New Restaurants SF

July 8, 2026

From a Bowling-Alley Kitchen to a Michelin Nod, and Back to a Food Truck: Alex Soto Returns to Napa

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One SF/Bay Area opening a day, chosen and checked. Today: the chef Michelin singled out for cooking mole next to a bowling lane is back, this time from a truck parked in a Napa winery garden, named for his father.

In 2002, Alex Soto arrived in Napa from Michoacán, Mexico, and got his first valley job washing dishes at Meadowood, the Michelin-starred St. Helena resort. He calls it an apprenticeship. "I was lucky to be around really good people," he told the Napa Valley Register.

The path from there is the strange part. While still at Meadowood, Soto and two friends launched Pico Modern Taqueria, a food truck pressing fine-dining technique against the recipes he grew up with. It built a following, then closed. In 2020, he took over a burgers-and-fries kitchen inside the Napa Bowling Center, renamed it Lane 33 Café, and started turning out flautas de cochinita, costillas en chile verde, and pollo con mole next to the lanes.

Two years later the Michelin Guide came calling. Lane 33 landed on its list of 17 new Bay Area culinary discoveries, inspectors writing that "in the category of bowling alley eats, mole and quesadillas aren't likely to spring to mind, but Chef Alex Soto's skillful, flavor-packed Mexican cooking" would "change your outlook." Soto thought the email was a prank. The honor didn't fix the kitchen, which was built for grilling burgers; equipment problems forced him to close Lane 33 four months later, in October 2022.

He stepped away. Worked a harvest. Helped a friend open a restaurant in London. Spent time back in Michoacán. He returned to Napa in January 2023 and opened Lencho's Mexican Food, named for his father, in the food court at the Napa Premium Outlets, building out what he calls his "Napa tacos" concept: house-made tortillas, pollo con pipian, tacos calabacitas. That closed too. He swore off the "craziness" of the restaurant game and leaned into catering and festival work, including BottleRock and the La Onda music festival.

Now he's back, and he has chosen the smallest format yet. On Friday, July 3, Soto rolled Lencho's Food Truck into its new home: the garden of St. Clair Brown Winery & Brewery at 816 Vallejo St. in Napa, open noon to 6 p.m. Thursday through Monday. Owner Elaine St. Clair, who has known Soto since before the pandemic, told the Register, "He just kind of came right when we were thinking that this is what we wanted to do. It was perfect." She built the garden to "feel like your own backyard."

There is no dining room, no reservation system, and no website to book. You walk up, order his house-made-tortilla tacos and pipian, and eat at a patio table with a glass of wine. After a Michelin nod, a bowling-alley kitchen, an outlet food court, and two closures, Soto is cooking the food he wants to cook in the format that lets him keep doing it.

Also opening

Tracking

Bar Skula (Oakland, Lake Merritt) is still in soft-open, but a Berkeleyside roundup adds new detail: a sea-creature mural by Pancho Pescador, Lake Merritt wildlife photos by Damon Tighe, and a menu spanning oysters, scallops, ceviches, Lassen Trout, and a grilled half chicken. Bar Auklet (Point Reyes Station): quiet week, no new coverage since opening July 2.

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