How Burlingame's Old Post Office Fits Into an Ordinary Week

How often is a restaurant with a $120 dinner menu supposed to show up in your week? The man who built the Old Post Office has an answer, and he gave it to the San Francisco Chronicle before the doors opened.

"We like restaurants that are rooted in the communities that they're in, so if we had gone for a place that's … $500 a plate to sit down, it just would be a place you go once a year and it wouldn't be a place that is a part of the community. The Village Pub is the living room for Woodside. Spruce is the living room for Presidio Heights, and we wanted the Old Post Office to be that for Hillsborough and Burlingame." Tim Stannard, Bacchus Management Group

The restaurant opened Thursday, October 1, at 220 Park Road, so it has now been open seven weeks. Most of the early coverage went to the tableside duck and the chandeliers. The building, the menus and the plaza outside follow the plan Stannard described, so the block can work on a regular Tuesday or a Sunday morning as well as an anniversary dinner.

Five ways in, from a bar burger to a $120 dinner

Bacchus Management Group runs about ten Bay Area restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Village Pub in Woodside, Selby's in Redwood City and Spruce in San Francisco. It calls its specialty "accessible luxury," which it describes as restaurants that can earn Michelin stars and still be known for their bar burgers. The Old Post Office follows that model, so the same building offers very different evenings.

At the top of the range is the duck. There are six a night, and they have to be ordered when you book. According to Eater SF, the birds are dry-aged for 10 days, roasted in a custom carousel oven that turns them horizontally, and carved at the table from carts made by the same maker that supplies Eleven Madison Park. The sauce is finished over a burner with a small flambé, and the duck arrives as four courses over about 20 minutes.

At the bottom of the range is the burger at the bar. Between the two, lunch costs less than half of dinner and is served in the same dining room. Weekday lunch includes Parker House rolls and dinner includes laminated brioche, and both come with Vermont cultured butter stamped with an eagle.

Executive chef Jonathan Granada worked as a chef tournant at the French Laundry and as culinary director of Otium in Los Angeles. He calls the food "contemporary American." He told Eater SF, "I wanted the food to be repeatable," and he hopes diners leave already wanting to come back. His chef de cuisine, Niño Maraon, runs the kitchen day to day. Pastry chef Kyle Caporicci makes desserts that range from a mandarin orange creamsicle to a tipsy cake with brandy cream and roasted vanilla bean gelato.

Reservations are taken through OpenTable or by phone at 650-502-1000, both available through the Old Post Office website, which also lists current hours.

Why the casual room sits where it does

The restoration standards decided which rooms could change.

The post office was built in 1939 and opened in 1941. It was a Works Progress Administration project designed by architect Ulysses Floyd Rible, mixing Spanish eclectic and Art Deco styles. It stood empty from 2014, when the post office moved to a smaller site nearby. The restoration had to meet the U.S. Secretary of the Interior's standards for rehabilitation. The Chronicle reported that Bacchus and its designers, Stephen Brady of S.B. Brady Designs and Craig Trettau of Left Coast Design, were not allowed to change anything judged historically significant. That included the terrazzo floors, the marble walls and most of what became the main dining room.

The rule reached small details too. Some old memo boards still sit behind a locked glass window whose key was lost long ago, and they stay that way because the tenant is not allowed to put in a new lock.

The wing that held the postmaster's office, a sorting room and storage was not classed as historic. That freedom is where the casual option comes from. The wing now holds the Postmaster's Bar, which kept the original metal "postmaster" sign, and a large new kitchen. The protected main hall, with its 25-foot ceilings, became the prix-fixe dining room. The restaurant's two tiers line up with the line between the protected and unprotected parts of the building.

Many of the original details are still there:

• "The Letter," a cast-stone relief of a woman, still sits above the original front doors.
• Brass teller windows, now lit from behind, run along one wall of the long dining room, along with the original brass mailboxes.
• The safe door, a heavy black door that once guarded the post office safe, now hangs in the hallway to the restrooms.
• Brass eagles, which Stannard pulled from a construction pile headed for the dump, were planned for the host stand.
• The chandeliers are heavy enough that the ceiling had to be reinforced. Lighting designer Magnus Schevene of Rose Gold Society told the Chronicle his sources of inspiration included an upside-down wedding cake, Icelandic cathedrals and the basalt columns at Devils Postpile.

Saving the building also meant moving it. To dig the underground parking garage for the 220 Park Road project, the entire 1,000-ton landmark was rolled across steel beams and later returned. During the five years of work, the Chronicle reported, locals kept looking in and getting impromptu tours from Stannard, and some, he said, were still bringing their mail.

Outside, the plaza runs on Sunday mornings

The restaurant is the anchor of a larger project. Dostart Development Company, working with Sares Regis Group of Northern California, kept the post office and built a six-story office and retail building of 185,000 square feet behind it. The project also added the underground garage and a public plaza that hosts live music, a farmers market and events.

The farmers market is what gives the block a regular weekly schedule, and that schedule has just changed for winter. The state's certified-market listing for the Burlingame Fresh Market puts it at 200–240 Park Road at Burlingame Avenue. It runs on Thursdays from 3 to 7 p.m. only from July through October, and on Sundays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. all year. From November on, Sunday is the market day.

That fits the restaurant's schedule. The market opens at 9 a.m., and weekend brunch at the Old Post Office runs until 2:30 p.m. A Sunday market trip and brunch can happen on the same block on the same morning.

Here is what is on the downtown calendar in the coming weeks:

1. Sundays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.: The Burlingame Fresh Market on Park Road. Upcoming dates include November 22 and 29 and December 6.
2. Wednesday, December 2, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.: A holiday wreath-making workshop with Penflora, listed by Downtown Burlingame at "The Shop."
3. Friday, December 4, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.: Winterfest in Burlingame, hosted by Downtown Burlingame and City of Burlingame Parks and Recreation. After the traditional tree lighting there is a small train ride around Burlingame Avenue and hot chocolate.

Winterfest ends at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday, which is the middle of dinner service. Dinner runs nightly until 10 p.m. Anyone planning to go from the tree lighting to the dining room or the Postmaster's Bar will want a reservation, since that evening is likely to be busier than usual.

What spring adds to the plaza

For now, the Old Post Office is all indoors. The Chronicle reports that next spring brings more seating in a glass greenhouse outside, along with gardens and patios facing the public plaza. Those additions would connect the restaurant directly to the plaza where the market and the live music already take place. Until then, the main ways in are a seat at the Postmaster's Bar, a weekday lunch at $55, or a Sunday that starts at the market on Park Road.

If you live nearby and want to talk about how the new Park Road block is shaping downtown Burlingame, Cheryl Bower is glad to hear from you, whether over coffee after the Sunday market or when you're ready for a home valuation.