Lark Creek's 15 Years Echoes Walnut Creek's Dining Evolution

This spring,Walnut Creek's food scene received some validation for what residents have long come to know: that our downtown has become a Bay Area dining hot spot.

Walnut Creek was named an Undiscovered Restaurant Town by the lifestyle website, Livability.com. We have around 80 restaurants in downtown now, and over the past year, Walnut Creek has enjoyed the opening of several distinctive Asian eateries and welcomed a new set of establishments that boast major food and wine talent.

Before any of these restaurants arrived to raise the caliber of Walnut Creek's food scene—and even before there Va de Vi, one of the few East-of-the-Caldecott Tunnel restaurants to make the San Francisco Chronicle's annual top 100 Bay Area restaurants list—there was Prima Ristorante and Lark Creek Walnut Creek.

In particular, the opening of Lark Creek Walnut Creek 15 years ago, in a retail space on the ground floor of the Locust Street garage, represented "the suburbanization of fine dining," says Michael Dellar, co-founder with chef Bradley Ogden of the Lark Creek Restaurant Group. "We weren't the first, and we weren't the last but we got a lot of attention."

Lark Creek Walnut Creek opened on July 18, 1995 and was among Contra Costa County's first "star chef" driven restaurants. The restaurant's founding mantra of seasonal farm-fresh fare and all-American wines is still a driving force today, Dellar said.

"We were doing the fine seasonable ingredients, the farm to table," added Dellar, also president and CEO of the restaurant, which also owns the Michelin-star-rated One Market in San Francisco and Yankee Pier in Lafayette.

Lark Creek Walnut Creek is celebrating its 15th anniversary Monday with special $15 prix-fixe lunch and dinner menus featuring some of its favorite dishes, updated takes on American classics for which Ogden became famous. Monday's menu include Ceasar Salad, Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf and Tamale Pancake with shredded BBQ chicken. Through the month of July, every bottle of wine you purchase at the restaurant is also half off. 

Since the 1980s, Walnut Creek has been evolving into a food and destination spot, notably with the opening of Prima Ristorante on North Main Street in the late 1970s. In the late 1980s, the other Walnut Creek hot spot was Spiedini's in an office building a block from the Walnut Creek BART station. Spiedini's was an early Contra Costa venture by Dellar, who was living in Orinda at the time.

By  1995, Spiedini was past its prime and Dellar had partnered with Ogden to open the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, which was a critical success, and One Market in San Francisco. 

Dellar learned that Walnut Creek was looking for a tenant to share occupancy with the Oakville Grocery on the ground floor of the new Locust Street garage. The city's original plan had been to lease that space to a collection of food vendors who would bring a food-market-type enterprise to downtown Walnut Creek. Instead, Lark Creek offered to share that space with Oakville Grocery and to open a new outpost in Walnut Creek. For Dellar, Walnut Creek was personally attractive because it was close to home.

In 1995, the Lesher Center for the Arts also was five years old. Over the next 20 years, the arts center would become the northern anchor for downtown, with Broadway Plaza on the southern end. Restaurants and clubs would move in storefronts along Locust and Main Streets between the Lesher Center and Broadway Plaza. In 1997, the Walnut Creek Yacht Club opened, with its emphasis on serving fresh seafood, as well as artisan cocktails.

Monday's anniversary celebration will include a proclamation by Mayor Sue Rainey, thanking Lark Creek "for its commitment to the community and honoring its longevity.

The Lark Creek Group has grown into portfolio of 10 restaurants throughout Northern California and Las Vegas. As for Lark Creek Walnut Creek, Dellar says: "As we pass this milestone, we look forward to the next exciting 15 years."