Chef who ripped San Francisco plots his return

Not so long ago, outspoken chef Peter Helmsley seemed to have written off San Francisco.

When he announced the closure of his SoMa restaurant Aphotic in October 2024, it was with an incendiary Instagram message decrying the area near the Moscone Center as the “ugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole” — though he also said he was open to moving to a different part of town.  

Now the chef will open a martini-focused cocktail bar next summer in Russian Hill. Hemsley, who earned a Michelin star for his ambitious seafood restaurant, is partnering with mixologist Trevin Hutchins on a bar called Jupiter Room inside the former Lord Stanley space on Broadway and Polk Street. 

According to Hutchins, Jupiter Room will be a “martini-focused project” 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 green-hued, cognac-based, early-aughts shot — with the classic, julep-like style cocktail known as a smash (opens in new tab) to make a creation he’s calling the “Hulk Smash.” 

The bar’s name is an homage to Jerry Thomas, a 19th-century mixologist and author of “The Bar-Tender’s Guide (opens in new tab),” the world’s first book on the subject. In it, Thomas grandly refers to himself as the “Jupiter Olympus of the bar.” 

Despite that obscure, 150-year-old reference, Hutchins wants Jupiter Room to be fun, not a place where bartenders “hit people over the head with knowledge or technique.” 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. 

The build-out is expected to take some time, Hutchins says, because they’re adding a bar to the space. Additionally, Hemsley is involved in a separate project (opens in new tab) in the former Kells Irish Restaurant in Jackson Square. In the meantime, San Francisco’s appetite for martinis remains insatiable. “We want to make it so there’s something for everyone,” Hutchins says.