San Jose museum chef opens Tony’s Patio BBQ
San Jose chef and caterer Tony Santos has been pivoting madly since the coronavirus forced the temporary closing of his cafe at The Tech Interactive museum.
He’s making family meals for delivery, catering for virtual parties and creating holiday boxes for companies to send to their staffers working from home.
And he has turned his commissary kitchen in Alviso into a restaurant, Tony’s Patio BBQ.
Santos has been smoking meats for years, but now he’s got a pitmaster pal. His new head chef,
Paul Miller, brings both barbecue experience — he learned to smoke hogs in his native Arkansas — and a deep restaurant résumé to this venture. In the Bay Area, he’s cooked in the kitchens of Sent Sovi in Saratoga, Los Gatos Brewing Company, Martins West gastropub in Redwood City, among others.
They’re smoking brisket, baby back ribs, pulled pork and chicken leg quarters, and serving those with house-made barbecue sauce and Texas toast. Clever options on the menu include Grown Up Beanie Weenies, with hot links or kielbasa atop baked beans, and pulled pork nachos.
Smoked meats are also
available on sandwiches or in salads.
Rounding out the menu are side dishes of miso coleslaw, potato salad, mac & cheese and honey mustard deviled eggs. There’s seasonal cobbler for dessert and sweet tea.
Barbecue is available for pickup, delivery or outdoor dining on the patio from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
DETAILS >> 5202 N. First St., San Jose; 408- 493- 6090; tonycaterstoyou.com
As promised, San Francisco’s oldest restaurant will reopen
It’s year 171 for the Tadich Grill, and they’re going for year 172.
San Francisco’s oldest restaurant will reopen its historic doors for indoor dining this month, when the city’s COVID-19 restrictions will be lessened to allow operations at 50% customer capacity Tadich Grill is proud .“and excited to announce our reopening hours … beginning Monday, Nov. 9,” the Buich family announced on the website. “All precautions will continue to be taken to maintain the health of our purveyors, employees and customers, as we restore Tadich Grill back into your daily lives.”
After offering takeout and delivery during the first months of the pandemic, the owners decided to temporarily close the restaurant July 31 and wait for indoor dining to resume.
Social distancing won’t allow for customers to put their names on the waiting list and pack into the restaurant’s bar area to wait for tables. So, for the first time, Tadich will take reservations, at www.exploretock.com, for customers ready to get back inside for the res
taurant’s noted preparations of cioppino, sand dabs and petrale sole.
Lunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays and dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. every day.
Tadich, opened by Croatian immigrants in 1849, is regarded as San Francisco’s oldest continuously operating restaurant — and the oldest west of the Mississippi.
DETAILS >> 240 California St., San Francisco; tadichgrillsf.com
Kansai brings its sushi to downtown Hayward
Kansai, a sushi bar and Japanese restaurant with locations in Oakland and Concord, has expanded to Hayward.
The restaurant chain made the Sfist
website’s list earlier this year of the 12 Best Sushi Spots in the East Bay, drawing praise for its vast menu and latenight hours.
Also singled out was the signature Tiger Woods roll, a spicy tuna and cucumber one topped with seaweed salad, fish egg and spicy mayo.
Besides sushi, sashimi and nigiri, Kansai offers tempura, teriyaki, katsu, poke, udon and soba noodles and fusion entrees. Lunch specials are available weekdays from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Kansai’s newest is at 954 B St. along Hayward’s downtown corridor. The other locations are at 1669 Willow Pass Road in Concord and 4345 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.
DETAILS >> Open from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Peninsula supper club Selby’s will close until spring 2021
Selby’s supper club is hitting the pause button.
The retro-glam dining room on the Atherton-redwood City border, which opened in the summer of 2019, had been serving bordelaise-sauced prime steaks and martinis made tableside for only about nine months when the coronavirus pandemic forced it to stop indoor dining in March.
The restaurant pivoted, putting a takeout-and- delivery spin on executive chef Mark Sullivan’s contemporary continental cuisine.
But Selby’s was meant for destination dining, its owners say, so they’ve decided to close the restaurant temporarily.
“With winter approaching and the ongoing shelter-in-place orders limiting indoor dining, we have made the thoughtful decision to temporarily pause service until spring 2021,” the Bacchus Management Group said in a statement.
Until then, Selby’s staff members will support the group’s restaurants that remain open, The Village Pub in Woodside and Spruce in San Francisco. Both are offering lunch, dinner and prix fixe brunch.
A sister restaurant in Palo Alto, the Mayfield Bakery & Cafe, has closed permanently.
Selby’s is located in a 1930s building on El Camino Real that for years housed the restaurant Chantilly. Bacchus, headed by noted restaurateur Tim Stannard, kept the historic exterior and footprint intact, but renovated the interior to evoke the glamour found in Hollywood restaurants of the era such as Chasen’s, Romanoff’s and the Brown Derby.