The Reported Table: Bacchus bets $120 dinners, and a $40 duck, on a 1941 Burlingame post office

Top image: A historic building on Burlingame Avenue in downtown Burlingame, the district where The Old Post Office opened Oct. 1. No licensed photo of the restaurant itself was available. Photo: Eugene Zelenko / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Celeste Marchetti-Okoro, Food & Dining Reporter

Burlingame’s 1941 Art Deco post office, as Eater SF describes it, is now selling a $120 three-course dinner. The Old Post Office opened Oct. 1 on Park Road. It comes from Bacchus Management Group, the company behind the Village Pub in Woodside and Selby’s in Atherton, both of which hold one Michelin star. “My hope is The Old Post Office becomes for Burlingame and Hillsborough what The Village Pub is for Woodside, or Selby’s is for Atherton,” founder Tim Stannard told The Almanac.

What the menu says

From the posted menus, as read Nov. 3:

• Dinner is $120 per person for three courses, according to the dinner menu. Starters include citrus-cured hiramasa and crispy pig’s tail. Mains include Mt. Lassen trout, pork belly en feuille de brick, a Snake River Farms New York strip and a Maine lobster tail (+$20).
• Add-ons: Alba white truffle risotto is a $50 supplement, and Petrossian caviar is a $125 supplement.
• Lunch is $55 for two courses on weekdays, per the lunch menu.
• The bar is à la carte, per the bar menu. It ranges from $9 duck fat fries to $45 steak frites.
• Every menu adds a 5% charge labeled “San Mateo County employer mandated expenses.”

The signature is a duck that is not on the printed menu. According to The Almanac, it serves two, costs a $40-per-person supplement and must be ordered ahead. The kitchen will initially serve six a night. The ducks are dry-aged 10 days and carved from a cart by RCP Design, which also builds Eleven Madison Park’s. Executive chef Jonathan Granada told the Almanac the dish was inspired by a duck he ate at Le Palais, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Taiwan. “I think I’ve cooked over 200 ducks already trying to figure this out,” he said. Eater SF reports the duck is served four ways.

Who’s behind it

Bacchus has 10 restaurants, per the Almanac, including Spruce in San Francisco and Augustine at Santana Row, per Eater. Stannard is a James Beard semifinalist. Granada joined Bacchus in 2025, per the Almanac, after working at The French Laundry and at Otium in Los Angeles, per Eater. He calls the food “contemporary American” because “it’s a melting pot of what Americans eat every day,” he told Eater. Pastry chef Kyle Caporicci and bar director Mathew Frantin round out the team.

The Almanac describes a 90-seat dining room under 25-foot ceilings with the original terrazzo floors and brass teller windows, a 24-seat private room and about 300 spirits. A glass-walled patio room is planned for April.

Eater reports that Bacchus calls its pricing “accessible luxury.” Stannard told the Almanac he already holds three Wine Spectator Grand Awards, “more than anybody in the world,” and wants a fourth. He admitted to “Michelin on the brain,” but added: “what’s more important to me is that the community feels like this is a place for them.”

What the critics have said

The Almanac and Eater pieces are opening reports, not reviews. The first full review we found is from the blog Foodnut.com, posted Oct. 20. Its author scored dishes individually: the hiramasa, trout and pork belly each got 9 out of 10, while the autumn salad got 5 out of 10 for being “too sour.” It recommended the restaurant overall. We found no major-critic review as of Tuesday.

The early accounts also disagree on details:

• Lunch: the Almanac reported $50; Eater and the menu say $55.
• Dinner: Eater said six courses; the Almanac and menu say three.
• Address: Eater’s text says 220 Park Road; the restaurant says 222.
• Duck oven: the Almanac says the birds rotate vertically; Eater says horizontally.

We used the restaurant’s posted figures.

The record

The Chronicle was unable to locate a San Mateo County Environmental Health inspection report for The Old Post Office. The restaurant is barely a month old; we will update when a report is available.

The long view

Bacchus built its name by giving wealthy Peninsula towns a restaurant of their own, and Stannard has said Burlingame and Hillsborough are next. At posted prices, dinner for two with the duck comes to $320 before the 5% county surcharge, wine, tax and tip. Whether that counts as “accessible luxury” will be settled over years, not weeks, and perhaps by the Michelin inspectors Stannard says he is thinking about. The bigger test is local: if a building that once handled Burlingame’s mail can fill 90 seats a night at these prices, that says a good deal about how much discretionary spending the mid-Peninsula still has.

Sources

• The Old Post Office, menus (dinner, lunch and bar PDFs, read Nov. 3, 2026) and website
• The Almanac, Adrienne Mitchel, Sept. 30, 2026 (updated Oct. 7)
• Eater SF, Dianne de Guzman, Oct. 2, 2026
• Foodnut.com review, Oct. 20, 2026
• San Mateo County Health (Environmental Health Services)

The Reported Table is built from published menus, public records and other critics’ published reviews. The Chronicle does not award stars and our reporters do not claim tastings.