The Old Post Office Opens in Burlingame: Jonathan Granada Brings Tableside Duck and Fine Dining to a 1941 Landmark
Historic architecture, French Laundry pedigree, tableside theatre and a duck service limited to just six orders per night: The Old Post Office has officially opened in Burlingame.
Sometimes the most interesting new restaurants are not built from scratch.
They are resurrected.
In Burlingame, just south of San Francisco, a historic 1941 Art Deco post office has been transformed into The Old Post Office, an ambitious new restaurant from Bacchus Management Group, the hospitality company behind restaurants including Spruce, Selby’s and The Village Pub. The restaurant officially debuted on 1 October 2026.
But the architecture is only half the story.
At the centre of the kitchen is executive chef Jonathan Granada, whose résumé includes time at The French Laundryand Los Angeles restaurant Otium. His opening menu brings together French influences, Chinese techniques, Spanish references from his heritage and contemporary American cooking.
🦆 Six ducks. Four preparations. One piece of restaurant theatre.
The dish attracting immediate attention is not simply roasted duck.
It is practically a performance.
Only six duck orders are available each evening, and they must be arranged with the reservation. The birds are dry-aged for ten days before being cooked in a custom carousel-style oven.
Then the theatre moves into the dining room.
The duck is presented tableside on specially made service carts, carved in front of the guests and accompanied by a flambéed sauce incorporating ingredients including black pepper, blackberry vinegar and plum brandy.
What follows is a four-part progression:
🍽️ sliced breast with wood-grilled Treviso and ume
🍞 duck liver with brioche and umeboshi
🔥 grilled leg with vinegars and Castelfranco
🥣 and finally, a duck broth infused with matsutake mushrooms
The entire sequence unfolds over approximately 20 minutes.
In an era in which restaurant experiences increasingly compete not only on flavour but on memory, storytelling and shareability, it is a clever proposition.
✉️ When the building becomes part of the menu
Perhaps the most intelligent aspect of the concept is how deliberately the restaurant references its former life.
The historic structure retains original architectural elements including terrazzo flooring, brass details and former post-office features, giving the dining room a sense of identity that no newly built restaurant could easily recreate.
Even some of the food plays with that history.
A laminated brioche is served with butter stamped with an eagle, a subtle reference to the building’s postal past.
Elsewhere, Granada revisits memories from his own career.
A white-truffle risotto finished tableside recalls a dish he prepared during his time working with Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, while a crispy pig-tail preparation reaches back to his Otium years.
This is nostalgia working on two levels:
the history of the building and the history of the chef.
🥂 Fine dining — without making every visit an occasion
There is another interesting strategic decision behind The Old Post Office.
Bacchus Management Group describes its approach as “accessible luxury”: creating restaurants capable of offering serious fine-dining experiences without becoming places guests visit only once a year.
That philosophy explains the restaurant’s dual personality.
The main dining room operates around prix-fixe menus, while the separate Postmaster’s Bar offers more familiar à la carte options including a burger, lobster roll and steak frites.
Dinner is priced at $120 for the prix-fixe menu, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Lunch and brunch are planned at lower price points, while the restaurant’s own website lists dinner nightly, with lunch beginning October 12 and weekend brunch beginning October 17.
This may prove one of the smartest elements of the whole project.
Luxury at dinner.
A burger at the bar.
A historic landmark as the backdrop for both.
⭐ And what about Michelin?
The Michelin question will inevitably follow.
Bacchus already operates restaurants with Michelin recognition, and the San Francisco Chronicle described The Old Post Office as opening with Michelin-star ambitions. That, however, should be understood as an aspiration rather than an accolade: The Old Post Office has not been announced as a Michelin-starred restaurant. San Francisco Chronicle
For now, the more interesting question is whether the restaurant can turn spectacular architecture and elaborate service into something more difficult to achieve:
a place people actually want to return to.
Because beautiful restaurants attract attention.
Great restaurants create habits.
And if The Old Post Office succeeds in combining both, Burlingame may have gained far more than another impressive dining room.
👉 Learn more through the below link.
Source / Further Reading: Dianne de Guzman, Maximalist Tableside Duck Service Is the Signature at the Peninsula’s Old Post Office, Eater SF, 2 October 2026. Additional factual verification: The Old Post Office official website and San Francisco Chronicle.
FnBpedia Team