MUST-VISIT RESTAURANTS
Chefs, tech industry backers team up to satisfy hunger for 1st-class options
With nearly all of his restaurant experience concentrated in San Francisco, Joe Hargrave wasn’t necessarily looking to venture south to Silicon Valley to open a branch of his fun-loving Tacolicious.
At least not until his investors, most of them involved in the tech industry, floated the suggestion to him. Whether they reside in Silicon Valley or just spend most of their working hours here, they were tired of having to drive to San Francisco to get their fix of his albacore tostadas and achiote-braised chicken tacos.
“The idea first came from my investors who work on Sand Hill Road,” says Hargrave, founder of Tacolicious, who counts 58 of his 88 investors as from the tech world. “I was totally open to it. I think it was a smart idea.”
So much so that Hargrave ended up opening a Tacolicious not just in downtown Palo Alto in 2013, but also in San Jose’s Santana Row in 2016.
The tech industry’s appetite for good food and its wealth of discretionary income has been a major driving force in the past few years in invigorating the restaurant scene in Silicon Valley.
Not long ago, the valley’s worldly workforce was left largely wanting in its hunger for distinctive dining. Just consider that when the Michelin Guide released its first Bay Area edition in 2006, only two Silicon Valley restaurants were honored with star ratings: Manresa in Los Gatos and Chez T.J. in Mountain View. Now, there are 10 Silicon Valley restaurants in that rarefied group, including Adega, the intimate, family-run Portuguese restaurant that just garnered the first Michelin star in San Jose. Moreover, when Taiwanese dumpling darling Din Tai Fung finally opened its first Northern California outpost last year, it did so not in San Francisco, but in Santa Clara.
Angel investor and serial Internet entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky saw the need in 2011, when he opened his first Oren’s Hummus in Palo Alto, where he lives. The Tel Aviv native had not been able to find decent hummus in the valley. He now has three locations in Silicon Valley and is considering opening one in San Francisco.
Chef Robbie Wilson, who trained under such illustrious chefs as Michel Troisgros, Tom Colicchio and Thomas Keller, opened his critically acclaimed Bird Dog restaurant in downtown Palo Alto in 2015 for one reason: Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist, part owner of the Warriors and former Facebook executive, and his wife, Brigette Lau, also a venture capitalist and former Navio Systems engineer, agreed to be his investment partners only if the restaurant was in Palo Alto, where the couple lives with their kids.
Many of the investors in Protégé, the hotly anticipated restaurant by two French Laundry alums expected to open this fall in Palo Alto, also hail from Silicon Valley’s tech sector. Co-owners Dennis Kelly, a master sommelier, and Executive Chef Anthony Secviar are seeking to fill a void in this region for their style of dining — finessed, yet informal, New American cuisine driven by French techniques, seasonal ingredients and Spanish flair.
“We have a lot of friends in the area who go to San Francisco for this kind of food,’’ says Secviar, who lives in Mountain View. “Silicon Valley is ready for the restaurant scene to catch up with the rest of the Bay Area. The movement has already begun, and I think we will see tremendous growth in owner-operated restaurant openings in the next few years.”
That includes a Nobu restaurant coming in June to downtown Palo Alto’s Ephiphany Hotel, which is owned by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Additionally, Tim Stannard, founder of the Bacchus Management Group, which includes Spruce in San Francisco, the Saratoga in San Francisco, Mayfield Bakery & Cafe in Palo Alto, the Village Pub in Woodside, and the Bay Area’s Pizza Antica locales, will open the Village Bakery in Woodside later this summer. The cafe with a retail bakery, not far from where he lives, will serve breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.
This year, Chef Ray Tang also joined the growing list of San Francisco restaurateurs such as Gott’s (which opened in Palo Alto in 2013) and Delfina (which opened in Burlingame in 2013 and in Palo Alto in 2014) to plant stakes in Silicon Valley. In May, he opened the Catamount in downtown Los Gatos to serve his brand of New American classics as personified by his Presidio Social Club in San Francisco.
Tang, whose Hong Kong business partner works in tech, had been looking to open a restaurant in the South Bay for a couple of years, drawn by what he considered a dearth of urbane, moderately priced, farm-to-table establishments here. He also thought opening in the South Bay would be less of a headache.
“I wouldn’t want to open in San Francisco now because of all the costs,’’ Tang says. “There are more hurdles than I want to deal with. Getting a liquor license there alone would be a huge hurdle to overcome.’’
All of which makes Silicon Valley an attractive area for restaurateurs now, Hargrave says, and well into the foreseeable future.
“Bay Area residents like to comment that the end is near,’’ Hargrave says. “But the tech economy is just scratching the surface. We’re just getting going.’’