Not so long ago, outspoken chef Peter Helmsley seemed to have written off San Francisco. <\/p>\n
When he announced the closure of his SoMa restaurant in Oct. 2024, it was with an incendiary Instagram message<\/a> decrying the area near the Moscone Center as the \u201cugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole\u201d \u2014 though he also said he was open to moving Aphotic to a different part of town.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Now the Michelin-recognized San Francisco chef will open a martini-focused cocktail bar next summer in Russian Hill. Hemsley, who earned a star for his ambitious seafood restaurant Aphotic, is partnering with mixologist Trevin Hutchins on a bar called Jupiter Room inside the former Lord Stanley space on Broadway and Polk Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Hutchins, Jupiter Room will be a \u201cmartini-focused project\u201d serving elevated comfort foods like burgers and shrimp cocktail, along with drink mashups such as a hybrid Cuba libre\/daiquiri. Other cocktails will be highbrow-lowbrow; for example, Hutchins is playing with a combination of the Incredible Hulk (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014 a green-hued, cognac-based, early-aughts shot \u2014 with the classic, julep-like style cocktail known as a smash (opens in new tab)<\/a> to make a creation he\u2019s calling the \u201cHulk Smash.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The bar\u2019s name is an homage to Jerry Thomas, a 19th-century mixologist and author of \u201cThe Bar-Tender\u2019s Guide (opens in new tab)<\/a>,\u201d the world\u2019s first book on the subject. In it, Thomas grandly refers to himself as the \u201cJupiter Olympus of the bar.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite that obscure, 150-year-old reference, Hutchins wants Jupiter Room to be fun, not a place where bartenders \u201chit people over the head with knowledge or technique.\u201d There is a growing fatigue with excessive detail, he says, so he wants to take cocktails back to their pre-Prohibition golden age. It will also be a late-night space, geared toward industry types stopping by for a snack and a cocktail after their shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n The build-out is expected to take some time, Hutchins says, because they\u2019re adding a bar to the space. Additionally, Hemsley is involved in a separate project (opens in new tab)<\/a> in the former Kells Irish Restaurant in Jackson Square. In the meantime, San Francisco\u2019s appetite for martinis<\/a> remains insatiable. \u201cWe want to make it so there\u2019s something for everyone,\u201d Hutchins says.<\/p>\n Jupiter Room Date and timeOpening summer 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not so long ago, outspoken chef Peter Helmsley seemed to have written off San Francisco. When he announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[414,143,145,144,8456,26297],"class_list":{"0":"post-37855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-chefs","9":"tag-oakland","10":"tag-oakland-headlines","11":"tag-oakland-news","12":"tag-restaurant-openings","13":"tag-russian-hill"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}