The former Lord Stanley team closed their Polk Gulch room in May 2025, registered the entity behind Wolfsbane two months before they turned off the lights, and picked up a star on their first eligible cycle at the 2026 California ceremony.

Rupert Blease and his wife Carrie spent ten years building Lord Stanley — a Polk Gulch room that held a Michelin star and ran as one of the city's more considered fine-dining operations — before closing it last May. The entity behind their next restaurant, Foxy Wolf LLC, was registered with the City in March 2025, two months before Lord Stanley went dark. Wolfsbane opened October 15 at 2495 Third Street in Dogpatch, in the former Serpentine space. Eight months later, at the 2026 Michelin California ceremony in San Diego on June 24, it earned a star.

The Dogpatch address connects directly to the Bleases' third partner, Tommy Halvorson, who ran Serpentine in that same building before it closed during the pandemic. His familiarity with the space was, by most accounts, the catalyst for the location. The room seats 38 — 18 in the main dining room, 20 in a private dining room — and runs a nine-course tasting menu at $248 a person, a substantial step up from what Lord Stanley charged at its close. Rupert Blease trained at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxfordshire under Raymond Blanc and worked the line at Per Se in New York under Thomas Keller before landing in San Francisco.

Michelin's inspectors called Wolfsbane Blease's "much-anticipated return to fine dining" and found "no shortage of creative flair" in the multicourse menu — contemporary Californian, laced with Nordic, Japanese, and French influences. The bread course, given Halvorson's bakery background, is the room's signature.

The Dogpatch bet is a real one. The neighborhood carries dining momentum but not the foot traffic of Polk Street or the Mission. At $248 a head over 38 seats, the math is tight even by tasting-menu standards. What the star changes is the reservation engine: Wolfsbane had been booking on its own merits since October. It will now book on the guide's. The Bleases planned this room while still running the old one — the March registration date makes that plain — and the star, arriving on the room's first eligible cycle, is the confirmation they were waiting for.