A gorgeous, 1941 Art Deco-styled post office in Burlingame sees new life with the restaurant by the team behind San Francisco’s Spruce, Michelin-starred establishments Selby’s and the Village Pub , and more. The Old Post Office debuted on Thursday, October
1, and with the opening comes an ambitious menu from chef Jonathan Granada, who spent time working at the French Laundry and now-closed Los Angeles restaurant Otium under chef Timothy Hollingsworth.
It’s a restaurant that almost didn’t happen. As Tim Stannard, founding partner and president of Bacchus Management Group, tells it, he’s been looking to expand Bacchus’s mini empire of restaurants into Burlingame for nearly two decades, but couldn’t quite find a fit for the restaurant they wanted to open. The post office space at 220 Park Road wasn’t even on Stannard’s radar until a friend made him promise to take a look at it; at the time, Stannard and the Bacchus team were deep into the buildout of their Santana Row restaurant, Augustine, and they just weren’t looking at new spaces. Still, Stannard dropped in with longtime Bacchus collaborator and designer Stephen Brady, and they were wowed by the space’s soaring ceilings, preserved terrazzo floor, and brass work. “My jaw just dropped and so did Steven’s,” Stannard says. “Stephen has done a lot of historical work in his career, and we just both looked at each other and said, ‘We’re a hundred percent going to do this restaurant, just whatever we need to do to make this happen.’”
Building a menu to match the historical space required balance, and Granada was up for the challenge of creating dishes that could stand up to the grandeur of the space. Diners will have a choice between prix fixe menus for dinner, lunch, and brunch, or the more casual a la carte menu available at the Postmaster’s Bar. “I’m really excited about [the menu] because I think it shows some new-school techniques, but it’s a lot of old-school [techniques, too], which I’m a fan of — and it fits the building a lot,” Granada says. There are French influences, Chinese techniques, and Spanish techniques from Granada’s heritage. It’s a mix of different skills from Granada’s training, but at the end of the day, he calls the Old Post Office’s food “contemporary American” because “it’s a melting pot of what Americans eat every day,” he says. “It’s just food that I really enjoy and that I hope people would want to come back and eat again,” Granada says. “I wanted the food to be repeatable. I wanted people to come in and eat and go, ‘Oh my god, I can’t wait to go back.’”
Emblematic of this mix of influences and the thoughtful details behind the dishes is the showstopper duck supplement that’s limited to six orders a night (purchased with reservation). The 10-day, dry-aged ducks are cooked in a custom-built carousel oven, which spins the birds horizontally (much like the ride). They’re then served tableside on (also) custom-made carts, from the same maker as the ones at Eleven Madison Park, with four different preparations. Guests will get a show as the duck is carved and a sauce incorporating black pepper, gizzards, house blackberry vinegar, and plum brandy — with a bit of a flambé moment — is made over a burner. From there, the quartet of dishes is served over the next 20 minutes: sliced duck breast with wood-grilled treviso brushed with ume, or Japanese plums, with freeze-dried olives and raspberries, plus the pan sauce; duck liver with brioche and umeboshi; grilled duck legs sauteed with plum vinegar, sherry vinegar, and blackberry vinegar, and served with compressed castelfranco; and finally, duck broth made from the bones and steeped matsutakis, served with charred scallion oil and a smidge of aged sherry to complete the experience.
Beyond the (limited) duck orders, Granada’s opening menu will see some fun surprises and details from his background or the building itself. A Parmesan tart that Granada’s dubbed “Gougere 2.0” is one of the opening bites, a tart filled with Parmesan mousse, black pepper, grated Parmesan, and chives. A wavy-lined, laminated brioche finished with thyme and flaky sea salt comes with butter stamped with an eagle (a nod to the post office surroundings). A crispy pigtail served with an aligote made with parsley root and aged Comte, and is a throwback to the chef’s days at Otium, where he first served the dish. A white truffle risotto finished tableside with brown butter is nostalgic to the time Granada made the dish with chef Thomas Keller at the French Laundry. Meanwhile, a New York strip steak is served with bone marrow and brown butter mashed potatoes inside a vol-au-vent, or hollowed puff pastry vessel.
Lunch launches on Monday, October 12, featuring “very similar” dishes, per Granada, but with some changes such as soup instead of vegetables, perhaps a chicken leg instead of duck breast. Brunch, starting on Saturday, October 17, will feature new items such as a buckwheat crepe stuffed with lemon ricotta and topped with honey-poached cranberries and almonds, and then bruleed with a blow torch.
But as fantastical as all of these dishes sound, the a la carte menu at the bar will keep things grounded for the more casual diner; Spruce and the other Bacchus restaurants are each known for their specialty burger, and the Old Post Office is no exception. Here, Granada has prepared a six-ounce patty and dressed the brioche buns with in-house Thousand Island sauce, and topped them with smoked cheddar, caramelized onions, and crispy shallots. An egg is also added, but not without some technique to it: the egg whites are fried with crispy guanciale thrown in, while the yolk is confited for that runny texture. Meaty lobster rolls and steak frites also appear on the menu, all complemented by a classic cocktail menu.
Even with all the extra touches and tableside service, the Bacchus team is aiming for what they call “accessible luxury,” pricing the six-course dinner menu at $120 (with lunch and brunch at $55 and $70, respectively). “You can easily see a restaurant like this, with this kind of grandeur and glamour, starting at $300 or $400 a person to come in and have dinner — and that just runs absolutely counter to what our hopes are for this restaurant,” Stannard says. “…It’s not an inexpensive menu, but we think that it falls into that expense of accessible luxury, which is really where I hope our restaurants land for guests.”
It’s just the start for the new restaurant as the team moves into Phase II this winter with the construction of an outdoor patio area and a 60-seat glass house, set to open in April. It’s an ambitious restaurant, but one that Granada is thankful for. “What an opportunity, what a cool space — I feel so honored,” Granada says. “I feel like everything is happening for a reason. Sometimes things just feel right.”
The Old Post Office (220 Park Road, Burlingame) debuted on Thursday, October 1, and is open 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday for lunch; 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday for brunch; and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. daily for dinner.
