Woodside Weekend Guide to Cafes, Dining, and Scenic Trails

For years the plainest gap in the Woodside town center wasn't a missing store or an empty lot. It was the absence of another place to sit down before noon. Buck's was open for breakfast, as it has been since 1991, and that was the option. The Village Pub opened in 2001 and appears in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide USA with a Michelin star. Woodside didn't have another daytime room with no reservation required, the kind of place other towns treat as ordinary. That gap closed last September.

A cafe with an unexpected chef

The building at 3340 Woodside Road has stood since 1902, according to the wood sign out front, and its most recent use before last year was as a test kitchen for Hero Bread, closed to the public for years. Aubriana Kasper and co-owner Gena Winter reopened it as The Little Store, a flower shop and cafe serving breakfast and lunch from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, as The Almanac reported after the reopening.

Running the kitchen is Sierra Hazel, who came from the two-Michelin-starred Birdsong in San Francisco. That's an unusual hire for a cafe on a two-lane road in a town of a few thousand people. Kasper's husband, Rowan MacNiven, is a Woodside native and the proprietor of Buck's of Woodside. Kasper and Winter, both formerly of San Francisco's Sightglass Coffee, had already opened a coffee-and-flower shop together in San Francisco, Marigold, in 2018. The pedigree walked in the door with the people who already knew each other and already knew the town.

The menu runs on California seasonality: a harvest bowl built on herbed yogurt, a burrito with tater tots and chipotle crema, a jambon on French baguette, and an avocado toast made with whipped avocado mousse, priced roughly $14 to $16. None of that would be remarkable on its own. What makes it worth noting is that it adds another daytime option to a stretch of road where Buck's had been the option.

The evening counterpart

The Firehouse Bistro bills itself as Woodside's newest restaurant, offering a modern take on French comfort food with seasonal ingredients, a full bar, and both indoor and open-air seating. Between it and The Little Store, the town now runs two rooms doing French-inflected cooking at different tempos, one built around daytime service and one around dinner. That's a real change from a decade in which the same two anchors, Buck's and the Village Pub, defined the entire dining day.

What didn't move

Buck's opened in 1991 after Jamis MacNiven, a former builder who had constructed the Hard Rock Cafe and remodeled Steve Jobs's house, decided he couldn't find a decent place to eat in his own town. The restaurant became something else by accident: Netscape held early meetings in the back room, Hotmail traces its origin to the same building, Tesla's founding is tied to a specific table there, and PayPal got funded over pancakes. After Jamis retired at the start of the pandemic, his sons Dylan, Tyler, and Rowan reopened it in August 2020, and the mix of ranchers and venture capitalists at neighboring tables hasn't changed.

The Village Pub appears with a Michelin star in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide USA, and it also carries the Wine Spectator Grand Award. The restaurant opened in 2001. Buck's and the Village Pub remained the town's dining anchors when The Little Store and Firehouse Bistro arrived. What changed is the number of hours in a day when there's somewhere to be.

How the rest of a Saturday strings together

The dining shift matters because it reshapes what comes before and after the meal, and Woodside residents already have fixed points to work around.

• Wunderlich Park, reached from the Woodside Road parking lot, was once the Folger family's ranch, the same Folgers behind the coffee brand, before Martin Wunderlich bought the property in 1956 and deeded its 942 acres to San Mateo County in 1974 for public use. The restored Folger Stable now houses a small museum. The Alambique Trail climbs steadily from the lot to a junction called The Crossroads, connects to Bear Gulch Trail, and passes a spot locals know as The Meadows, with views that make the climb worth it.
• Purisima Creek Redwoods, up Skyline, is the pick when the town center is booked with an event and you want the temperature to drop the moment you step out of the car.
• Filoli remains the standing recommendation for hosting visitors who aren't going to hike. It's close enough that a morning at the gardens pairs with a 1 p.m. table in town without rushing.

Trail choice on any given weekend also depends on what's happening at the Horse Park at Woodside, on Sand Hill Road. The property runs a full calendar of USEA-recognized trials through the year, including a fall event that lands in September, and each one means a busier Sand Hill Road and a cross-country course closed to the public while it's underway. Residents who don't ride have learned to check the calendar before planning a morning walk along that stretch, the same adjustment the spring and summer trials required earlier in the year.

The town's civic life runs at a smaller, steadier scale. Independence Hall, on Woodside Road, hosts a Qi Gong class on Tuesday mornings and the Arts & Culture Committee's First Friday gatherings, alongside the routine business of trails and planning committee meetings. None of it is large. All of it is proof the town center operates on the same unhurried rhythm as its restaurant scene: slow to add anything, and quick to keep what works once it's there.

The shift last year isn't that Woodside got a new restaurant. Small towns get new restaurants regularly, and most of them don't reshape a Saturday. This one did, by adding another daytime option beyond Buck's. That's a useful thing to understand about how a place like this actually fills its own gaps.

If you're curious what else defines daily life in this stretch of the Peninsula, Satinder Kaur covers Woodside Hills and the surrounding towns regularly, and you're welcome to reach out with questions about the area.