This chef ran one of the Bay Area's best popups. Now he's opening his own spot
Chisme is moving out of its sultry lair inside Oakland's Low Bar and over to 347 14th St., where the Kon-Tiki shook Mai Tais until its closing in December.
Chef Manuel Bonilla said the new Bar Chisme will be more of a dive bar, with a small cocktail program with a few original drinks to complement his Filipino-Salvadoran cooking. Gone are the tropical trappings of the previous tiki bar for what will be a more casual, yet eclectic look.
'We're going for 'abuelita's house on acid'. Very homey and very chill,' he said.
The owners of the Kon-Tiki, Christ Aivaliotis and Matt Reagan, shut down their popular spot late last year after seven years in business. Bonilla is familiar with the new location: He was the Kon-Tiki's opening chef.
But his choice to return to the space amounts to a bet on the future of downtown Oakland, as Aiviolitis wrote in a profanity-laden screed that business in downtown Oakland was nearly impossible.
Aivaliotis and Reagan approached Bonilla and his business partners to take over their old corner space. Bonilla is keeping the operation as minimal as possible to protect himself from increasing costs. Unlike its predecessor, there won't be any servers and all orders must be placed and picked up at the bar. The vision: 'Straight up no-frills, but with Chisme's food,' he said.
Bonilla's resume isn't just dive bar food. It includes Oakland's two Michelin-starred Commis, and he currently works at modern Salvadoran restaurant Popoca. At Chisme, Bonilla's dishes have included yucca smothered in black beans, rich sisig pupusas and handmade chicken nuggets. Bar Chisme's menu will lean in a similar direction with the addition of a smashburger and a grilled burger. The house cocktails will feature ingredients like rums and agave distillates, also reflecting that influence.
Chisme took over Low Bar's kitchen in March of last year after the venue's owners announced they were ending their kitchen program. Chisme had made appearances as a popup before settling into its residency. Bonilla's cooking and being the only open kitchen until close to midnight made Chisme a magnet for late night diners or an excuse to stick around for another drink.
Chronicle restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez praised Bonilla's vision, which went from playful to layered. Dishes like tortas stuffed with lechon fuse cultural cues from his Filipino and Salvadoran background. 'His style is loose and fun but never misses a chance to impress, like the family member who steals the show on the dance floor,' he wrote. Chisme was ranked among the best new restaurants of 2024.
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Pastor's most recent plans call for a 12,971-square-foot, two-story complex on Dolores Street that includes eight upstairs apartments, roughly 5,100 square feet of ground-level retail space, and a dozen parking spaces. Plans submitted to the city in 2021 called for the demolition of a former bank annex once used as a community room. Because it was less than 50 years old, it did not qualify as a historic structure — but after it turned 50 in October 2022, the Carmel Historic Resources Board voted to add it to the city's historic resources list. Pastor agreed to build around the annex. Then, another issue arose: The project would require the removal of a small concrete wall, decorated with exposed aggregate and inlaid rocks, built in 1972 by a man local historians dubbed the 'father of stamped concrete.' In the fall of 2023, the City Council said the wall was too important to be moved and sent Pastor's company back to the drawing board. This April, the city's Planning Commission approved the project, marking a major milestone. Two weeks later, 11 residents and business owners filed an appeal. They argued that the development, which includes three buildings, exceeds the city's limit of 10,000 square feet. Each building is smaller than that. But the opponents said that since two buildings are connected by a second-story exterior walkway they should be considered a single structure — one bigger than 10,000 square feet. They also argued that the site would not have enough parking and that planned rooftop gardens would not meet the city's landscaping requirements because they would not be on the ground floor. "The plans that were submitted and approved in April are still outside of the guidelines and the rules of the city's codes," Courtney Kramer, one of the appellants, said during a City Council meeting Aug. 4. 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The city administrator, city clerk and members of the City Council did not respond to requests for comment. Read more: There are no street addresses in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Some say it's time to change Karyl Hall, co-chair of the Carmel Preservation Assn., said Pastor has bent over backward to listen to the community and to design — and redesign — his projects with the town's traditional architectural styles in mind. Hall, a retired research psychologist, is an adamant supporter, albeit a surprising one. Hall believes modern architecture — which she describes as "Anywhere, USA" buildings with sterile facades and box-like structures — poses an existential threat to Carmel-by-the-Sea. She co-founded the preservation association in response to the first proposal for The Pit: a contemporary design approved by the Planning Commission for the previous owners that she called "the ice box." Hall said she was heartened by Pastor, who proposed more traditional buildings. In an interview Thursday, she said some in town believe "that one person who owns so many properties is kind of scary." But the billionaire, she said, has been treated unfairly. 'The one thing we can always count on with him, which is why I've been supportive, is he's done quality work and he's done work that reflects Carmel's character," Hall said. "You can't say that about most of the developers who move in here. They just want to make big bucks." It remains unclear what Pastor means by "leave" Carmel. Will he halt his ongoing projects? Or sell his properties? Tim Allen, a real estate agent who has handled most of the billionaire's local purchases, said Thursday that Pastor is weighing his options. 'We need new infrastructure. We need new housing — it's mandated by the state. He's building these things," Allen said. "I hope this town rallies around Patrice, or he's gone." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
2 days ago
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Monaco billionaire developer says he's bailing on Carmel-by-the-Sea, a 'strange community'
Patrice Pastor spent big bucks on Carmel-by-the-Sea, in part because of cherished childhood memories, vacationing with his father in this charming, if quirky, coastal town. But after snapping up more than $100 million in properties in the area in recent years, the Monaco billionaire has grown increasingly infuriated by delays on his development projects, including a mid-sized retail and residential development that he has been trying to get approved. After six years of hold-ups and redesigns on that project — due, he said, to townsfolk endlessly nitpicking his plans — he has decided to bail on Carmel. "It's time to leave this strange community, if you can call it a community," Pastor said in a statement after the City Council this month delayed taking any action on the development, which he named the JB Pastor project in honor of his great-grandfather. City officials, he wrote, have used "reasons that are akin to a schoolyard" to stand in his way, and it is time, he said, to "reconsider my investment in Carmel." Read more: Why is a Monaco billionaire buying so many properties in Carmel and Big Sur? In Carmel-by-the-Sea, development — including upgrades to private homes — is notoriously slow. This wealthy Monterey County enclave strictly regulates architecture to maintain the much-vaunted "village character" of a place filled with cottages, courtyards and secret passageways. Residents in the one-square-mile town, population 3,200, have long sought to keep out the so-called trappings of city life. They have no street addresses, instead giving their homes whimsical nicknames like Almost Heaven and Faux Chateau. And they have no streetlights or sidewalks in residential areas. Over the last decade, Pastor has bought at least 18 properties, including The Hog's Breath Building, the site of the pub once owned by actor and former Carmel-by-the-Sea mayor Clint Eastwood; and the L'Auberge Carmel hotel, which houses a Michelin-star restaurant. In 2023, he paid $22 million for Cabin on the Rocks, the only oceanfront home ever designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Last year, the California Coastal Commission approved his 'visionary plan' to restore public access at Rocky Point, a seaside property he bought for $8 million in nearby Big Sur with views of the picturesque Rocky Creek Bridge. In Carmel-by-the-Sea — where, according to Zillow, the average home price is $2.3 million — Pastor's purchases have become a source of intrigue, and, for some, downright suspicion. Pastor is the scion of a powerful real estate family that built much of mega-rich Monaco, a dense, one-square-mile nation on the French Riviera. His defenders in Carmel-by-the-Sea have questioned whether he has been discriminated against because he is too rich. "We are not treated the same as everyone else," Pastor wrote this month. "I suppose we are now at the point where we need to accept we are not wanted and draw the necessary conclusions." The city has rejected several of Pastor's design proposals, including multiple pitches for a mixed-use development on the site of what locals call The Pit. Pastor bought the massive, unsightly hole in the ground — the site of a downtown construction project whose previous owners ran out of money seven years ago — for $9 million in 2020 and is still trudging through the city's permitting process. Pastor, in his statement, called the delays with that project a "grotesque situation." The latest opposition to his JB Pastor development may have been the final straw. Pastor's most recent plans call for a 12,971-square-foot, two-story complex on Dolores Street that includes eight upstairs apartments, roughly 5,100 square feet of ground-level retail space, and a dozen parking spaces. Plans submitted to the city in 2021 called for the demolition of a former bank annex once used as a community room. Because it was less than 50 years old, it did not qualify as a historic structure — but after it turned 50 in October 2022, the Carmel Historic Resources Board voted to add it to the city's historic resources list. Pastor agreed to build around the annex. Then, another issue arose: The project would require the removal of a small concrete wall, decorated with exposed aggregate and inlaid rocks, built in 1972 by a man local historians dubbed the 'father of stamped concrete.' In the fall of 2023, the City Council said the wall was too important to be moved and sent Pastor's company back to the drawing board. This April, the city's Planning Commission approved the project, marking a major milestone. Two weeks later, 11 residents and business owners filed an appeal. They argued that the development, which includes three buildings, exceeds the city's limit of 10,000 square feet. Each building is smaller than that. But the opponents said that since two buildings are connected by a second-story exterior walkway they should be considered a single structure — one bigger than 10,000 square feet. They also argued that the site would not have enough parking and that planned rooftop gardens would not meet the city's landscaping requirements because they would not be on the ground floor. "The plans that were submitted and approved in April are still outside of the guidelines and the rules of the city's codes," Courtney Kramer, one of the appellants, said during a City Council meeting Aug. 4. She said it was frustrating to residents who have "been through excruciating renovation projects and followed the rules" to see certain projects get a pass. City codes, she said, "need to be applied consistently in order to preserve this village in the forest." During the six-hour meeting, the City Council delayed making a decision on the appeal, putting everything on hold again. Ian Martin, one of the appellants, said in an interview Friday that the push-back against Pastor's projects is "absolutely nothing personal at all" and that longtime locals also go through the same long process. "Of course, Clint Eastwood was so frustrated with the planning process that he ran for mayor," Martin said. "Pastor is not being singled out." Eastwood, who was mayor in the 1980s, ran for office after fighting with the City Council over what he said were unreasonable restrictions on the design of an office building he wanted to erect. Pastor now owns that building. Martin said that of the 11 appellants, two are former City Council members and three, including himself, are former planning commissioners. They are "very well versed in the general plan and the municipal code and the design guidelines," he added. The group, he added, is "not opposed to the project." They just believe it has to play by the rules. Chris Mitchell, managing director of Esperanza Carmel LLC, the local branch of Pastor's international real estate company, said in a statement that "this process has made a mockery of the city's own rules." "Our project was reviewed for six years, redesigned five times, and approved by the Planning Commission and City staff," he wrote. He called the appeal a "last-minute" political maneuver and stall tactic. "The message from City Council is clear: it doesn't matter how much you follow the rules, if your business is not wanted here, you won't be treated fairly,' Mitchell wrote. The city administrator, city clerk and members of the City Council did not respond to requests for comment. Read more: There are no street addresses in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Some say it's time to change Karyl Hall, co-chair of the Carmel Preservation Assn., said Pastor has bent over backward to listen to the community and to design — and redesign — his projects with the town's traditional architectural styles in mind. Hall, a retired research psychologist, is an adamant supporter, albeit a surprising one. Hall believes modern architecture — which she describes as "Anywhere, USA" buildings with sterile facades and box-like structures — poses an existential threat to Carmel-by-the-Sea. She co-founded the preservation association in response to the first proposal for The Pit: a contemporary design approved by the Planning Commission for the previous owners that she called "the ice box." Hall said she was heartened by Pastor, who proposed more traditional buildings. In an interview Thursday, she said some in town believe "that one person who owns so many properties is kind of scary." But the billionaire, she said, has been treated unfairly. 'The one thing we can always count on with him, which is why I've been supportive, is he's done quality work and he's done work that reflects Carmel's character," Hall said. "You can't say that about most of the developers who move in here. They just want to make big bucks." It remains unclear what Pastor means by "leave" Carmel. Will he halt his ongoing projects? Or sell his properties? Tim Allen, a real estate agent who has handled most of the billionaire's local purchases, said Thursday that Pastor is weighing his options. 'We need new infrastructure. We need new housing — it's mandated by the state. He's building these things," Allen said. "I hope this town rallies around Patrice, or he's gone." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
