The Big Four anchors the lobby floor of the Huntington Hotel at 1075 California Street, the wood-paneled Nob Hill bar that returned in 2026 after a six-year closure, classic cocktails and live piano intact.
The bar sits at the top of Nob Hill, across from Huntington Park and a short walk from the California Street cable car. The room is the draw: dark green walls, polished wood paneling, leather banquettes, and the railroad memorabilia that gives the place its name. It is named for the Big Four railroad barons, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker, who built the Central Pacific and whose mansions once crowned this hill.
The Big Four closed in 2020 and reopened in March 2026, its 50th year, after Flynn Properties bought the Huntington out of foreclosure and brought in designer Ken Fulk to restore the noir-ish, clubby room. SFist covered the return and noted the kitchen kept the signature chicken pot pie that ran on the menu for much of its first fifty years. Live piano plays nightly, which is the detail that sets the bar apart from the city's newer cocktail rooms.
What to order: a classic cocktail mixed to spec, a martini or an old fashioned, taken at the bar where the piano carries the room. The dining side runs New American with tableside steak tartare and a wedge salad that can come with Dungeness crab, but the bar is the seat for a drink and the music. Drinks sit at the upper end for the city, fair for a restored landmark room inside a Nob Hill hotel.
The crowd is a Nob Hill mix: hotel guests, an older San Francisco set that remembers the original, and newer drinkers drawn by the redesign and the piano. The room rewards a slower pace, a drink and a conversation rather than a fast turn, and the bar seats fill earlier on nights with a strong pianist.
Best time to go is an early evening on a weeknight, when the bar has space and the piano is on. Who it is for: a date that wants a classic room, an after-dinner drink with live music, and anyone who values old San Francisco over a new scene. Who should skip it: budget drinkers and anyone after a loud, late night, since this is a quiet, dressed-up bar built for the music and the room.
For more in the category, see our guide to the best cocktail bars in San Francisco, browse the full San Francisco bar guide, or place it against our citywide cocktail bars roundup. It pairs well with the other Nob Hill rooms for a classic evening on the hill.
