Tụ Tập, a new Vietnamese restaurant, is due to open this summer in San Anselmo in the former location of Kientz Hall, seen in 2024.
Lauren Segal/Special to the Chronicle
The view of Mount Tamalpais from the rooftop deck at the former Kientz Hall, where Tụ Tập will soon open.
Lauren Segal/Special to the Chronicle
A group of Bay Area restaurant industry veterans that includes a former longtime Slanted Door chef is bringing a buzzy modern Vietnamese restaurant to Marin County — though the opening team of Tụ Tập, due open in July in San Anselmo, comes with a share of legal controversy.
Owner Adam Block has owned and helped broker deals for dozens of prominent restaurants in the Bay Area and across the country, as well as abroad, for decades, including Thomas Keller’s Per Se. A former partner and chief financial officer at Farmshop in Larkspur and Santa Monica, he’s involved in a legal battle with Farmshop chef-owner Jeffrey Cerciello, whom he sued in 2024 for breach of contract, alleging he was pushed out of the venture. Cerciello countersued, alleging Block was stealing money from the business, among other complaints. Both men deny the other’s claims. The cases are due to go to trial in February.
Block declined to comment on the case but said he is excited to open a restaurant in San Anselmo, where he lives, especially after working on projects around the world. “It’s kind of a homecoming,” he said.
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Executive chef and partner Justine Kelly, who worked at the Slanted Door for 18 years and also grew up in San Anselmo, will lead the kitchen at Tụ Tập, which is taking over a space with a large rooftop patio boasting views of Mount Tamalpais at 625 San Anselmo Ave. Bill Upson of the Real Restaurants group, which includes Bix in San Francisco and Buckeye Roadhouse and Picco in Marin, is also a partner at Tụ Tập.
The Chronicle first learned about the new restaurant from John Nguyen, who was recently hired as Tụ Tập’s chef de cuisine. He left the project, Block said, after a reporter asked about Nguyen’s background. Nguyen, who helmed some of New York City’s most acclaimed Vietnamese restaurants and was named Chef of the Year by Eater New York in 2017, garnered headlines in 2018 when his former employer, a New York restaurant owner, whom he threatened after his job was terminated, according to court records, sought a temporary restraining order and sued him. The case was settled out of court.
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Later that year, Nguyen was arrested by the New York Police Department on suspicion of aggravated harassment for allegedly making threats against another employer, Eater New York reported. The NYPD did not respond to a request for an update on that case. Nguyen has been working in Hong Kong restaurants since 2019.
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“This came out after we hired him,” Block said, adding that Nguyen’s hire was based on a word-of-mouth recommendation. “We appreciated him taking the honorable initiative of stepping away.”
Nguyen did not respond to requests to comment.
Tụ Tập will put a bar on the rooftop deck.
Lauren Segal/Special to the Chronicle
Kelly said her main inspiration is famed Slanted Door chef-owner Charles Phan, whom she knew for 30 years and who died last year. (The acclaimed restaurateur had his own plans to open a Vietnamese noodle restaurant in Marin before his death; when or whether it will open is unclear.) “It’s been really emotional for me to do the project,” Kelly said. “For me, personally, it is an homage to him and his legacy moving forward.”
The menu will include “spins on classic Vietnamese” dishes, Kelly said, with a mesquite grill as well as a raw bar program and weekend dim sum-inspired brunch with both Chinese and Vietnamese dishes, including dumplings and pho. Tụ Tập will will also sell grab-and-go dumplings and meal kits; the latter ties into Kelly’s experience as co-founder and executive chef at Sun Basket, a Bay Area meal kit company that closed in 2022.
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Tụ Tập is taking over a space previously occupied by Kientz Hall, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant that closed in late 2024.
Block said Tụ Tập’s downstairs lounge and additional bar on the upstairs patio will give it an “urban” feel, to fill a niche for suburban residents in the post-COVID era, who work from home more often and spend less time in the city as a result. “People are eating closer to where their bed is,” he said, so they “are missing those experiences.”
Editor’s note: This story, published on May 29, contained inaccurate details about the civil litigation between Adam Block and Jeffrey Cerciello and was corrected on May 30.