Two Restaurants, One Couple: What's Actually New on C Street This Fall
September 10, 2026
September 10, 2026
Walk down C Street in early September and you will notice paper still covering the windows at 908 C St, the same street where Wild Heart Bread Co. has been serving sourdough since last November. Behind that paper is El Zaguan Restaurant & Bar, a modern Mexican scratch kitchen that filed for its on-sale liquor license with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control on August 24. According to its own Instagram account, the target is a September opening.
That alone would be worth a mention. What makes it worth a longer look is who is behind the counter. El Zaguan is owned by Belinda Gutierrez, the same person who, alongside her husband Mark Hutchason, has spent the better part of a year restoring the historic Block 7 building at 218 S. Lincoln Way. Chef Julio Cambreros, who has been documenting El Zaguan's buildout down to the dinnerware he is personally selecting, also holds the title of Director of Food and Beverage at Block 7. One couple, one chef, two full restaurants, opening within months of each other.
Block 7 has been the name on everyone's lips in Old Town for close to a year. The building at 218 S. Lincoln Way carried the Block 7 name back during Galt's early annexation, sat dormant for decades, and is now being restored as a farm-to-fork restaurant built around relationships with local farmers and ranchers. The team has described it as a tribute to Galt's past and a toast to its future, and it was originally expected to debut in mid-2026.
Opening one restaurant in a building with that kind of history is already a statement. Opening a second one, in a different storefront, before the first has even served its opening dinner, is a different kind of statement. It says the couple behind both projects is not betting on a single building or a single concept. They are betting on Old Town itself, the stretch of C Street and Lincoln Way where both addresses sit. El Zaguan is planning a fully scratch kitchen with five tortilla flavors, fifteen pepper varieties worked into its sauces and mole, and house-made tamales and churros. That is not a soft launch. That is a second full commitment from people who already had one restaurant's worth of capital and attention tied up in Old Town.
If you want to know whether that bet makes sense, you do not have to wait for El Zaguan or Block 7 to open. Wild Heart Bread Co. already ran the experiment, and it worked.
Owner Lindsay Ortez, a Lockeford native, started baking out of her home in fall 2023, earned her cottage baker's license, and began doing porch pick-ups for neighbors. Demand outgrew the setup fast enough that she moved into a commercial kitchen in Lodi, partnered with the local business Pop the Bubbly, and spent two years building a following under the name Artisan Art's Bread. On November 1, 2025, she brought that following home to Galt, opening Wild Heart Bread Co. at 411 C St, in the space that used to hold Erica's Cookie Co.
The bakery now turns out more than twenty rotating sourdough varieties, made with organic flour and fermented for 18 hours or longer, along with cinnamon rolls, quiches, and muffins. Ortez runs monthly sourdough classes capped at 10 to 12 participants and sends weekly menus by text to anyone who signs up. Current hours are Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the first Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., with pickup orders available on Wednesdays.
Here is what Ortez said a few months after opening:
"Galt has such a beautiful energy and appreciation for its locals, and I feel so honored to share my love for feeding people. We've grown to know so many faces in such a short time and look forward to welcoming many more."
That is not marketing copy written by a national chain testing a new market. That is someone who tried a small storefront on C Street and found out it could hold a real business. Gutierrez and Hutchason watched that happen in Old Town before they broke ground on Block 7.
None of this happens in a vacuum. Old Town already has a small cluster of places that have made C Street and the 4th Street Promenade worth a special trip rather than a stop on the way to somewhere else. The Mix Up Mediterranean Table sits at 415 1/2 C St. Velvet Grill & Creamery anchors 400 4th St., The Coffee Shop Bakery round out the strip where you can get a full dinner, a scoop of ice cream, and a coffee without moving your car. Just up C Street to the West, stop by Cafe Latte Company for a sandwich and a coffee.
And then there is the Saturday Market Series, which runs the first Saturday of every month from March through November on the 4th Street Promenade. The 2026 season kicked off March 7 and brings more than 75 vendors selling baked goods, prepared food, home decor, crafts, and seasonal flowers, drawing in the range of 10,000 attendees across the full run of the season. Three dates remain this year:
Wild Heart Bread Co. has been a regular presence at these markets since opening. If El Zaguan and Block 7 both land their September and mid-2026 targets, this fall's remaining Saturday Markets could be the first chance to see all three brought together in one Old Town afternoon.
If you have lived in Galt for a while, you already know the version of this story that gets told about Simmerhorn Road and Twin Cities Road, where a Grocery Outlet is going into the old Rite Aid building and a 45-acre retail center is drawing interest from a car wash, a Panda Express, and a gas station chain. That growth is real, and it matters for a different set of reasons.
What is happening on C Street is a smaller, quieter version of the same confidence, and it is coming from people who already live here rather than from national real estate investment trusts. A husband and wife who could have put all their resources into one ambitious restaurant instead chose to open two, on the strength of watching a home baker turn a porch pick-up business into a storefront that people now show up for by name. That is not a coincidence of timing. That is three separate people reading the same room the same way.
If you are already a regular at the Saturday Market or you have picked up a loaf from Wild Heart on a Wednesday, keep an eye on 908 C St this month. The paper will come down eventually, and when it does, Old Town Galt will have three new sources of energy built by people who bet on the town you already call home.
Becky Roenspie and the team at Roenspie + Johnson Real Estate Group live and work in this stretch of Galt every day, and we love watching it fill in one storefront at a time. If you ever want to talk about what is happening in your corner of town, or anywhere else across Galt, Herald, or Wilton, contact us for a local market consultation.
We pride ourselves in providing personalized solutions that bring our clients closer to their dream properties and enhance their long-term wealth.