Kenwood Restaurant deal crumbles

Dean Vincent Bordigioni has abandoned plans to purchase the Kenwood Restaurant property, and owners Becky and Bill Foss put it back on the market on Monday. Bill Foss, a co-founder of Netscape, ran Kenwood Restaurant for a few years, hoping to do as well as his Sausalito Fish restaurant, but the Kenwood venture didn’t pan out.

Catherine Venturini and John Burdick’s plans to develop Crush Roadhouse on the property have been put on hold, now that Bordigioni is out; they were leasing the space from the Fosses, with the agreement that the lease would continue when Bordigioni closed on the purchase.

According to Venturini, the Fosses had begun work to fix up the restrooms and other parts of the building until the whole project seemed to grind to a halt.

Bordigioni told the Index-Tribune by phone that “the black and white numbers just didn’t work out” after another business deal fell through. Additionally, the Kenwood purchase was complicated by some confusion over Alcohol Beverage Control regulations at the restaurant site.

For now, Venturini and Burdick, successful caterers and former owners of Olive & Vine in Glen Ellen, will have to hope someone else buys the well-located and beautiful property and gives them a chance to bring it back to its yummy self.

Kenwood has come a long way from the ever-popular Bunny’s Country Kitchen fried chicken and decades of the real Kenwood Restaurant, which took nearly 10 years to sell to the Fosses.