RN74
Millennium Tower, 301 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA
Tel: 415-543-7474
Designer: AvroKO

In the midst of Depression 2.0, you’d think that no restaurant owner would open a splashy new wine bar, let alone at the base of a slick new condominium tower. Not so. Restaurateur and chef Michael Mina, who owns and operates 14 restaurants in Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, has unveiled his latest restaurant in his hometown of San Francisco. RN74, named after a road that snakes through France’s Burgundy region, opened this spring and has quickly become one of the city’s top hangouts for winemakers and wine enthusiasts. At the base of the 60-story Millennium Tower in San Francisco’s SoMa district, the 30-seat bar is armed with a 7,000-bottle list and a chef from French Laundry. AvroKO, the design firm that designed Per Se in New York, modeled the 4,700-square-foot establishment after a European train station, outfitting it with leather banquettes, industrial lighting, exposed walls and columns, train tickets-turned-napkin holders, and the coup de grâce: an electronic train board advertising discounted wine bottles.