A Point Reyes Station restaurant is about to get a new name, new owners and a slightly different menu. As of April 1, the Point Reyes Roadhouse will be known as Mi Casita.
Longtime waitress and host Marina Bernal and her nephew, Ruben Santana, are taking over the lease from Ms. Bernal’s niece, Marisol Salgado, who will continue operating her other business up the road, Whale of a Deli.
Ms. Bernal will own 70 percent of Mi Casita, and Mr. Santana, a chef, will own the rest.
“This is my American dream,” Ms. Bernal said. “I really love this restaurant. This is my life.”
Ms. Bernal, industrious as ever at age 53, has been putting in long hours at the roadhouse since her niece opened the place amid the pandemic, in 2021. It serves breakfast and lunch six days a week, and brunch on weekends. Ms. Bernal will soon also offer dinner on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
The new owners intend to keep all the staples of the menu—such as the Olema Cheese Steak, the Lighthouse French Toast and the Miwok Veggie Hash—but add some Italian seafood dishes and Mexican options. Tuesdays will become Taco Tuesdays, for lunch only, at first, but eventually for dinner, too. Other new additions: barbecued oysters, fish and chips, and clam chowder, dishes that many of their weekend guests—mostly tourists—have requested.
Although prices nationwide have been rising, Ms. Bernal plans to knock a dollar or two off a few menu staples. The Ridge Chicken Sandwich and the Sky Burger—the most basic of the three burger options on the menu—will fall from $23.50 to $21.50. She will also add a kids’ menu, and, for young and old alike, milkshakes.
And someday, Ms. Bernal said, she might turn the large yard into a beer garden.
Ms. Bernal moved to town with her ex-husband when she was just 18. He took a job at the Mendoza dairy, and her first job in town was at Café Reyes. For the last 27 years, she has lived in Petaluma, where she once held three different restaurant jobs at the same time.
Mr. Salgado, who is 44, works as a chef at K.C.’s American Kitchen in Windsor and has been in the restaurant business for more than two decades. He will supervise Mi Casita’s kitchen in the evenings while continuing to work mornings at his current job.
The lease changed over on Sunday, and the new menu and hours will take effect on April 1.
The building, just down Highway 1 from the Levee Road, was built in the 1940s and was originally an auto shop. It has housed a succession of restaurants over the years, most famously Chez Madeleine, which enjoyed a successful run there from the late 1960s into the 1980s. After that, David Evans, the Point Reyes rancher who still owns the building, operated a restaurant there along with his Marin Sun Farms butcher shop for 16 years.
Next came Ms. Salgado, who painted the exterior of the single-story building deep red, making it impossible to miss as you drive into town from the south.
For his part, Mr. Evans is relieved to have found a new tenant quickly, given how many restaurants in town are sitting vacant, including the former Sir and Star, Vladimir’s, Fog’s Kitchen and, most recently, Saltwater. Eleven in Bolinas and the William Tell House in Tomales have also closed their doors in recent years.
“I have a mortgage and expenses to run the place, and I was really worried that I was going to have to go a long period of time without a tenant,” Mr. Evans said. “I’m grateful that Marina was ready to go. A lot of this happened quickly, and it wasn’t expected.”
Unlike many other West Marin establishments that struggle with staffing due to scarce housing and high rents, Ms. Bernal already has her team in place.
Three longtime chefs—Marquesita Velasquez, Horfilia Gomez and David Ramirez, who have been at the Roadhouse from the early days—will stay on. And despite Ms. Salgado’s departure, La Casita will remain mostly a family affair. In addition to Ms. Bernal’s nephew, two of her four grown children, Bryan and Ulises, will work there on weekends.
Ulises suggested the restaurant’s new name, which is the Spanish diminutive for a house. “He told me, ‘Mom, you’re here all the time. You live here. It’s your house.’ And I said, ‘Yes, it’s my house. Mi casita,’” she said.
Starting next month, Mi Casita will be open Mondays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 10905 Highway 1.