“It’s time to put the rumors to rest,” Seth McDaniels, general manager of Palo Alto’s The Epiphany Hotel said in a statement. Renowned Japanese restaurant Nobu is opening its first Northern California location at the hotel next year, he confirmed.
Rumors have been swirling for months about the high-end restaurant’s move to 180 Hamilton Ave., but remained unconfirmed by both Nobu and Epiphany representatives until now.
The Epiphany’s restaurant, Lure + Till, will officially close on Jan. 2, 2017, to make way for the “anxiously awaited addition” of Nobu in June, McDaniels said.
“While the closing of our beloved hotel restaurant is bittersweet, we are thrilled to usher in a new era of dining here at The Epiphany, welcoming one of the most renowned, upscale Japanese dining experiences to Palo Alto,” he said.
Lure + Till opened with The Epiphany Hotel in downtown Palo Alto in 2014. Photo by Michelle Le.
Planning documents submitted to the City of Palo Alto last month show minor proposed changes for the outside of the hotel’s ground-floor restaurant space, including new planters, outdoor gas heaters, patio light fixtures, door handles and handrails — and, of course, a new bronze, back-lit Nobu sign.
A rendering included in Nobu’s project plans, submitted to the City of Palo Alto in October.
The restaurant space itself, however, will go through a “dramatic transformation,” McDaniels said.
In the interim months between Lure + Till’s closure and Nobu’s opening, the hotel will continue to offer full dining options to Epiphany guests (24-hour room service, breakfast and bar/lounge service), McDaniels said.
Famed restaurateur and chef Nobu Matsuhisa operates restaurants in Beverly Hills, Malibu, Las Vegas, Aspen, Miami Beach and New York City as well as Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Milano, Mykonos, the Bahamas and elsewhere. He opened his first restaurant in the United States (Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills) in January 1987.
Lure + Till opened with The Epiphany in March 2014. Lure + Till’s acclaimed chef Patrick Kelly left the restaurant two months ago to relocate to Denver.
Former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who partnered with Matsuhisa to build a hotel on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, bought The Epiphany last year.
Nobu representatives did not immediately return requests for comment.
My goodness. Larry Ellison owns the Epiphany Hotel and a world famous restaurant will be added to the glitter.
Anyone wonder where all the former tenants of Casa Olga went? I know of a few, living in Milpitas in a dilapidated group home that has been ordered to close because of its condition. Instead of the lively downtown exposure that the tenants had, most are shut up in care facilities nowhere near a downtown where a pharmacy, post office or a barber is available. Sure, it was bound to happen but a loss to our community.
Palo Alto is the kind of town that rejected a senior residential project and invites start ups to take over the downtown. What’s next?
Do any of the homes in Palo Alto have kitchens?
Been to a Nobu, meh…
interesting naming this the first Nobu in Northern CA….
look up the short lived Katsu experiment in Los Gatos
http://losgatosmagazine.com/2013/04/06/katsu-fresh-start-for-new-eatery/
http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2012/11/26/nobu-vet-opens-katsu-in-los-gatos-complete-with-1200-dish/
and then, it closed, sometime late 2014/early 2015 I think.
Maybe Katsu is relocating to Palo Alto? Or another Nobu affiliated chef? Whatever, soon enough it will be a Blue Line Pizza, just like here in LG.
Too snooty for me. Unimpressed. But, this is the new Palo Alto, indeed.
As guests of a Japanese company, we had what we thought would be a wonderful and original dining experience at Nobu in Switzerland.
Actually, it was exponentially overpriced, same-o, same-o sushi–and not nearly fresh enough, since switzerland is landlocked.
The result was that more than half of the party developed very painful and severe food poisoning late that night. Many people, ourselves included, were too sick to even leave our hotels for three days. Some people required medical care.
The moral is–NEVER eat sushi in a landlocked country, or ANY place without direct access to seafood fresh from the sea!
Epilogue: the Japanese company had to procure a lawyer to get their money back. They were so humiliated they vowed never to return to Switzerland!