After more than 25 years and about a dozen restaurants across the Bay Area — including the Michelin-recognized, fine dining establishments Spruce in San Francisco, Selby’s in Atherton and the Village Pub in Woodside — Bacchus Management Group’s latest ranks as its most expensive to launch, according to founding partner and president, Tim Stannard. It was also the hospitality group’s easiest to line up investors for.

That’s because the 7,000-square-foot venue is unlike any other. The Old Post Office restaurant, which opened Oct. 1, is housed in an early 1940s building with Spanish and Art Deco nods. It was previously the Burlingame Main Post Office.

“Buildings like this come around maybe once in a lifetime,” Stannard told me. “Everybody was literally jumping up and down to do it.”

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The former post office’s historic status meant that in the lobby turned dining room, original elements like the locally quarried marble wainscoting, terrazzo flooring inlaid with brass, and brass teller windows and individual mailboxes could not be changed.

That was just fine with Stannard. “I fell in love with the building as soon as I saw it,” he said of his initial visit in 2022. “When I walked inside, my jaw dropped.”

Frequent Bacchus collaborators Stephen Brady Design and Left Coast Design Studio made it even more stunning. In the 92-seat dining room, 600-pound chandeliers cascade from the 25-foot-tall ceiling, while chairs and banquettes upholstered in espresso-hued mohair invite guests to settle in. More sumptuous mohair — a whopping 350 yards, the color of brown sugar — covers the walls above that exquisite marble.

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Meanwhile, the postmaster’s office has morphed into the elegant 22-person Postmaster’s Bar. Amid herringbone wood flooring, a coffered ceiling and saddle leather barstools, the wood-paneled walls are adorned with works from San Francisco’s Lost Art Salon, such as a watercolor and an etching by historic artist James Southard, along with black-and-white photographs by the gallery’s cofounder, Gaétan Caron.

A second bar in the back of the dining room has five seats. Patio seating for 60, which will be in a 3,000-square-foot glass-walled solarium that has yet to be constructed, is slated for completion in spring 2027.

Stannard acknowledged that Bacchus is aiming for both a Michelin star and a Wine Spectator Grand Award, which Spruce, Selby’s and the Village Pub have all held. He characterized those spots as “simultaneously neighborhood restaurant and destination worthy.”

In the same vein, the Old Post Office has an a la carte bar menu and a three-course, prix fixe dining room menu. The latter, priced at $120, comprises a canapé (a parmesan tartlet on my opening night visit), bread service (a ridiculously good laminated brioche), a choice of a starter and an entree, dessert (including a cheese option of Point Reyes Quinta........

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