If you live here, you already know Bridgeway in July. Foot traffic thickens by 10 a.m., the ferry disgorges another wave at noon, and by dinner the sidewalk between Anchor Street and El Portal is a slow shuffle. What's different this year is who you're walking past. The ground floors of some of the oldest buildings on the waterfront have new operators, a longtime Italian anchor has a new name, and the free summer calendar happens to line up with almost every one of those openings. This is the walking tour, in order.
The 1915 Building at 690 Bridgeway Has a New Tenant
The corner of Bridgeway and El Portal, across from the ferry landing, sat quiet for years after Caffè Tutti closed in 2020. That building has anchored the block since it was built more than a century ago. On February 17, 2026, it reopened as Cultivar Sausalito, and it is the most substantial ground-floor turnover on the waterfront this cycle.
A few things worth noting if you haven't walked in yet:
- The space is 4,500 square feet, three times the size of the group's original Cultivar San Francisco, which changes the scale of what you can do on a Saturday night without a reservation.
- The renovation cost north of $4 million and took more than three years to complete.
- The historic Hotel Sausalito, built in 1915, sits above it, and the shell was preserved through the build-out.
- The kitchen centerpiece is a Valoriani wood-fire oven crafted in Tuscany, where the company has made wood-fired ovens for more than 50 years. That's what's driving the pizza and hearth-roasted portion of the menu.
The program is garden-to-glass on the bar side, farm-to-table on the plate side, with produce coming down from the owners' Napa gardens. If you want the practical version: the address is 690 Bridgeway, phone (415) 962-4200, dinner daily from 5 p.m., parking in the lot directly across the street, with happy hour and lunch to be added in the coming months.
The Divino Space Is Now Notte Divino
A block south, the longtime home of Ristorante Divino has quietly changed hands. The Sausalito Chamber of Commerce is hosting the ribbon-cutting on Friday, July 24, 2026 for Notte Divino, and the framing matters for anyone who ate at the previous restaurant for years.
Elizabeth Nebot's hospitality is being honored as part of the transition, and the new owners, Jaxton Funk and Johnny "Love" Metheny, are continuing the tradition of Southern Italian cuisine and Italian wines while adding handcrafted cocktails, live jazz, and a late-night atmosphere. Same room, adjacent identity. If you were a Divino regular, walk in before you decide whether it's still your restaurant.
What's Still Coming
One more waterfront opening is on the calendar for later this year. Piccino Sul Mare, an Italian-inspired California restaurant from the team behind Piccino and Piccino Presidio in San Francisco, is slated for a 2026 debut on the Sausalito waterfront. Much of the produce at Piccino is grown on the company's own farm in Healdsburg, Piccino Fields, which is a useful data point when you're deciding whether to treat this as another San Francisco import or as something more regional.
An exact opening date has not been announced. If you live near the water, you'll probably see the buildout signs before the press release lands.
The Free Calendar, in Chronological Order
Here is the practical part, the reason a lot of you scrolled this far. Print this or screenshot it.
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Every Friday, June 5 through mid-September | Jazz & Blues by the Bay, 16 weeks of free Friday-night concerts | Gabrielson Park |
| Saturday, July 18, 4–8 p.m. | Spaulding Marine Center 75th Anniversary Summer Party, free, with live music, food and drink, hands-on demos, and a yard sale | 600 Gate 5 Road |
| Friday, July 24 | Notte Divino ribbon-cutting | Former Ristorante Divino space |
| Saturday, July 25, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. | Art, Eats and monthly market, 4th Saturday of the month | Tracy Way, Ferry Landing Plaza, Gabrielson Park |
| Saturday, September 19, 12–4 p.m. | Live music and unlimited tasting wristbands, $25 pre-sale, $30 week of | Dunphy Park |
Two of those deserve their own paragraph.
Spaulding at 75
If you've lived here long enough to walk the Marinship, you know Spaulding. The building yard has been on Gate 5 Road since 1951. The 75-year celebration is a free evening on the waterfront with live music, local food and drink, hands-on demos, maritime art, and a yard sale. The 75-Year Toast is at 6 p.m., with music by Salt Over the Shoulder. This is one of the few evenings a year the working waterfront is open to walk-throughs, and it is a better introduction to that side of Sausalito than any brochure.
The Fourth, Executed Properly
The July 4 program in town is a full day, not a fireworks show with filler around it. The parade starts at 10 a.m. in Old Town, the picnic runs noon to 4 p.m. at Dunphy Park, the evening celebration begins at 6:30 p.m. at Gabrielson Park, and the fireworks run 9:15–9:30 p.m. at Gabrielson Park. If you're hosting out-of-town family, the Dunphy-then-Gabrielson sequence is the local one. If you'd rather skip it, that's the day to book a table inland.
One New Event Worth Watching
Dogs by the Bay was a brand-new event on the waterfront in spring 2026, and the inaugural celebration turned into a standout success.
Worth knowing because inaugural community events in Sausalito either disappear or become fixtures within two years. If the 2027 edition is confirmed, expect it to move around Tracy Way, Bridgeway, and Gabrielson Park the way the fall festival cycle does.
The Downtown Backdrop
None of this is happening in a static setting. Downtown Sausalito's own framing for 2026 is that a new chapter is underway along the waterfront with improved access, public spaces, and renewed energy, and that downtown stands at an inflection point. Cultivar taking over a shuttered corner, a name change at Divino, a Piccino build-out in progress, Spaulding turning 75, and a first-year dog festival landing well are the individual data points behind that framing. If you'd been away for the last two summers, this is the season you'd notice the difference.
How to Sequence a Saturday
For anyone reading this who wants a plan rather than a menu of options, one workable sequence for late July:
- Coffee downtown by 9 a.m., before the ferry crowd.
- The 4th-Saturday market on Tracy Way and Ferry Landing Plaza from 10 a.m., which pulls in local makers and food vendors and is a better shopping window than a weekday.
- Walk north on Bridgeway. Look at what's happening in the Piccino Sul Mare buildout as you pass.
- Late lunch or an early cocktail at Cultivar's bar. The 20-seat bar is designed for walk-ins and is the low-friction way to see what the room does before you commit to a full dinner reservation.
- Drive or bike up Gate 5 Road in the late afternoon for whatever Spaulding programming is running that weekend.
- Back to Gabrielson Park after 6 p.m. for Jazz & Blues by the Bay if it's a Friday, or dinner at Notte Divino if it's a Saturday and the room is open.
That is a full day on foot, without a car for most of it, and it will cost you very little other than what you spend at the bar.
The Point
The reason the summer calendar matters, even for a resident who has been through fifteen of them, is that it's the fastest way to actually see what's changed on the block since last year. The Bridgeway you walked in July 2024 is not the Bridgeway you're walking in July 2026. Two of the three restaurants named in this piece did not exist under their current names four months ago. A third is a build-out you can watch in real time. The waterfront's summer program is free, and it happens to route you past every one of them.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own block, your own home, or a family member thinking about a move down from the city, Julie Upton is happy to walk it with you. Let's connect.
