Two Transamerica Pyramid restaurants abruptly close amid ownership reset

Kitchen equipment was wheeled out under the watch of a security guard as the doors locked on two restaurants inside San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid, leaving a closed sign in the window and employees huddled inside. The sudden shutdown of Ama and Cafe Sebastian put a hard stop to two visible bets on downtown dining in one of the city’s most recognizable buildings.

Cafe Sebastian had been open since December 2024. Ama, Brad Kilgore’s Italian-Japanese fusion restaurant, opened in September 2025 and was gone after just seven months in business. Kilgore said the new owner was seeking an “unaffordable” lease rate, a reminder of how quickly a restaurant can go from marquee opening to empty room when the rent math stops working.

The closures landed as the Transamerica Pyramid Center changed hands. Cyprus-based Yoda PLC announced on February 11, 2026, that it had entered into a purchase and sale agreement for 100% of the complex, and the transaction closed in late March for $691.6 million, or about $933 per square foot. The property spans more than 1 million square feet across the pyramid at 600 Montgomery, Two Transamerica at 505 Sansome Street, and 545 Sansome Street. The ground-floor dining spaces had been rebranded as Three Transamerica Plaza, part of a larger reset that never delivered on earlier plans for a top-floor lounge and a tenants-only restaurant in the tower itself.

For restaurant workers, the abrupt end matters as much as the names on the lease. A dining room can look finished to guests long before a closure becomes visible behind the pass, and in this case the signs were literal: locked doors, equipment moving out under security, and no runway for a slow wind-down. In a market where staffing is already tight and turnover high, a sudden shutdown like this can leave cooks, servers, and managers scrambling for their next shift with almost no notice.

The upheaval also marks the latest turn in the larger story around Michael Shvo’s Transamerica ambitions, which had already faced questions about his future role and the removal of his branding. The sale ended his high-profile stewardship of the landmark, a building designed by William Pereira that opened in November 1972, rises more than 850 feet, and has 48 floors. What happened inside its restaurant spaces showed how fragile even the most visible luxury hospitality projects can be when ownership, branding, and rent all shift at once.