Café Vivant, a restaurant specializing in heritage poultry raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and fine-wine purveyor Somm Cellars are slated to open in a 5,000-square-foot, dual-concept Menlo Park location this summer.

Behind the concept — set in the former Le Boulanger cafe on Santa Cruz Avenue — are acclaimed New York City sommeliers and Chicago chefs.

A rendering of the planned interior of Café Vivant, a new locally-raised heritage chicken restaurant and wine shop planned in Menlo Park. (Courtesy Marahmik Inc.) 

Leading the project are sommeliers and restaurateurs Jason Jacobeit and Daniel Jung. The two hail from the city’s fine-dining scene, where they shaped wine programs at restaurants like Bâtard and Tribeca Grill before co-founding Somm Cellars, according to a press statement. In their travels, they became fascinated by French and Japanese cultural reverences toward heritage poultry breeds.

“In these countries, the focus isn’t on conventional farming labels and lifestyle inputs like ‘organic’ or ‘free-range’ but on Heritage breeds — birds prized for their robust genetics, which directly contribute to their rich, complex flavor,” Jung says.

But when they came back to the U.S. and started looking around for heritage poultry, they couldn’t find much available in the U.S., at least at the scale and to the standards they were looking for. So, with Rob James of Pescadero’s Corvus Farm, they invested in an 80-acre farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, growing peak-season produce while raising chickens, guinea hens, quail, partridges, pigs, sheep and rabbits.

Set to lead the kitchen at Café Vivant are two acclaimed Chicago chefs: Executive Chef Jared Wentworth and Chef de Cuisine Emily Phillips. (Courtesy Joseph Weaver) 

“For the past seven months, our farm has been ground zero for an ambitious research and development project into heritage-breed poultry genetics,” Jacobeit says. “It’s all designed to prioritize both exceptional flavor and environmental stewardship.”

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Leading the restaurant’s kitchen are partners Executive Chef Jared Wentworth and Chef de Cuisine Emily Phillips. Wentworth, who has 30 years of experience in the U.S. culinary scene, has collected 17 Michelin stars in restaurants he’s led, including Longman & Eagle and 16″ on Center in Chicago. And Phillips has 20 years of experience, including as executive chef at Vivere in Chicago. While they led the Dining Room at Moody Tongue, the restaurant was named the world’s first two-Michelin-starred brewery.

Details: The restaurant is set to open this summer at 720 Santa Cruz Ave., Menlo Park; cafevivantca.com.