Nick Kokonas, the Chicago restaurateur behind Alinea and the reservations platform Tock, is betting big on downtown St. Helena. His next act, a wine bar called Elsewhere, is headed for the light-filled corner building at 1429 Main St., with local chef Elliot Bell of Charlie’s tapped to run operations and build a wine-first food program meant to keep Main Street buzzing later into the night.
What Elsewhere Will Offer
Elsewhere is framed as a wine-first bar, with a by-the-glass program slated to feature roughly 40 to 50 wines and pours ranging from about $12 up to $500. That top tier will occasionally include $500 pours of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. The food is built to play backup to the bottles, with small plates, a rotating trio of mains designed to pair with red, white and sparkling wines, and even a stemware list that runs to 15 different glass types. Those menu and pricing details were reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
From Reservations Tech To Wine Country
Kokonas is not exactly scraping together funds for this project. In 2021, Squarespace acquired Tock for an aggregate consideration of roughly $415 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. He then sold his majority stake in the Alinea Group in 2024, as new investors took control and left him with a passive minority interest, as reported by Restaurant Business. Those exits, paired with his recent vineyard and wine-brand investments, help explain why his attention has tilted toward opening a wine bar in Napa Valley.
The Space And St. Helena's Late-Night Gap
The 1429 Main St. location, a farmhouse-meets-greenhouse building that previously housed French Blue, then Archetype, and later NoMa, has been refreshed with a garden patio and a large fold-up bar that opens to the street, making it an easy fit for a wine bar. Kokonas has said he wants Elsewhere to serve as the living room of Napa Valley and to keep the vibe approachable rather than stuffy. In that spirit, he has joked that we will never utter the words ‘malolactic fermentation.’
The concept addresses a real gap in the local scene. Kokonas noted that there are very few true wine bars in the valley, and almost none that stay open late on weeknights, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
When To Expect It
Elsewhere is scheduled to open in 2026, although Kokonas and his team have not yet named a firm date or laid out a reservation policy. For now, the pitch is simple: a casual, wine-first room where locals and visitors can line up Napa bottles against global classics, settle in with food that actually matches the glass, and stick around well past the dinner hour.
