Alfred’s making a comeback
Venerable steak house returning with the old owners involved again
San Francisco’s 90-year-old Alfred’s Steakhouse is back in familiar hands.
After being sold to Michelin-starred chef Daniel Patterson three years ago, the Financial District restaurant is again being operated by the Petri family, the same folks who ran the business from 1973 to 2015.
“We’re going to return some normalcy there,” said Al Petri, the 75-year-old patriarch who retired from the restaurant business eight years ago. Petri recently became the majority investor in Alfred’s, which is on Merchant Street.
“San Francisco needs an affordable place where they can come, have a nice dinner and not have to pay such high prices,” Petri said.
The restaurant — San Francisco’s oldest steak house — is currently closed. It will reopen in early December with a new, fixed-price menu centered around firegrilled steaks. Similar to another local beef stalwart, House of Prime Rib, the new Alfred’s format will have customers pay for the steak cut they choose, with prices ranging from $39 to $68. Included in the price will be an appetizer platter for the table, a choice of starter (Caesar, heart of romaine salad or prawn cocktail) and two sides.
Under the Patterson regime, options
were more expensive, and the service model leaned more on a la carte dining. Patterson remains an investor in Alfred’s and will continue to help shape the restaurant’s menu moving forward, Petri said.
Petri originally retired from running Alfred’s in 2010, about five years before it was sold to Patterson. At the time, Petri attributed the sale to a changing San Francisco restaurant market, one that made it hard for businesses like his to succeed.
So what would make the 75-year-old return to an industry he wanted to leave just a few years back, thanks partly to rent increases and the high cost of operations? Petri said he was struck with new ideas during retirement, ones that didn’t come to fruition until he watched his son Marco run the business for a few years before Patterson.
“By simplifying things and just giving people what they enjoy, this can work. I want Alfred’s to be around for future generations,” he said
Another factor for his return: boredom.
“There’s only so many weeds you can pull while you’re retired,” he said with a laugh. “There’s only so many times you can cut the grass.”
The ownership transition bookends a hectic past few years. After Patterson’s restaurant group revamped the space with a new coat of paint and added grass-fed beef to the menu in 2015, a two-alarm fire forced the restaurant to close in 2017.
And when it closed again without warning in June to accommodate the ownership transition, rumors swirled that the business would shutter for good.
Petri said keeping Alfred’s alive is an act imbued with a sense of pride and also defiance.
“I want to show that this business model can work,” he said. “I could see it after stepping away for a while. With some small changes, getting back to what we used to do, I think it can last.”