday mahjong tables if you've timed it a day later.
- Cover the gap to Niven Park by road rather than trail, since the creek path doesn't connect the two segments directly.
- Walk the quiet Niven Park stretch toward St. Eliseo Drive, then head into Greenbrae proper for Bon Air Center.
- Finish at Victoria Pastry, a bakery that predates Bon Air by nearly four decades, or the new dumpling bar a few doors down if you'd rather end the day with something that only opened this year.
None of this requires calling it Greenbrae or Larkspur specifically. It only requires the creek path, a working pair of shoes, and a willingness to treat the two names as one errand list.
If this stretch of Sir Francis Drake has you thinking about what it would actually take to live inside the loop instead of just walking it on weekends, Bonnie Spindler has spent more than three decades matching buyers and sellers to the specific blocks of Marin and San Francisco that fit how they actually want to live. Book an appointment and start with the details that matter more than a listing photo ever will.
