Dining Dancing Romancing hospitality group has officially appointed chef Roberto Bonefont Jr. as Executive Chef at the company’s San Francisco fine dining endeavor, The 1881 Restaurant.
 
Chef Roberto has two decades of restaurant industry experience. In 2012, Chef Roberto posted up alongside the Michelin-star-experienced Chef Steven Snook. It was here that Chef Roberto was inspired and educated by the surrounding countryside. In 2018, Chef Roberto relocated to San Francisco to embark on a new culinary journey in luxury hotel restaurants. 
 
Now The 1881 restaurant, inside the new Mansion on Sutter hotel, bears some of Chef Roberto’s touches in offerings such as squid ink-crusted deviled eggs with Ossetra caviar, egg farce, shallots; an “Asparagus Mimosa”; cauliflower with labne, dates, almonds, brown butter, romanesco; such niceties as Strube Ranch Wagyu steak tartare with capers, chives, Dijon mustard, crostini; white sturgeon French caviar with petit blini, crème fraîche, Beluga vodka; or a daily selection of local oysters. Heartier dishes are represented by the likes of a bleu cheese “squared”, and a Crescent Farm duck breast with sweet potatoes, huckleberry, lollipop kale, duck jus. The restaurant’s Summer menu, due out in the coming weeks, will be the first of The 1881’s menus completely designed by Chef Roberto.
 
Also new to The 1881 is a Saturday and Sunday Brunch offering, launching on Father’s Day, Sunday, June 16 from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The 1881 Father’s Day Brunch menu will entail a mix of some of the eatery’s now-signature items, and some nods to classic breakfast favorites. Dishes will run the gamut from a New York-style bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a Kaiser roll, to a requisite Salmon Bagel, to The 1881’s Croque Monsieur, The 1881 Brunch Burger, to the afore-mentioned deviled eggs with Ossetra caviar.
 
The 1881, named for the mansion’s original build-date, seats 90 people in the main dining room with additional bar and outdoor patio seating options. The December 2018 soft-launch of The 1881 at the Mansion on Sutter was the first phase of the property’s opening, which is continuing with a three-stage public opening of 12 hotel rooms, plus a speakeasy bar (slated for a late-2019 opening).
 
The hotel side of the San Francisco property is operated by the Rosenson family’s lodging group, Luxury Mansion Collection, currently comprised of the Mansion on Sutter; the Mirabelle Inn located in the Santa Ynez Valley, in the heart of Santa Barbara wine country; and Château du Sureau, a Relais & Châteaux property in Oakhurst, California, which the companies acquired in December 2017.