As readers of this space know all too well, Mill Valley is home to some of the best restaurants in the Bay Area, as has been on display in recent years with the annual Mill Valley Restaurant Rally, with restaurants including Piatti, Piazza D’Angelo, Playa, Paseo Bistro, Bungalow 44, Gravity Tavern, Corner Bar, Watershed, Rock + Rye at Sweetwater Music Hall and Buckeye Roadhouse, and many more.
Piccino Presidio opened in March. Whereas the Dogpatch Piccino is cozy, the new location in the former Sessions space on the Lucasfilm campus is handsome but huge, with 230 seats, a main dining room and bar, two private rooms, and a big front porch.
Margherita Sagan’s husband, Loring, is the cofounder and partner in Build, a firm that does residential development in San Francisco. He and Margherita recently bought a decrepit waterfront building in Mill Valley, at 242 Redwood Highway Frontage Road, where the Grateful Dead once practiced and still functions as the base for seaplane tours. It will house Piccino No. 3.
Like everything Rogat and Sagan do, the Mill Valley project has been a little nuts, as any property dealing with water elements will be.
But with the building permits secured, they hope things are on track for 2026. One thing is for sure: It will have pizza, pasta, and amazing bay views. Soon to have three restaurants to their name, the two women might very well see each other out of this life together. “We’re like sisters. We bicker; we’re joyful,” says Rogat. “And we’ll probably be buried next to each other.”
The Piccino menu has the same pizzas and delicious chiocciole pasta with fennel-pork sausage and kale as the original, but that’s where the similarities begin and end. Whereas the Dogpatch Piccino is cozy, the new location in the former Sessions space on the Lucasfilm campus is handsome but huge, with 230 seats, a main dining room and bar, two private rooms, and a big front porch.
Piccino owners Margherita Sagan and Sheryl Rogat opened in 2006.
The Mill Valley location at 242 Redwood Highway Frontage Road, near the waterfront, is set to debut later next year or in early 2026, and will be called Piccino Sull’Acqua. Both outposts will channel the Piccino ethos — seasonal food with Italian influence, from veggie-heavy pasta to pizzas — but have their own identities based on their chefs and locations, owners said.