Drive Bodega Avenue past the edge of downtown Sebastopol this fall and you'll pass a building that has worn three different names since it stopped being Marty's Top of the Hill. It was the French Garden for a while. Then Gravenstein Grill, until that closed in December 2023 and sat dark. Now it's Mansoor, a tableside "flambé house" where dishes finish in front of you with an open flame, bananas Foster and crêpes Suzette and saganaki among them.
That building's turnover is the real story of Sebastopol's food scene this year, and it's not happening where you'd expect. For the last several seasons, new openings in town have clustered at The Barlow, the converted apple-cannery complex where a curated roster of tenants shares parking, foot traffic and a built-in audience. This year's most interesting additions didn't go there. They went into leftover storefronts around the old town core, on Bodega Avenue and Healdsburg Avenue and Main Street, buildings with decades of prior tenants and none of the Barlow's managed infrastructure. One of them almost didn't open at all.
The Building Nobody Could Agree On
Mansoor's owner, Matt Sadati, a Walnut Creek-based developer with several Bay Area restaurants behind him, told Sonoma Magazine earlier this year that he wanted "to bring something that is missing to Sebastopol." Getting there took longer than a menu rollout. A nearby property owner, Riccardo Oliveira, appealed the planning commission's approval of the project, arguing that the site needed a full CEQA review and additional parking before a new restaurant use could move forward. The dispute went to the city council, and the question at the center of it wasn't really about flambé cooking. It was about whether Mansoor counted as a brand-new use of the property or simply a continuation of a restaurant that had operated there, under different names, for years.
The council sided with continuation. At its April 21 meeting it denied the appeal and granted Mansoor a beer and wine license, clearing the way for chef Zack Ghidotti, whose résumé includes stops in Tucson and Asheville along with Sonoma County, to open the kitchen. The Sebastopol Times covered the fight in detail, and it's worth reading if you want to see how a single restaurant opening can turn into a referendum on parking, precedent and what "new" actually means inside a building that's been serving food since long before flambé was the pitch.
The Rest Of The Storefronts Filled In Too
Mansoor wasn't alone in choosing an existing address over a fresh build. A few blocks away on Healdsburg Avenue, Alesta Modern Mediterranean took over the former Piala space, bringing saganaki, mezze platters and branzino to a storefront that had sat between concepts. On Main Street, Bonnie Bagels & Co. opened at 280 S. Main, putting East Coast-style bagels a short walk from the Sunday farmers market crowd that already knows the block.
None of these three needed a marketplace to anchor them. They needed a building, a lease and, in Mansoor's case, a city council willing to settle an argument about what counts as new.
| Restaurant | Address | Previous tenant | What's on the menu |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mansoor | 8050 Bodega Ave | Gravenstein Grill, French Garden, Marty's Top of the Hill | Tableside flambé: bananas Foster, crêpes Suzette, saganaki |
| Alesta Modern Mediterranean | 7233 Healdsburg Ave | Piala | Saganaki, mezze platters, branzino |
| Bonnie Bagels & Co. | 280 S. Main St | — | East Coast-style bagels |
Meanwhile, over at The Barlow, Wild Poppy Cafe has been expanding into the old Woodfour Brewing space with plans for an on-site tofu operation. That's real news too, and it's already been covered here. The point isn't that the Barlow stopped mattering. It's that the town's food story this year has two different addresses, and the one without a marketing team behind it is the one that had to go through a public hearing to exist.
A Festival At Ives Park, Not The Barlow Either
The same pattern holds for the next big date on the calendar. The Many Moons Festival returns to Ives Park on Saturday, October 3, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., its second year running. The Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition of the North Bay puts on the event, and last year's edition set the tone: taiko drumming, lion dancers, an ethnic fusion fashion show, and a lantern-lighting ceremony at dusk that closes out the day. Advance tickets run $10, $15 at the gate, and kids 12 and under get in free.
Like the new restaurants, this isn't a Barlow event. It's downtown, at the park most Sebastopol residents already think of as the default spot for anything communal, from summer concerts to farmers market overflow. If you're planning a Saturday around it, a few things are worth knowing:
- The festival runs the full day, so arriving early avoids the midday crush without missing the lantern ceremony at dusk.
- Ives Park sits close enough to Main Street that a pre-festival stop at Bonnie Bagels or a post-festival dinner at Mansoor is a genuine option, not a stretch.
- Tickets are cheaper in advance, and the coalition's own site has the current lineup if performers change closer to the date.
What This Actually Changes If You Live Here
None of this requires a special trip. That's the point. The last two years trained Sebastopol regulars to think of new food as something that happens at the Barlow, in a space built for browsing between shops. This year's additions ask for something more old-fashioned: you drive to a specific address, on a street you already know, to eat at a restaurant that fought to be there.
That's not a knock on the Barlow model. It's a sign that the parts of town outside it still have enough foot traffic and enough demand to support a business willing to renovate a dark storefront and, if necessary, argue its case in front of the city council. Mansoor's fight over parking wasn't really about a shortage of spaces. It was about whether a thirty-year-old restaurant building gets to keep being a restaurant building without starting over from zero every time it changes hands. The council said yes. Alesta and Bonnie Bagels didn't need council approval to prove the same point with less friction.
If you've lived in Sebastopol for a while, you already know which storefronts have been sitting empty and which ones just quietly reopened under a new name. This fall gives you three fresh answers on that list, plus a Saturday at Ives Park to close it out.
If any of this has you thinking about what's happening with property values or turnover in the neighborhoods around downtown, that's a different conversation, and one Jennifer Klein Real Estate is glad to have whenever you're ready. For now, get a bagel, make a dinner reservation, and save October 3 for Ives Park.
