For most of the past year, the building at 23538 Calabasas Road sat behind paper on the windows. Mulholland closed there in October, Jon & Vinny's announced it was moving in, and then nothing happened that you could see from the sidewalk. A spokesperson told a local paper the permits were still pending and there was no opening date to give. If you drove past on your way to the farmers market, you filed it under "eventually" and kept going.
It's open now. Reviewers walked through the doors in late July, and by August the restaurant was posting the same daily hours as its other locations, 8am to 10pm, seven days a week. That's not a small thing for a two-block stretch of Calabasas Road that already does more work per square foot than almost anywhere else in the city.
The Corner That Took Its Time
Jon & Vinny's ninth location sits in what one early review described as a converted bungalow, with a full bar, a heated back patio, and an attached Helen's wine shop. It's the chain's California-Italian menu, the same handmade pastas and wood-fired pizzas served at the Fairfax and Brentwood locations, now a few minutes' walk from your house instead of a drive down the 101.
What makes this worth noticing isn't the menu. It's the address. This building sits directly across the street from Sagebrush Cantina, which means Old Town Calabasas just added a second sit-down option to a stretch that, until this summer, had exactly one obvious answer to "where should we eat."
Everything Else On That Block Hasn't Moved
Walk out of Jon & Vinny's and you're standing in the middle of a pocket of Calabasas that predates the gated communities by more than a century. The Leonis Adobe, built in 1844, sits at 23537 Calabasas Road and was the first building in Los Angeles ever designated a Historic-Cultural Monument. It was the home of Miguel Leonis, a Basque immigrant who built a cattle empire across the west Valley in the 1800s and became known locally as the King of Calabasas. The property still keeps livestock on the grounds, and the museum opens on weekend afternoons, though the exact hours shift by season, so it's worth a quick check of the museum's own site before you plan around it.
Next door, Sagebrush Cantina has been serving margaritas and Mexican-American comfort food for more than 40 years. It's the kind of restaurant that outlasts trends by never chasing them, and it still keeps a scaled-down replica train, originally built for the 1940 New York World's Fair, parked out front where kids have been climbing on it for decades.
Across the road, at 23504 Calabasas Road, the Calabasas Farmers Market runs every Saturday from 8am to 1pm. That's the detail that trips people up. Several directories list it as a Sunday market or push the start time to 9am, but the market's own listing, the county's official locator, and every recent on-the-ground account agree on Saturday, 8 to 1. If you've been showing up at 9 expecting a slow start, you've been missing the first hour, which is also the hour with the least competition for parking and produce.
A Second Restaurant Is Trying to Catch Up
A few minutes south on Las Virgenes Road, a second new restaurant is working toward its own opening. Salsa & Beer Mexican Grill has signage up at 4895 Las Virgenes Road, and the owner told a local reporter in June that construction was nearly finished. The chain already runs four locations, including one in Lake Balboa and three in North Hollywood, so the format is established even if the Calabasas build-out isn't done yet.
The detail that matters here is the history. Salsa & Beer first tried to open a Calabasas location back in 2020, and it never happened. That's the useful contrast to Jon & Vinny's. A sign in a window and a construction crew don't guarantee a fixed date, and this neighborhood has already watched one version of this exact story stall out once before. Treat "opening soon" as a starting point, not a promise, until you see the hours posted.
What This Actually Buys You On a Saturday
Put together, the block now supports a full morning without moving your car:
- 8am: Farmers market opens at 23504 Calabasas Road. Arrive at the start of the hour for the best selection and the shortest lines.
- 9 to 10am: Walk across the street to the Leonis Adobe grounds if the museum's weekend hours line up, or just admire the gardens and the animals from the fence.
- 10am: Coffee or a full breakfast at Jon & Vinny's, open daily from 8am.
- Midday: Tacos and a margarita at Sagebrush Cantina, or save it for dinner now that there's a second option next door.
Parking is the one place people trip up. The two lots directly serving the market and the Adobe charge a flat $5 for the day. Street parking exists but fills fast once the market opens, and if you're willing to walk a few extra minutes, the lot at the Commons shopping center a short walk away is usually the easier bet.
If You Still Have Legs By Noon
Old Town Calabasas is a morning built for walking, but if the day is still young, Las Virgenes Road keeps going south past the restaurant strip and reaches King Gillette Ranch in about two miles. The 588-acre property was once the private estate of King C. Gillette, the razor manufacturer, and the Spanish Colonial Revival mansion at its center was designed by Wallace Neff. A roughly one-mile loop from the visitor center climbs to a spot called Inspiration Point, steep in a few short stretches, and it opens onto a 360-degree view that takes in the mansion below and the rock formations of Malibu Creek State Park in the distance. It's close enough to treat as the second half of the same Saturday, not a separate trip.
The Thing Worth Remembering
None of this is really about restaurants. It's about how rare it is, in a city built mostly around gates and driveways, to have one short stretch of road where a 180-year-old adobe, a 40-year-old cantina, a weekly farmers market, and two brand-new restaurants all sit within sight of each other. Most of Calabasas asks you to drive between the things you love about it. Old Town, for one morning a week, doesn't.
If you're already living here, you probably knew half of this. If a friend is asking what Saturday in Calabasas actually looks like, now you have the answer with the right hours attached.
For more on what's happening around Calabasas, or if a conversation about the neighborhood ever turns toward buying, selling, or leasing, Nancy Cassidy is always happy to talk. Let's Connect — Schedule a Consultation.
