A BLOCKBUSTER RESTAURANT FOR THE SALESFORCE TOWER.
Dominique Crenn has a new megawatt project in the works: Boutique Crenn, an ambitious restaurant opening later this year in San Francisco’s brand-new Salesforce Tower, the city’s tallest building.
There are many moving parts with Crenn’s new French-influenced venture, but according to the chef, who also owns the Michelin two-star Atelier Crenn and Hayes Valley’s Petit Crenn, Boutique Crenn will be something San Francisco has never really seen before — a destination pushing the boundary of what a restaurant can be, combining elevated food with cutting-edge fashion.
“People see chefs as only chefs, but there is so much more for us to be,” Crenn told Inside Scoop.
She recently signed a lease for a 4,000-square-foot space on the first floor of the Salesforce Tower (415 Mission St.) and an additional 1,000square-feet space in the building’s lobby. Together, the areas will host art shows, fashion pop-ups and temporary art installations, Crenn said.
On the food side, Boutique Crenn will be part boulangerie, part patisserie and part restaurant with a ever-changing menu. Many of the kitchen’s ingredients will be sourced from Crenn’s farm in Sonoma. While it wouldn’t be fair to say the Boutique Crenn menu is an afterthought, Crenn has ideas how the space can be something beyond just a food destination.
“Boutique Crenn is something that you would see in Paris or Japan,” she said. “San Francisco leads the way in the restaurant world, so it fits here too.”
“Who knows, maybe we could host fashion week one day there,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just excited to see what the space can become.”
The new project isn’t the only thing that the chef has on her plate this year: Her highly-anticipated Bar Crenn is scheduled to open next month. It will be a wine bar with food, right next to Atelier Crenn on Fillmore Street.
Cutting ties: With age comes wisdom, according to restaurateur Charlie Palmer — or at least the ability to quickly decide whether or not a project needs to be abandoned.
In February, word came out that Palmer was no longer affiliated with San Francisco’s Burritt Room + Tavern and Mystic Hotel, locations he operated with City Core Hospitality under a joint LLC called Palmer City-Core Hotels.
Now, Palmer is also stepping away from St. Helena’s 40-year-old Harvest Inn (1 Main St.), another property in which he partnered with City Core Hospitality in recent years.
“I decided to sell my interests and step out of it,” Palmer told Inside Scoop regarding the Harvest Inn property. “Over the last six months to a year, I saw there was a big difference in vision between what I wanted and what they wanted.”
In the simplest of terms, Palmer said his partners saw Harvest Inn — and its restaurant, Harvest Table — as real estate while he viewed it as a hospitality venture. The two sides have had disagreements over how to designate money for the aging property.
“They didn’t understand having to spend, say, $450 on a dining room chair that truly fit the space. For them, it was ‘why can’t we spend $50 instead?’” he said. “I wanted it to be the best.”
At the beginning of the joint venture, Palmer said the group understood the plans he had for the property and fully supported them. At some point, the visions diverged. Instead of trying to find ways to mend the relationship, Palmer said he decided it was time to move on.
“I’ve been lucky to have amazing partners over the years,” Palmer said. “This is the first time on this scale that I just didn’t see us coming eye-to-eye on where the property needed to go.”
The same could be said for the Mystic Hotel space: “I loved the Mystic, but again, we didn’t share the long-term vision.”
Palmer said his namesake steakhouse within Napa’s new Archer Hotel is doing well. The Charlie Palmer Group manages all food and beverage operations in the hotel and the rooftop bar will be opening soon.
As for now, Palmer said he’s just looking forward to what’s next.
“With my years of experience, I don’t want to waste my time in negative discussions like I’ve had over the last few months,” he said. “Maybe it is wisdom over time. Who knows?”
About the bottom line: Claudio Villani is roughly two weeks away from opening the doors to AltoVino (1358 Mason St.) on March 15, his new Italian project in Russian Hill — and all he’s thinking about these days are numbers.
How many seats should be designated for outdoor dining? How many customers should AltoVino expect on a slow week day? How about the weekend?
All are common concerns for any restaurateur. But for Villani, who is essentially opening an expanded incarnation of his popular Cole Valley wine bar InoVino, the plan is to stay close to what was successful in the past.
Villani told Inside Scoop that InoVino’s outdoor seating, for example, has been a boon, helping to keep the shop’s service numbers up even on
nights when the interior isn’t filled to capacity. With that in mind, he said to expect revamped outdoor seating at AltoVino. In the end, it’s all a numbers game, he said.
“Outdoor seating has had a major impact with InoVino and most places, really. It just adds so much,” he said. “We’re adding more awnings outside and putting in new heat lamps at AltoVino so I can put six tables with 12 or 14 more chairs.”
The initial timeline for AltoVino, which is filling the former Mason Pacific space, originally hoped for an opening late last year. Villani said that was mostly wishful thinking. The redesign took a little more time, he added, but now they’re almost finished.
“The interior was always a nice space but it had a corporate feel. We’re loosening it up a bit and we’ve made it more colorful,” he said.
The dining room will seat 48 diners. When adding in the bar seating and some additional benches by some of the space’s windows, Villani said the location will have the capacity for 60.
What does that mean in terms of service? Well, Villani is thinking about that too.
“We’ll be happy to start where weekdays we have about 60 to 70 covers. On the weekend, getting 100 to 120 is the goal,” he said. “That’s a goal we can easily make. It’s realistic.”
With chef Nick Kelly (Barbacco, Perbacco) at the helm in the kitchen, Villani will serve regional Italian fare, including pasta made on-site, and some InoVino hits like a house-made foie gras and chicken liver pate.
Seriously, the Wurst: After months of testing recipes (and sharing a few hilarious epiphanies associated with process on social media), Serious Eats culinary director, cookbook author and all-around food-whiz
J. Kenji López-Alt is ready to open Wursthall in San Mateo. The new biergarten (310 Baldwin Ave.) is the first time López-Alt has been a driving force behind a restaurant opening. If everything goes as planned, Wursthall will open to the public on March 12.
This isn’t a solo venture for López-Alt. He’s joined by Adam Simpson and Tyson
Mao, the owners of San Mateo craft beer and wine bar Grape and Grain.
For the unfamiliar, the upstairs space at Wursthall will serve as a full-service beer hall with food while the first floor will only have cocktails, wine and beer.
López-Alt’s playful obsession with German pub fare has created a Wursthall menu with dishes like the vegan doner kebab made with the Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat and cooked in a vertical rotisserie. There’s also the pork shoulder sandwich with meat cooked sous vide for 24 hours, shredded, combined some raw pork to form patties and then seared.