Lima Nikkei Is the Latest Restaurant in El Paseo's Brick Rooms. What Did It Keep?

On May 15 and 16, 1948, Edna Foster threw a two-day party she called a "Fiestaval" to open the complex she had spent eight years building between Throckmorton and Sunnyside avenues. The Marin County Association of Artists hung an exhibition, musicians played, and the Mill Valley History Room's account records "scores of food." She called it El Paseo, from the Spanish for "scenic path."

Seventy-eight years later, the restaurant rooms along that path have a new operator. Lima Nikkei, which serves Nikkei cooking, a blend of Japanese and Peruvian food, has opened at 17 Throckmorton Ave., according to the Marin Independent Journal's October 27 report. Sandoval's renovation mostly strips away finishes later owners added and brings the rooms back toward what Foster and her architect built.

Three Owners in 58 Years, Then Four in Twenty

The restaurant has run under various owners since 1947. Here is the order of operators, drawn from the History Room's timeline and later news coverage.

The first 58 years had three ownership groups. Bottmeyer and Kollner alone stayed 33 years. Since 2006 there have been four ownership groups, counting Hagar's partnership with Florence and his later solo years as one. Florence and Hagar went their separate ways in 2016, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Eater SF reported that Hagar closed the restaurant in 2018 because of time constraints and his music commitments. In 2019 he sold the business to Ki Yong Choi, a Mill Valley resident. Choi's Paseo Bistro opened after pandemic delays. The Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce announced in December 2025 that it would close on the 20th of that month.

Through all of this, the rooms stayed the same. Each new owner took over the same brick walls, the same winding passage, and the same split between a front dining room and a back room. Whatever an owner did to those rooms carried over to whoever came next.

What Foster and Costigan Built Into the Walls

The building's story starts in 1935. That year Edna and Henry Foster bought the Holtum Building at 15 Throckmorton and the lot behind it on Sunnyside. At the time the Holtum held a cleaner and a shoe repair shop, and Edna Foster called it an "old eyesore." She hired Augustus "Gus" Costigan, the local architect who also designed the former Mill Valley Record offices at 70 Throckmorton and restored John Reed's sawmill in Old Mill Park. Together they planned a group of buildings, courts and gardens connected by a passage running from street to street.

Construction started in 1940, and the war interrupted it. Costigan served with the Army Combat Engineers in Africa and Italy. When he came home, he and Foster went looking for materials that already looked old. According to the History Room, they used:

• Adobe bricks from Mexico
• Beams from a building being torn down at Fort Cronkite
• Railroad ties and spikes
• Handmade tiles and wrought iron fixtures
• Champagne bottles, set in to look like stained glass

Costigan also carved beams, balustrades and the rustic signs that became his trademark. The complex was finished in 1948.

The Mill Valley Public Library's inventory treats the El Paseo Complex, with its connected buildings and alleys, as a separate thing from the restaurant that took the same name. The complex has housed shops, galleries, studio apartments, an insurance office and a health food store over the decades. In 2022, the History Room listed Gallery 15 and Poet and the Bench among its tenants. The restaurant has been the one tenant that stayed.

Sandoval's Renovation Ran in Reverse

Edwin Sandoval is originally from Lima, Peru, and worked in his family's restaurants there in the 1970s. He moved to Novato in 1982, stayed in restaurants for a while, and then spent 35 years in construction. He owns Atlas Construction, and he ran the renovation of 17 Throckmorton himself.

The Independent Journal lists three main changes:

1. Brick that an earlier owner had whitewashed was sandblasted back to its original color.
2. Dark-stained wood floors were refinished in a lighter shade.
3. All 56 light fixtures were replaced.

The first two remove later finishes from the original surfaces. The main dining room now pairs bare brick with pale wood furniture and curved upholstered banquettes. Vertical wood slats give the bar a Japanese feel.

The back room was left mostly alone. The IJ says it "retains the building's original character," with colored glass windows and exposed rafters. The History Room's account of the 1940s build describes champagne-bottle glass and salvaged Fort Cronkite beams. Sandoval, a builder by trade, concentrated the work in the front room, where the brick had been covered, and kept the back room's glass and rafters.

The space seats about 125 people. That capacity was set long before Sandoval arrived, and it is part of what every new operator takes on.

The Kitchen Is the Part That's New

No operator in the History Room's timeline served a Peruvian menu. Sandoval wrote it himself and hired Wilmer Anaya to run the kitchen. Anaya, also from Lima, has worked at La Mar Cebichería Peruana in San Francisco. The food is meant for sharing, and it comes from a tradition that began when Japanese immigrants settled in Peru more than a century ago.

From the IJ's description of the menu:

• Ceviches, six of them. One is yellowfin tuna in ají amarillo leche de tigre, finished with wasabi and shredded nori. Another pairs octopus with a black olive emulsion and chimichurri.
• Maki, four rolls. One is a yellowtail roll with cilantro, jalapeño and yuzu mayo.
• Small plates. Bao de chicharrón with crispy pork belly and rocoto gochumayo, a Hokkaido scallop served in the shell with Parmesan foam, and roasted cauliflower with edamame hummus and huacatay.
• Robata skewers. Chicken, beef tenderloin, wild salmon, Spanish octopus or mushrooms, brought to the table on small Japanese grills in the style of Peruvian anticuchos.
• Larger plates. Lomo saltado made with beef tenderloin, udon in Peruvian chile curry with coconut milk, and Australian wagyu New York strip or filet mignon served with yuca fries.

Seafood comes from Four Star Seafood & Provisions in San Francisco and meat from Allen Brothers in Chicago. Bartender Lee Bustamante built the cocktail list with Sandoval around pisco and shochu. The Paseo Sour combines pisco, matcha, shochu, yuzu and black sesame syrup. The Miso Elixir comes with a sweet potato anticucho. The Amazonian Geisha mixes Haku vodka with camu camu and ume plum liqueur.

A Family Business, Like the Early Ones

Sandoval has said he went back into restaurants to give his grandchildren an opportunity. His grandson Lukas, a business student at College of Marin, manages the restaurant. His granddaughter Claudia handles the books and marketing.

That puts Lima Nikkei closer to El Paseo's early owners than to its recent ones. Mary Harkins ran the restaurant for fifteen years, and Bottmeyer and Kollner ran it together for 33. Hagar closed House of Chops because his other business and music commitments competed for his time. Sandoval brings a construction company and a family staff. Both are useful in a building that is nearly 80 years old.

Getting There

Lima Nikkei serves dinner only. It's open 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 17 Throckmorton Ave. Menus and booking are at limanikkei.com. The 4 p.m. opening makes an early dinner easy in November, when it's dark before six. The passage still runs through to Sunnyside, so you can come in from either street.

Anyone curious about the building should listen to Edna Foster's oral history interview, held by the Mill Valley Public Library. In it she describes building El Paseo in her own words. After that, take a look at the rafters in Lima Nikkei's back room.

If you own one of the town's older homes and want to talk about how its history plays into its value, The Brody Team is glad to walk through it with you. Contact The Brody Team.