Tartine Bakery soft opens at Strawberry Village; official opening Aug. 19

Staff training is underway at the new Tartine Bakery in Strawberry Village, which has been open intermittently since Aug. 13. The formal opening is set for Aug. 19. (Margaret Hemley / For The Ark)

Tiburon Peninsula residents no longer have to drive to San Francisco, or wait in its hourlong lines, for a Tartine country loaf.

The bakery will formally open its first North Bay store Aug. 19 at the Strawberry Village shopping center, filling two storefronts that had sat empty for years and ending a wait that began when Tartine announced the location in March 2025.

The 3,091-square-foot bakery and cafe sits in the same cluster as Safeway, Calico Corners and High Tech Burrito. It will be open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. daily and will sell the sourdough, morning buns and pastries that built the brand, soft-scramble tartines and breakfast sandwiches on a sweet potato bun, along with lunch items including ham-and-gruyere sandwiches and a double smash burger with American cheese, celery remoulade and fennel confit.

Tartine began opening intermittently for staff trainings on Aug. 13, with staff saying a friends and family soft opening was set for Aug. 15 and Aug. 16 and the public soft opening would begin Aug. 17.

San Francisco firm Studio BBA designed the space to pick up the shopping center’s Mediterranean look, with high ceilings, an open floor plan and sightlines that let customers watch the bakers work.

The store is also a return to the peninsula’s doorstep for a business that started nearby. Founders Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt honed their craft at Bay Village Breads in Point Reyes Station, then moved to 17 Madrona St. in Mill Valley in 2000. They left for San Francisco in 2002 and opened the first Tartine at 18th and Guerrero streets in the Mission district, where customers reserved bread three days ahead and lined up each morning for the afternoon bake.

The pair won the James Beard Foundation award for the best pastry chefs in America in 2008, and Bon Appétit magazine called Tartine “America’s most influential bakery” in 2017. Robertson’s 2010 book, “Tartine Bread,” helped set off the home sourdough boom.

Tartine’s three other Bay Area locations are all in San Francisco: the original Mission bakery, the Tartine Manufactory and a store in the Inner Sunset. The company also runs seven locations in Los Angeles and six in Seoul, South Korea, and has leased a former CVS in San Francisco’s Financial District, a fourth city store it expects to open next year.

Getting to opening day in Strawberry took longer than planned. Edens, the Washington, D.C.-based real-estate developer that has owned the center since 2022, said in 2025 that Tartine would open that year. Tartine CEO Dar Vasseghi said last fall that the target had moved to spring 2026, and a publicist later pointed to the end of July.

This story will be updated.