The Big Four opened March 17 at the Huntington Hotel after a six-year COVID closure, under new owners Highgate Hotels and Flynn Properties, with a Ken Fulk redesign that kept the room's 1976 bones intact.

The Big Four opened to the public March 17 at the Huntington Hotel, 1075 California Street in Nob Hill, ending a six-year closure that began when the pandemic shuttered the hotel in 2020. The room — 72 seats, dark wood paneling, polo-green leather banquettes — has been part of the hotel since Newton Cope Sr. and his wife Dolly Fritz launched it in October 1976, naming it for the four Central Pacific Railroad barons who built the hill: Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis Potter Huntington.

The ownership behind it is new. Highgate Hotels and Greg Flynn's Flynn Properties picked up the hotel's defaulted $56.2 million mortgage from Deutsche Bank in March 2023, acquiring the property for a reported reserve bid of around $29 million — roughly a third of the $87 million the prior owner paid circa 2018, per The Real Deal SF. City business registration data (DataSF) shows the new entity, "1075 California Street Owner Lp," filed its Big Four Restaurant DBA in October 2023, mid-renovation — the third registered operator to hold the name at this address since the 1976 founding.

Ken Fulk handled the redesign. His stated directive, by his own account to the SF Standard, was blunt: "Don't screw it up." Writing last week after dining there, the SF Standard's Sara Deseran reported that he honored it — wood paneling touched up, brass polished, banquettes reupholstered, lighting recalibrated to focus attention back on the portraits of the four tycoons that have always defined the room. Deseran counted suits, socialites, and sweaters tied over shoulders on a Tuesday night; when the chicken pot pies arrived at a neighboring table, the men in button-up shirts clapped.

David Intonato leads the current kitchen, having previously worked at Appellation Healdsburg and Gardenia in San Jose, according to SFist's March coverage. Mayor Daniel Lurie attended the hotel's March 1 ribbon-cutting.

The acquisition math is the subtext. Highgate and Flynn paid roughly a third of what the prior owner had put into the property — $29 million on a hotel that last traded at $87 million. The DBA filed in October 2023 is when they staked the name. March 17 is when they found out if the room could carry the bet. Based on Deseran's Tuesday count, it's looking like it did.