The Big Four, a 50-year old San Francisco restaurant where former Mayor Willie Brown and late Senator Dianne Feinstein once held court and neighbors strolled in for a weeknight steak and martini in its low-lit, wood-paneled dining room, is reopening in the Huntington Hotel after a yearslong hiatus.
The Nob Hill restaurant will return March 17 as part of an extensive remodel of the century-old Huntington Hotel, which reopened March 1. Known for its clubhouse atmosphere, live piano performances and classic dishes like chicken pot pie and crab Louie, the restaurant will begin accepting reservations on Wednesday. The hotel will also unveil a new cocktail bar off of the lobby a few weeks after the restaurant opens.
Noted interior designer Ken Fulk oversaw the aesthetic revival of the hotel and the 72-seat Big Four, while chef David Intonato, most recently of Appellation in Healdsburg, a hotel restaurant from celebrity chef Charlie Palmer, updated the menu.
The Big Four – named for the four owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, including the hotel’s namesake, Collis P. Huntington – was more of a place to be seen than a culinary destination before its closure. The hotel’s towering red brick structure, kitty-corner from Grace Cathedral, was originally built in 1922 as an apartment building. A few years later, it became a hotel where cultural figures and celebrities like Truman Capote and Princess Margaret stayed. After multiple ownership changes over the years, the hotel and restaurant closed in 2020 because of the pandemic; the former owners defaulted on their $56.2 million mortgage in 2022.
Designer Ken Fulk preserved original details from the Big Four, such as wall sconces made of rams’ horns, carved wooden columns and mirrors etched with names of the four magnates. (Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle)
In 2023, Highgate, a hotel management company, and San Francisco’s Flynn Properties purchased the hotel. In preparation for the reopening, they recently relit the hotel’s eye-catching rooftop sign.
“It’s a symbol of the resurrection of San Francisco,” Greg Flynn, CEO of Flynn Properties, told Mayor Daniel Lurie in a video the mayor posted on Instagram of the hotel’s ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 2.
The restaurant’s new menu honors the spirit of longtime customer favorites, especially its chicken pot pie, which will keep its pre-pandemic price of $35. (The Big Four hasn’t finalized other menu prices.) Rather than use a roux as was done before, Intonato thickens the sauce with pureed noodles to evoke a sense of comfort and a “cleaner, brighter expression,” he wrote in an email. The crab Louie will be served inside a small, hollowed-out head of iceberg lettuce with Brokaw avocado, asparagus and snap peas.
The Big Four chicken pot pie will maintain its pre-pandemic price of $35. (Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle)
“We felt our updates had to follow the same spirit as our enhancements to the dining room itself – thoughtful refinements that honor the restaurant’s beloved classics,” Intonato said.
Tableside service will play a part in several dishes. Servers will mix steak tartare with cornichons, capers and chives at the table and serve it with roasted bone marrow. For cioppino, they’ll pour a saffron shellfish broth over a bowl of Dungeness crab legs, clams, kampachi tuna and mussels, honoring what an old Big Four menu called “San Francisco seafood stew.”
Fulk kept the dominant dark green and brass color scheme and overall look of the Big Four. (Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle)
While the restaurant is 50 years old, the decor captures the heady time when the railroad owners built mansions on Nob Hill in the 1870s, with its vintage train timetables, shining brass fixtures, bear statues and portraits of the railroad magnates. Fulk kept the dominant dark green and brass color scheme and overall look, preserving original details, such as wall sconces made of rams’ horns, carved wooden columns, mirrors etched with names of the four magnates, and a decorative fireplace mantel and back bar centered around the piano, which will return for nightly live performances.
While the Big Four’s cocktail list emphasizes local creations like the Cable Car, with rum, lemon and bitters, the new bar, called Arrabella’s Cocktail Salon, will have a different menu. It’s named after Arrabella Huntington, once known as the country’s wealthiest woman and whose first husband was the hotel’s namesake.
Big 4, Huntington Hotel, 1075 California St., San Francisco. Opening March 17. thebigfoursf.com
This article originally published at A 50-year-old S.F. see-and-be-seen restaurant makes a comeback.