The Hedley Club, the art-deco bar tucked inside downtown San Jose's 95-year-old Hotel De Anza, opened for business again Wednesday after a full remodel and reinvention. The new version pairs the building's original painted ceiling, hand-carved bar and ornate chandelier with a Northern California bistro-style menu built around dishes like a butter chicken hot dog and black cod with kimchi butter.
The relaunch comes from chef Sri Gopinathan and Ayesha Thapar, who developed the Hedley Club along with the adjoining Palm Court and an upcoming Mexican restaurant called Tejer, all part of what the San Francisco Chronicle describes as a trio of concepts from the Cal-India Collective. Thapar said of the space, “It has a certain pedigree,” while Hotel De Anza chief operating officer Sean Curtis said the relaunch interprets the hotel as it was when it first opened. Gopinathan said the new menu “offers the comfort side of the story,” leaning into dishes that blend his culinary background with Northern California bar fare.
That blending shows up most directly on the $19 butter chicken hot dog, which Gopinathan described as combining comfort foods from two places he has spent his life, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The dish arrives with a housemade bun and smoked sauce, part of a menu that also includes fried chicken with curry leaf sesame crumbs for $18, ahi tuna tostadas with salsa macha for $22 and a delicata-topped sourdough pizza for $22. Royal Miyagi oysters run $24 for a half dozen or $48 for a full dozen, chicken wings come glazed with jaggery for $18, and fries are $11.
A Northern California Bistro With Cal-India Roots
Hedley Club is being described as serving California bar food with modern flair, specializing in Northern California-style bistro and bar fare rather than a straightforward Indian menu. Sf.eater.com reports the cocktail program was created by Merrick Rodrigues, who built a list of classic drinks made with California's celebrated artisanal spirits and regional botanicals. One standout on the list is the Diving Lady, a strawberry shrub-based cocktail, and the bar also pours California wines by the glass.
Next door, the greenhouse-like Palm Court offers the same Hedley Club menu in a space with trailing vines and an outdoor feel, per the same account. Both spaces debuted together in September, giving San Jose diners their first look at the reinvented hotel before Wednesday's fuller relaunch.
A Hotel Built in 1931, Nearly Lost in the 1970s
Hotel De Anza is a 95-year-old, 10-story building at 233 W. Santa Clara St. that opened as the second hotel in downtown San Jose in 1931, designed in the zigzag Moderne art-deco style and named after Spanish colonial governor Juan Bautista de Anza. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and East Bay Times places that listing in 1982. The building fell into disrepair by the 1970s and faced demolition before the San Jose Redevelopment Agency stepped in to save and remodel it around 1990, re-lighting its rooftop sign that same year. Destination by Hyatt later took over operation of the hotel, and the property underwent a $10 million restoration in 1990 and another renovation in 2015, per East Bay Times' earlier coverage of the sign's history.
Curtis and Dhaval Panchal, both San Jose natives, acquired the 100-room hotel in 2024 and began a new restoration, work that included relighting the rooftop neon sign again in 2025. Many of the upgrades were expected to wrap before the end of this year, with the overhaul covering the historic tower, refreshed guest rooms and reopened dining spaces alongside the new restaurant concepts, as detailed by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
What's Still Coming to Hotel De Anza
Gopinathan and Thapar's broader restaurant group already runs Eylan in Menlo Park, Ettan in Palo Alto, Little Blue Door in Los Altos and Copra in San Francisco, a lineup the Mercury News notes includes Eylan's Michelin Guide “new discovery” distinction and Gopinathan's earlier run as chef at San Francisco's two-Michelin-starred Campton Place. The last piece of their Hotel De Anza plan, Tejer, is a Cal-Mexican restaurant led by chef Enrique Gonzalez with Gopinathan collaborating on the menu, and its 95-seat dining room is planned to include a mural, handmade Mexican lighting and a stone bar.
Sf.eater.com's reporting places Tejer's opening in December, making it the final piece of the three-concept rollout that began with Hedley Club and Palm Court. For now, the reopened bar stands as the most visible sign of a restoration that has brought one of downtown San Jose's oldest buildings back into the city's dining conversation.
