New fine dining spot in Atherton
Opening in what may be the most expensive city in the country, home to tech titans and multimilliondollar mansions, is a 10,000squarefoot restaurant embodying the opulence of the Hollywood dining scene in the 1930s and 1940s.
The upscale destination is called Selby’s and comes via the Bacchus Management Group, which is also behind Spruce and the Saratoga in San Francisco, as well as the Village Pub in Woodside. It’s scheduled to open Tuesday in Atherton at 3001 El Camino Real, a historic address for Silicon Valley restaurants.
Awardwinning chef Mark Sullivan, whose work at Spruce and the Saratoga earned the locations Michelin stars, will oversee the menu at Selby’s. Bacchus Management representatives said the food will be “modern continental.” Prices are still being finalized. Some of the options include a dryaged duck, carpaccio cipriani prepared tableside, grilled whole lobster and burgers.
Selby’s could open with one of the largest
wine lists and wine cellars in the country, based on the early details. According to the Bacchus Management team, 3,000 to 4,000 wines will on the menu and up to 20,000 bottles will eventually be on site, with a focus on Italian, Spanish, French and California wines. The building has newly built storage cellars to accommodate white wines, red wines and Champagnes.
For context, Michael Mina’s RN74 in San Francisco, which closed in 2017, was known as a destination for French wines. Its wine list was padded by the 30,000bottle wine cellar of venture capitalist Wilf Jaeger.
The ivycovered Selby’s building is a familiar stop for dining in Atherton. In the 1930s, it was home to Johnny’s, followed by Barbarossa and then Chantilly, which closed in 2017, roughly 43 years after opening. Since then, the building has been in the hands of the Bacchus Management team, which gutted the space and rolled out a complete remodel.
Designer Stephen Brady (formerly of Ralph Lauren Home, Gap and WilliamsSonoma) was tasked with creating Selby’s old Hollywood look — olivegreen mohair walls, chestnut leather chairs, two custom avantgarde chandeliers and 175 original pieces of art. Around 90 guests can sit in the building’s two main dining rooms, 30 can fit in its bar and lounge, and 150 in the private event spaces.
“As a company, we get a lot of offers to consider spaces and do new projects, probably about 10 options per week, maybe more. We look at a lot of stuff but with this, we just fell in love with the building and knew it was right for us,” said Bacchus Management founder Tim Stannard. “We don’t rely on the demographics or the studies or traffic counts or anything like that. We just spent time in Atherton hanging out, walking the streets, going to Starbucks. We knew it was the right move.”
It doesn’t hurt that the average annual household income in Atherton is over $450,000, according to Bloomberg and Business Insider. The town is within commuting distance of Palo Alto and San Francisco, and tech executives from companies like HP, Microsoft and Facebook have called the town home over the years — often living in gated estates with market values above $5 million. The median home sale price in Atherton in the first five months of this year was $8.7 million, according to Corelogic.
“Honestly, it isn’t the household income that really matters to us. What ends up making a great guest, we’ve realized, is travel,” Stannard said. “The ones who travel have experienced different foods and cuisines and are usually more open to trying new things in a restaurant.”