A different high-end Indian restaurant will take up where Dosa left off in the former bank space it called home for over a decade on Lower Fillmore, at the edge of Japantown.
The acclaimed team behind two other high-end restaurants, Taj Campton Place in SF's Union Square and Ettan in Palo Alto, have inked a deal to take over the vaulted-ceiling former Dosa. And their unnamed new restaurant will open there, they tell the SF Business Times, in "six or seven months."
Chef Srijith Gopinathan earned Michelin recognition for the Taj Campton Place Restaurant, earning the restaurant a star back in 2015, and two stars the following year — a rating it maintains to this day. Gopinathan calls his cuisine "Cal-Indian," and he expanded in February 2020 with the slightly more casual Ettan, alongside business partner Ayesha Thapar. The pair also just opened Little Blue Door at Los Altos' new State Street Market, serving Ettan's Kerala fried chicken among other dishes.
Earlier this year, Gopinathan also opened a London-inspired gastropub in Lodi called Oxford Lodi, with the help of business partner and friend Narender Ramarapu. That restaurants specializes in English pub fare like shepherd's pie and fish and chips, but also features the kind of multicultural cuisine one finds in London, like falafel, chicken tikka masala, and kebabs.
The new SF restaurant, Gopinathan and Thapar say, will be "at the scale and design grandeur" of Ettan, but will have a different menu and vibe.
"This is going to be a prominent, landmark-style destination restaurant," Thapar tells the Business Times. "We're hoping it changes the feeling in the Lower Fillmore area a bit."
Of course, in its heyday, Dosa also changed the vibe of the Lower Fillmore, and had a good run at the corner of Fillmore and Post from 2008 to 2020. The restaurant was known for its excellent Indian food and its dosas, as well as cocktails from the space's grand bar. But Dosa's owners filed for bankruptcy in 2019, closing the original Valencia Street location before giving up on the Fillmore location a year later, mid-pandemic.
The former bank space features a 4,813-square-foot ground floor and a 1,846-square-foot mezzanine level, with a fully built-out kitchen. It formerly had a dining capacity of 165 seats, but that may change with a redesign.
Thapar hints to the Business Times that an outdoor patio may be in the works for the space as well. And they're hoping with a major remodel for the kind of design accolades that the three-story Ettan has received, including winning a 2021 BLT Built Design award.
The design for the Fillmore space is being handled, at least in part, by Michael Zucker & Associates, whose name is listed on permit filings. Los Angeles-based Thomas Schoos Design was the lead on the Ettan design.
Stay tuned for updates on the name and opening later this year.
Photo via Yelp
