For a city that spent the past three summers watching landmark restaurants go dark, this August feels different. The hilltop is lit again, Montgomery Drive has a line out the door, and the two busiest weekends on the civic calendar are about to compress into a nine-day stretch that will reshape how you park, eat, and shop downtown.
The Two Weekends That Will Rewrite Your Routine
August in Santa Rosa always meant the Sonoma County Fair. This year it means the fair plus a marathon plus a suspended farmers' market, all inside sixteen days.
- Aug 7–16: Sonoma County Fair runs ten days at the fairgrounds off Bennett Valley Road, with wine country horse racing, the Hall of Flowers, and the usual carnival footprint.
- Aug 8–9: The Gravenstein Apple Fair takes over Ragle Ranch Park in Sebastopol, which is a fifteen minute drive west and a legitimate escape valve if the fairgrounds crowds are too much.
- Aug 12: Last Wednesday of the Wednesday Night Market season at Old Courthouse Square, per the city's own calendar at srcity.org.
- Aug 15–16: The Cotati Accordion Festival at La Plaza Park, a twelve minute drive south, and unlike anything else on the county calendar.
- Aug 22–23: The Santa Rosa Marathon returns for a scenic weekend through wine country with an after-party at Old Courthouse Square. Details at visitsantarosa.com.
- Aug 23: No Sunday Downtown Farmers' Market at Courthouse Square that day because the marathon finish line is sitting on it. The market resumes the following Sunday and runs through September 20.
If you live in Bennett Valley, Junior College, or anywhere feeding onto Fourth Street, the practical read is this: front-load your downtown errands into the week of Aug 17–21, when the fair has wrapped and the marathon has not yet closed streets.
Restaurants That Finally Opened
The 2022 closure wave left a lot of empty rooms. A stretch of them refilled this spring, and the reason is not just optimism. More than 20 restaurants have opened or are slated to debut in Sonoma County in 2026, and some restaurateurs point to a softening real estate market and easing rents as one reason behind the surge. That is a real shift in the underlying economics of a storefront, and it explains why so many of these openings landed in previously vacant landmark spaces rather than new construction.
The Junction, hilltop above Annadel. This is the one most locals have been asking about. After three years of quiet on the ridge above Annadel State Park, the Villa reopened as The Junction with sweeping views, family-friendly pizza, and an expanded beer program. Per Sonoma Magazine, the Santa Rosa outpost features a 4,000-square-foot beer garden with a play area and live-music stage, a 150-seat dining room, a 30-tap draft program, and an on-site bottle shop, and unlike the Mill Valley original it includes a full bar. The Hoodline write-up has the full backstory on the Fiedler and Krupman partnership. If you have family visiting during fair week and you want a room big enough to absorb a group of eight, this is the reservation.
Parkside Eats, 4323 Montgomery Drive. The former Lepe's space reopened this spring, and the neighborhood found it fast. Parkside Eats is already packed for good reason, open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch, with birria hash, juicy burgers, poke nachos, roasted chicken and fish tacos as standouts. Owners Hayley Cutri and Efrain Balmes recently closed their Sonoma Eats restaurant in Agua Caliente after the building was put up for sale, and they carried the concept over the county line.
Olives and Agave, 909 Village Court. Tapas and Mediterranean plates inspired by Spain and the Middle East replaced Montgomery Village's Cascabel, which quietly closed last May. The shopping center anchor slot was empty for the better part of a year, so this one matters for anyone who does their Saturday errands at Montgomery Village.
Redwood Gospel Baking Company. A working bakery cafe attached to the Redwood Gospel Mission opened in April with espresso drinks, plain croissants, kouign-amann, and almond croissants, per Press Democrat coverage. The room reads as a legitimate work-from-cafe spot, not a mission adjunct.
Seoul to Tokyo, 3082 Marlow Road, Suite B3. Korean, Japanese and Pacific Rim dishes, with standouts including bulgogi, ramen, tteok-bokki and katsu. Fills a gap that has been open for a while on the west side.
The Ones Still on the Horizon
Two announced projects are worth tracking because they take over rooms that have defined west Santa Rosa dining for decades.
Owl & The Vine, Guerneville Road. A new wine bar and taproom is expected to open in late summer 2026 in the former Walter Hansel Wine & Bistro space on Guerneville Road in west Santa Rosa, the latest venture from Lawrence and Stephanie Bondulich, a husband-and-wife team from New York who say they hope to revive the historic roadside property. Walter Hansel closed in August 2025 after 12 years, with rising food costs and declining foot traffic cited as reasons. The building dates to 1944 and has played a varied role in Santa Rosa's dining scene, originally a chicken coop, later home to Big Oak Chicken Shack in the late 1940s, the Spaghetti Factory, the Country Western Bull Rider Saloon, Willowside Cafe and Zazu Kitchen + Farm. Read the full history in the Press Democrat.
Hapa's on the Mainland, former Cricklewood. The Sweet T's team plans to open Hawaiian restaurant Hapa's on the Mainland in Santa Rosa by the end of 2026, featuring Hawaiian-style dishes, per the Press Democrat. Cricklewood was a west-side institution before it burned, so the rebuild carries some weight.
AYA at Graton Resort & Casino. A rendering of the forthcoming Aya restaurant at Graton Resort & Casino was scheduled to open in May 2026. It has already landed on early "hot and new" lists, which suggests it opened on or near schedule.
Three of the biggest openings this year took over spaces that had been dark for two years or more: The Villa, Cricklewood, and Walter Hansel. Read that as a signal about which end of Santa Rosa's commercial real estate market is actually moving.
A Quieter August Playbook
The fair and the marathon are the obvious anchors. The better week is often the one in between.
Sunday, Aug 17. The Downtown Farmers' Market is on at Old Courthouse Square, the fair has closed, and the marathon has not started. The Sunday market runs July 12 through September 20 at 69 Old Courthouse Square. This is your one clean-window Sunday of the month.
Aug 15–16. If you have never been to the Cotati Accordion Festival, this is the year. It is a fifteen minute drive on 101 South and it sits far enough outside the Santa Rosa event footprint to feel like a real change of scenery.
Summer on the Square. Downtown Santa Rosa is programming free Summer on the Square live concerts throughout the month, with the Sonoma County Super Jam among the listings on the downtown calendar. Bring a blanket, walk from wherever you park, and stay through sunset.
Second-Saturday park cleanup. The Park-A-Month Volunteer Clean-up is held the second Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Southwest Community Park, 1698 Hearn Avenue. An hour of work, a real neighborhood, and the coffee tastes better afterward.
What This Month Says About the City
Three restaurants reopening long-shuttered rooms in one spring is not a coincidence. It is the built environment responding to a shift in commercial rents that has not yet fully shown up in residential data. If you have lived here long enough to remember the Villa in its 1970s form, or Zazu on Guerneville Road, or Cricklewood before the fire, this August is the first month in a while where the map of Santa Rosa feels like it is being redrawn in your favor rather than thinned out.
Come Aug 24, the marathon medals are handed out, the fair is a memory, and the Sunday market is back on the Square. That is the moment to actually try the reservation you have been putting off.
If you are thinking about where you want to be planted for the next chapter of this city, Amy Ahlers knows the streets, the schools of thought on the school of hard rents, and every corner Santa Rosa is quietly rebuilding. Own the home meant for you.
