Poggio Trattoria (Italy)

OVERVIEW

Poggio Trattoria (777 Bridgeway, Sausalito CA) has earned Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition (2017, 2018) and was named Marin’s best Italian restaurant by Marin Magazine in 2025 — awards that reflect over two decades of consistent excellence since opening in 2003. Created by restaurateur Larry Mindel and led by Executive Chef Ben Balesteri, the kitchen produces daily-changing menus of wood-fired dishes, house-made pastas, and seasonal California-Italian cuisine. Occupying the ground floor of the popular Casa Madrona Hotel building, Poggio is one of the most acclaimed restaurants on the Sausalito waterfront.

HISTORY

Downtown Water Steet (now Bridgeway) has stood at the commercial heart of Sausalito since the late 1800’s. As a hub for the railroad and ferries to San Francisco. This location housed the Tamalpais Hotel & Saloon until, July 4, 1893, a when a catastrophic fire swept through the entire block, reducing the Tamalpais Hotel and a dozen neighboring saloons and businesses to ash. When the smoke cleared, the city rebuilt — and in 1924 this address became something entirely new: A large steel Garage, built by Clinton Mason, son of John Mason, who operated the state’s largest distillery just .5 miles away. The garage would eventually close in the early 1940’s after the Golden Gate Bridge was opened. The building ensured as a Chinese gambling hall, a Marinship storage space and even and indoor golf course. After the war it reinvented itself again, becoming the Village Fair — one of the first adaptive reuse conversions of an industrial building in the United States — a warren of 38 artisan shops until it closed in the late 1990s.  Poggio opens to occupy the old Mason Garage which is part of the Casa Madrona Hotel and Manson (Mansion built in 1885 as a deliberate homage to the Italian Tuscan countryside, with porticos, verandas, and Mediterranean detail designed to recreate the villas of Northern Italy above Richardson Bay. It was the neighborhood's most prominent building, and it gave Sausalito's waterfront its most Italian silhouette for generations — long before Poggio put a wood-fired oven in the room below it.

FEATURED WHISKEY - Puni Alba Italian Malt Whisky

Puni Distillery, South Tyrol, Italy  ·  43% ABV

From Italy's first whisky distillery, in the Alps near Austria. Aged in Marsala casks from Sicily, finished in Islay casks. Fruity, lightly smoky, and elegantly complex. Italy's whisky revolution in a bottle.