Pat Kuleto

[2] The son of a building contractor, he often built things for himself as a child, including a large play fort with indoor plumbing when he was ten.

[3] Most feature multiple dining rooms, a large bar that Kuleto describes as an "altar" that "legitimizes the drinking experience", and an "exhibition kitchen" so that diners can watch their food being cooked.

As an example, Epic Roasthouse is imagined as (and is close to the real-life location of) a pump house that was proposed but never built as a backup fire protection system in San Francisco, and would likely have prevented most of the destruction from the fires caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which ruptured most of the cities primary water mains.

[2] Boulevard, which opened in 1993 at a cost of $2.3 million[4] repaid its initial investors within three years[5][6] and as of 2008 was the second highest grossing independent restaurant in San Francisco, and 59th in the United States.

[7] One restaurant that did not last five years was a branch of Carnegie Deli in Beverly Hills, California, which opened in 1989 at a cost of $4 million, financed and run by oil billionaire Marvin Davis in response to Davis' belief that existing delis in California were of low quality.

[8] Other projects include Splendido (which closed in 2001)[9] in San Francisco, Buckhead Diner in Atlanta, and Papagus in Chicago.

[10] Restaurants in which Kuleto served as designer and co-owner include Jardinière (with chef Traci Des Jardins), San Francisco's Postrio (with Wolfgang Puck), Farallon (an "undersea fantasy"[3] with Mark Franz), Epic Roasthouse (with Jan Birnbaum), Waterbar (also with Mark Franz), Boulevard (a belle époque design in an 1889 brick building that survived the 1906 earthquake, with Nancy Oakes),[11] Kuleto's, McCormick & Kuleto's (a joint project with the McCormick & Schmick's restaurant group at the site of the former Maxwell's Plum),[12] all in San Francisco, and Martini House in Napa Valley (with Todd Humphries).

He restored the property to a rustic 1930s appearance at a cost of $14 million, then reopened it in 2007 as an inn of twelve cabins and 130-seat restaurant.

[15] The 8-year project involved environmental mitigation (the restaurant's kitchen is above a stream bed; the California red-legged frog, an endangered species, was discovered on the property during construction), restoration of dilapidated building, and a fishing pier.