Walk into the brewpub at 765 Center Boulevard on a Wednesday night and you will find a hazy IPA on tap, a table of kids drawing on butcher paper by the game room, and a dog stretched out on the parklet outside. Ask the bartender what's new here and they will probably shrug. Depending on how long you have lived in Fairfax, you might remember this exact room under two other names.

That is the actual story of this building, and it says more about how Fairfax works than any single restaurant opening does. The address has carried three identities since 2004: Iron Springs Pub & Brewery, which ran for two decades before closing in 2024, a short stint as HenHouse Brewing, and now Fairfax Brewing Company, which opened under new ownership. What almost nobody outside the beer world seems to be talking about is who is actually pulling the taps. Larry Berlin, the original brewer at Iron Springs, is back in the same building making beer again. The name changed twice. The person who built the beer program that made this address a destination did not.

The building's actual timeline

Here is what changed and what didn't, laid out plainly:

Twenty years is a long run for any single-location brewpub, and Iron Springs earned its reputation over that stretch. When it closed, HenHouse Brewing moved into the space, but that chapter did not last. The current owners, Alex and Lisa Stricker, are known around Marin for State Room Brewery and the Flatiron sports bar in San Rafael. They brought Berlin back to build the beer list and hired Executive Chef Dan McGarry, whose résumé includes Duke's in Huntington Beach and Guy Fieri's restaurants in Sonoma, to run the kitchen.

The current tap list reads like a reunion. Repack Red and Tamalpais Tripel sit alongside seasonal stouts, porters and sours, the kind of lineup a longtime Iron Springs regular would recognize even without the old signage. One Yelp reviewer summed up the local reaction plainly: "Long time customer of Iron Springs very excited to have an updated restaurant and brewery here." That sentence captures something real. The affection was never really for a logo. It was for what came out of the tap and who made it.

What's actually on the menu

Fairfax Brewing Company is built to work for two different crowds at once, families in for an early dinner and beer people settling in for a few pints. The menu leans into that split:

• Caesar salad, ahi tacos, fish and chips and skirt steak with chimichurri, the kind of craveable pub staples that don't ask much of a Wednesday night
• Pork lumpia, japchae noodles and a Korean fried chicken sandwich, a global streak that runs through the more straightforward fare
• A dog-friendly parklet out front and a game room inside, both signals that this is meant to be a place people linger, not just a stop for a quick pint

None of that reads like a brand trying to reinvent itself. It reads like a room that already knew what worked and decided not to mess with it.

The rest of downtown runs on the same logic, just at different speeds

765 Center Boulevard is not the only address in town that has changed hands without changing character. Split Rock Tap & Wheel now occupies the former Fairfax Cyclery space, and it kept the bike shop's bones, half café and half repair counter, serving pizzas and sandwiches alongside 15 rotating California microbrew taps and seating built to handle a rider straight off the trail. The building's function shifted only slightly. The identity, mountain-bike town meets neighborhood hangout, stayed intact.

Compare that to Fradelizio's, which has been Fairfax's Northern Italian standby for more than 25 years without a name change or an ownership shuffle anyone talks about. Or Village Sake, chef Scott Whitman's Japanese-style community pub, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand designation and a spot on the San Francisco Chronicle's Top 25 Restaurants list, still under the same name it opened with. Fairfax's food and drink scene runs on a spectrum: some places rebuild themselves from the studs up under a new owner, and some places just keep doing what they've always done because it already works. What ties them together is that none of it depends much on signage. Locals track the person behind the counter and the recipe on the plate, not the name painted on the window.

That is worth knowing if you are trying to figure out whether a business closing in this town means something is actually ending. Sometimes it does. Often, as Center Boulevard shows, it means the same hands are about to start again a few months later under new letters.

What's happening in town right now

Two things worth knowing if you live here and haven't checked the calendar lately.

The Fairfax Community Farmers' Market at Bolinas Park runs every Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m. through October 28, tucked under the redwoods at the corner of Bolinas Road and Cascade Drive. The season has seven Wednesdays left before it wraps for the year, produce is shifting from summer stone fruit toward squash and apples, and it remains the kind of after-work market where people show up as much to see neighbors as to buy dinner ingredients.

Meanwhile, the Fairfax Theatre Company is mid-run at the Fairfax Pavilion, with performances scheduled through September 27. It is a suggested-donation, all-ages show, the kind of low-key community theater that doesn't get much attention outside the town itself but has been part of Fairfax's cultural rhythm for years.

Neither of those is a huge headline. Both are exactly the kind of thing that tells you what a Wednesday or a weekend actually looks like here right now, which matters more than any single restaurant opening.

The takeaway

If there is one thing worth carrying out of this, it's that Fairfax's loyalty attaches to people and to what they make, not to whatever is painted on the door. Iron Springs closed. HenHouse came and went. Larry Berlin never left the building, he just waited for the right ownership to bring him back to the same taps. That is a small story about one brewpub, but it is also a pretty accurate description of how this town operates. Names change here more often than substance does.

If you're already living in Fairfax, none of this needs an explanation, you've probably had a pint at all three versions of that building without thinking twice about it. But if you're the kind of person who pays attention to how a town holds onto its character even as storefronts shuffle around it, that pattern is worth noticing.

If you're curious what a home in a town like this is actually worth, or thinking about what comes next for a property here, Tam Home Team knows Fairfax and the rest of Marin from the inside. Get your instant home valuation or schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to talk.