La Mediterranee has been a Pacific Heights institution serving authentic Middle Eastern fare to those in the neighborhood and beyond for nearly a half century. Now, the restaurant is in danger of disappearing after Neil Mehta, a billionaire technology investor, went on a buying spree earlier this year, spending $40 million to purchase eight buildings along a three-block stretch of Fillmore Street. Mehta, tried to disguise his involvement by purchasing the properties using limited liability companies and found willing buyers in landlords who were struggling in the aftermath of COVID-19. 

At first, owners of the small businesses in those buildings looked forward to meeting the new landlord, hoping he would pay to spruce up their storefronts, many of which were in disrepair. They soon discovered that Mehta’s plans for Pacific Heights don’t include mom-and-pop businesses like La Mediterannee.

Word is that La Mediterranee and a handful of other eateries are being pushed out so Mehta can realize his ambition of creating a Y Combinator for restaurants. Y Combinator is the world’s largest incubator of technology startups and is run by Garry Tan. The incubator envisioned by Mehta would offer generous funding to restaurant concepts that meet with his approval. Current restaurant owners say Mehta’s plan offers no room for quirky places that have been longtime neighborhood favorites.

Mehta and Tan, it turns out, have a fair amount in common. Both are deeply invested in right-wing politics and both look upon San Francisco as the place to pursue their nefarious agenda. Mehta has given $50,000 to Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the political organization created by Republican billionaire William Oberndorf, making him one of the right-wing organization’s top contributors in the past year. Neighbors is among the top donors to Tan’s GrowSF. As the Phoenix Project has previously reported, Neighbors and Grow are spending lavishly on San Francisco elections to move the city in a dangerously rightward direction.

Among their aims is loosening regulation on real estate development, the better to boost the profits of speculators such as Mehta.

Like Tan, Mehta has longstanding ties to Trump enthusiasts Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. Mehta and Thiel, a fellow venture capitalist, funded four technology startups. Mehta, Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasian, partners at Andreessen Horowitz bankrolled a company headed by Tan associate Emmett Shear, a Y Combinator director. Srinivasan has become infamous for promoting the Network State, a scheme calling on tech elites to exit democracy and form their own sovereign territories beginning here in San Francisco.

Mehta has donated to mayoral candidates Mayor London Breed and Levi-Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, both of whom are in favor of eliminating many of the restrictions on real estate speculators. Lurie and Breed have earned Grow’s second and third place endorsements, in part, for their pro-developer stances. (Former Supervisor Mark Farrell is its top pick for mayor.) Notably, Mehta also contributed $12,500 to Republican Neel Kashkari’s 2014 California gubernatorial campaign.

La Mediterranee’s neighbor, Ten-Ichi is also being kicked out. Steve Amano, who operates Ten-Ichi, the 46-year-old Japanese restaurant started by his parents, said the new landlord notified him he must leave next month.

Mayoral candidate and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin recently introduced legislation to make it harder to displace long-time businesses. “We will not let venture capitalists engage in hostile takeovers of our neighborhoods,” said Peskin. “The fight to save legacy and neighborhood-serving businesses like Cafe La Mediterranee is a fight for the soul of our city.” He is introducing legislation to institute temporary zoning controls in the Upper Fillmore Commercial Historic District.

To date, Peskin is the only mayoral candidate to speak out against Mehta’s attempt to remake a neighborhood to his exacting specifications. The Fillmore Street affair is just another way that newly minted billionaires are attempting to further enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us. Peskin compared it to California Forever, a utopian community proposed by Silicon Valley billionaires in East Solano County. In the face of mass community opposition, a planned ballot measure on California Forever was dropped earlier this year.