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The Restaurant Worth the Drive Up Highway One: Bar Auklet

One SF/Bay Area opening a day, chosen and checked. Today: the oyster-shack operator the New York Times put in America's top 50 opens a live-fire seafood room up the coast, supplied by his own family's 117-year-old oyster farm.

Shannon Gregory runs the Marshall Store, a no-frills oyster shack on Tomales Bay that the New York Times named one of America's 50 best restaurants back in 2021. Last Thursday, July 2, he opened something more ambitious in Point Reyes Station: Bar Auklet, a live-fire seafood room, Eater SF reports.

The throughline is supply. Gregory's family owns the Tomales Bay Oyster Company, a 117-year-old farm his sister now runs, so the oysters come straight from the tanks. His Route One Bakery and Kitchen in Tomales supplies the bread. He told the Pacific Sun he built Bar Auklet to serve, in his words, "a level of quality that is not available anywhere around," the kind of cooking he says people would otherwise drive to San Francisco for.

Running the kitchen is Anthony Paone, who worked with Gregory at the butchery-focused Cafe Rouge before it closed in 2016 and has since been executive chef at Sea Salt and Lalime's, per the Point Reyes Light. The menu, Eater SF reports, leads with local seafood: oysters, Dungeness crab, and anchovies, plus wood-fired grill items like squid with lemon ketchup and fermented cayenne. The opening menu, per SFGate, also runs to crudo, sashimi, an oyster pan roast, and scallop ravioli, with small plates under $30. The bar pours European wines, vermouth cocktails, and craft beers and sodas made in house.

The room is a landmark revival. Bar Auklet took over the former Station House Cafe at 11180 Highway 1, a building now owned by the Point Reyes Good Luck Fund, a nonprofit tech founder Chris Hulls set up to steward old West Marin businesses (he also saved the century-old Old Western bar). Gregory signed the lease in January after Hulls spent a year looking for the right partner, SFGate notes.

Why this opening matters more than the others this week: West Marin has oyster shacks and bakeries but nothing at this cooking level, and Gregory told the Pacific Sun he expects this to be his last venture. Dinner is the sit-down event; lunch runs as pickup-only sushi and bento boxes sold through Instagram, and with no reservation system named in the coverage, plan to walk in early in these first weeks.

Tracking

Bar Skula (Oakland, Lake Merritt): no grand-opening date or reservation system yet since its July 1 soft open; watch for both as it settles in.

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