Now that Daniel Patterson's restaurant group no longer has any locations in the city of his once burgeoning mini-chain called Alta, it comes as no surprise that his two-year-old plan to re-open Alta a few blocks down from its original Mid-Market location has fallen through.
As Eater is reporting, the previously announced 2017 plan to open Alta in the ground floor of the new Yotel at Seventh and Market has been scrapped, though the Alta Group still holds the lease on the space and is moving forward with something still to be announced.
The news comes after a year in which Alta's space on Market near Van Ness pivoted to become Jamaican restaurant Kaya, Patterson's Oakland restaurant Haven closed and reopened as Dyafa from acclaimed Palestinian chef Reem Assil, and a second location of Alta at the Minnesota Street Project became the Indian restaurant Besharam — all of these La Cocina-born concepts that are under the Alta Group umbrella, with the exception of Besharam, whose chef Heena Patel broke ties with Patterson's restaurant group last month to go on her own. We also learned last month that the group's Michelin-starred restaurant Aster, headed by chef Brett Cooper, was shutting down to make way for Guamanian restaurant Prubechu.
Patterson appears to have made a strategic decision in recent years to diversify his portfolio of restaurants in favor of ethnic cuisines from chefs whose work he can help incubate and bring to a larger audience. His healthy fast-food concept Locol, a partnership with LA chef Roy Choi, opened and closed two locations in Oakland within about a year, and shuttered its first location in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles last August, shifting to a catering-only business. The Alta Group also ceded control of Alfred's Steakhouse in downtown SF in December, after two years.
The Alta Group portfolio still includes Patterson's flagship North Beach restaurant Coi — which holds two Michelin stars — an LA location of Alta, and Plum Bar in Oakland — which still makes a killer cheeseburger.
