Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon After Mina Group Exit
On Monday, June 1, the handoff at waterfront Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon moves from paper to service: Chef Michael Mina and the Mina Group will no longer manage the restaurant, and Arizona-based Clive Collective takes over.
Mina Group says Chef Michael Mina and the group are proud of what the team built there over the past four years, and grateful to the community that supported it. The two restaurant groups are working together on the transition.
Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon opened in November 2021 with Mina’s restaurant group managing the location. The change moves an operating restaurant from one management culture to another, not from service into closure.
What Changes at Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon
Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon will remain open without interruption and continue under the Bungalow Kitchen name. For diners, the guest-facing shape stays in place.
The transfer will show first in the working layer: who sets standards, who reads the floor, and who decides when a familiar system holds or needs new pressure. Clive Collective begins with a restaurant already in motion, not a shell waiting for an opening team.
Why the Mina Group Exit Matters
Michael Mina’s involvement belonged to the restaurant’s structure from the start of the Tiburon location. His group managed Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon from its opening through this transition.
The broader Bungalow history has more layers. Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon was originally the Northern California outpost for Bungalow Hospitality Group, which operates three other Bungalow restaurants in Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, and Long Beach. Mina first partnered on the Long Beach location in 2018; that restaurant opened in March 2021.
By January 2023, Mina had left the Long Beach project, and Bungalow owner Brent Bolthouse shifted that business toward a bar-and-lounge format with snacks and music, rebranding it as The Bungalow. The Tiburon restaurant is no longer associated with the other Bungalow locations.
Clive Collective Takes Over the Restaurant
Clive Collective’s move into Tiburon is its first step outside Arizona. The group’s restaurants include Cala Scottsdale, The Americano, and Tell Your Friends, all in Scottsdale, with other restaurants planned for Scottsdale and Phoenix in the coming year.
Co-founder Justin Massei pushed the expansion. He was born in the Bay Area and lives in San Francisco, giving this takeover a personal geography as well as an operational one.
Massei frames the work as inheritance before reinvention: “We are not coming in to reinvent the place. Our priority is to listen, protect what makes it special, and thoughtfully add the energy and craft that define our group.”
His sequence starts with listening. In restaurant terms, that means learning the room’s cadence, the kitchen’s stress points, the bar’s rhythm, and the regulars’ expectations before changing the shape of service.
What Stays in Place for Diners and Staff
Employees in both the front and back of house will be offered an opportunity to remain with the restaurant.
Restaurants carry knowledge in hands: the server who knows when a table wants guidance, the cook who can feel a station slipping before the printer proves it, the manager who sees a section bunching at the turn.
A name on the door cannot preserve that by itself. The people inside the room can. Clive Collective’s first test will be how carefully it holds that existing craft while it begins to add its own systems.
What to Watch After June 1
Programming and menu enhancements are expected in the weeks ahead.
The next phase will be measured in service, not signage: the pacing between courses, the language at the table, the confidence of the floor, and the steadiness of the kitchen under pressure.
Bungalow Kitchen Tiburon now enters the careful part of a restaurant handoff: the point where continuity has to be practiced, not announced. The operator changes. The room keeps working.
