Marin Breakfasts. The photo above was taken this morning in north Sausalito. It was a little misty and cool, and seemed to represent to me mornings here in Marin County and nice walks around Richardson Bay after a warm breakfast.

I became interested in finding breakfast places a couple years ago when it was the one joy I could bring my father during the course of his cancer treatments. He loves new things, and it was a little treat to find somewhere new each day after he finished with the hospital.

After going through the usual, I had a hard time finding where breakfasts were served in Marin. I've continued to look, and not found a good source for lists of breakfast places in Marin County, so I thought I'd share my list, which is not all-inclusive (yet), but has enough places so that you won't go hungry! Breakfast is a very important meal! For interesting information on breakfasts around the world, Wikipedia has a great round-up.

There are a couple places I checked where I expected to find a reasonable list of breakfast places for Marin County, but didn't. The first is the Marin IJ's "Bon Appetit", where you can search by town or cuisine, but breakfast isn't an option, and it's a paid advertising service, so the entries are actually rather sparse. I also looked in the San Francisco Chronicle's search in their Food and Dining Section. In the past it would come up with about two choices for all of Marin County, but today, using advanced search, keyword search, etc. it yields no breakfast or even brunch results for Marin County. I thought Yelp would be helpful, but when I run a search for 'breakfast' and 'Mill Valley', you have to scroll to the middle of the second page before the results leave San Francisco and give you an actual Mill Valley or even Marin result.

Also, my definition for a 'breakfast' place is that they open before 9 a.m. on a weekday and have at least one protein choice on the menu (no American-style continental breakfasts count). Those restaurants who choose to open only on weekends or a weekend day for brunch are really not breakfast places in my mind, but I list them separately as they usually do a bit more upscale and interesting things on the weekends and make a nice round out to the week.

I welcome your comments to point me to other places for breakfast in Marin or your experiences with any of these.

Since there seems to be no other breakfast reference for Marin on the web yet, I'm going to add a legend to my side bar and indicate with a * after restaurant links if breakfast is served there, and ** for weekend brunch only places (some brunch only places only serve one of the weekend days, so you should check before showing up).

Places I've been for breakfast

Corte Madera
Corte Madera Cafe

Fairfax
Koffee Klatch

Greenbrae
Cafe Z

Mill Valley
Caffe Oggi
Dipsea
Mama's Royal Cafe
Mill Valley Coffee Shop
Rain Tree Cafe

Kentfield
Half Day Cafe

Sausalito
Bayside Cafe
Bridgeway Cafe
Caffe Divino Sidewalk Cafe
Caffe Trieste
Lighthouse Cafe
Poggio

Tiburon
New Morning Cafe
Sweden House Bakery & Cafe

San Anselmo
Comforts Cafe

San Rafael
Lighthouse Diner

Places yet to go for breakfast

Bolinas
Coast Cafe - Brunch only

Fairfax
Cafe Amsterdam - Brunch only

Larkspur
Left Bank - Brunch only
Tabla Cafe - Brunch only
Ward Street Cafe

Mill Valley
Buckeye Roadhouse - Brunch only
Champagne French Bakery Cafe
Shoreline Coffee Shop
Small Shed Flatbreads - Brunch only
Toast Cafe

Olema
Olema Farm House - Brunch only

Pt. Reyes
Station House Cafe (domain expired 11/9/06 but will probably come back to life)

San Rafael
Flying Pig Diner
Seafood Peddler - Brunch only
The Crepevine
Le Croissant
Theresa & Johnny's Comfort Food

Stinson Beach
Parkside Cafe