Left Bank, LB Steak restaurants shutting down
The venerable Left Bank restaurants - known for decades in the Bay Area for their French bistro cuisine and joyous Bastille Day events - are shutting down, along with their sister restaurants LB Steak, Meso Modern Mediterranean and Petite Left Bank.
The owners, Vine Hospitality, first informed employees Monday morning - after their Father’s Day shifts on Sunday, according to the management staff at three locations. The company has yet to issue a public announcement.
“It’s shocking,” said an employee who had been hired just three months ago. “We just got the word at 9 a.m. We weren’t expecting this.
“But these things happen in this economy.”
The shutdown will hit hard at Santana Row in San Jose, which is home to all three of the restaurant concepts. The move also affects the oldest Left Banks in the group, Larkspur and Menlo Park; the LB Steak at Bishop Ranch in San Ramon; and Petite Left Bank in Tiburon.
In some cases, Francophiles have a couple of days to make a last trip in for lunch or dinner in these Parisian-styled cafes, according to staffers. The Left Bank location in Larkspur will serve diners today, Tuesday and Wednesday, then shut down. For Peninsula customers, they will have today and Tuesday at the Menlo Park location. There was no answer at the San Jose restaurant.
The group has had a long history of serving French classics - Nicoise Salad, Escargots, Duck Confit, Beef Bourguignon, Hanger Steak au Poivre, Les Profiteroles - and celebrating Bastille Day and Beaujolais Nouveau Day with costumed servers and live music.
Left Bank was founded in 1994 in Larkspur, when restaurateur-entrepreneur Ed Levine partnered with noted French chef Roland Passot to create the French brasserie menu and look. Next came the Menlo Park location, which has been a mainstay on Santa Cruz Avenue in that city’s downtown since 1998. The Santana Row restaurant opened in 2003. followed by the group’s first LB Steak there in 2009.
A decade later, the group expanded its culinary footprint with Meso Modern Mediterranean at Santana Row in 2019, then branched out to the East Bay for the first time with an LB Steak in San Ramon in 2021. The Petite cafe opened in Tiburon in 2022.
Levine died in 2017. An obituary that he wrote himself said, “He began working in restaurants in 1970 in Vancouver because he loved hospitality. He became a French service waiter and utilized his earnings to fund his college education.”
After earning an MBA from Stanford in 1981, he dove into hospitality management, becoming CFO of the Il Fornaio restaurant group in 1987 and CEO of the Gordon Biersch Brewing Co. in 1992.
One of his sons, Alistair Levine, is the current CEO of Vine. The company is still headquartered in Marin County.
Last August, months before shuttering this restaurant portfolio, Vine Hospitality abruptly closed its Rollati restaurant in downtown San Jose, noting that it was "taking this opportunity to refocus resources” on its three Santana Row places.
As of late Monday afternoon, Federal Realty, the owners of Santana Row, had not issued a statement about the newly vacant restaurant spaces.
In San Ramon, where the second LB Steak is located, City Center executive Jeff Dodd, senior vice president of retail, said Monday that the center is “actively exploring options for the space and looks forward to sharing updates in the coming months.”
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This story was originally published June 22, 2026 at 11:42 AM.