Drive Danville Boulevard through the heart of Alamo this month and you will pass two buildings that used to define where people ate. One has a new name and a familiar face still working the floor. The other has butcher paper in the windows and a website that is not quite finished yet. Both used to be something else entirely, and both changed hands in 2026, months apart, without much overlap in how the new owners are approaching the job.
That is not a coincidence worth shrugging off. Alamo's entire commercial stretch runs along a short section of Danville Boulevard and through Alamo Plaza, so two restaurant transitions happening back to back is not background noise. It is close to half of the town's sit-down dining identity changing at once, and the two operators are making almost opposite arguments about what keeps a restaurant alive here.
The One That Kept Its Staff
At 3195 Danville Boulevard, on the edge of downtown, the building has now hosted three restaurants across roughly four decades. It ran as the Courtyard Cafe for nearly 25 years before closing in March 2009. That August, chef Rodney Worth opened The Peasant's Courtyard in its place, and it stayed that way for almost 17 years. The Peasant's Courtyard served its last breakfast and lunch on Sunday, April 19, 2026, and The Courtyard Restaurant opened in the same space the very next morning.
The new owners are not outsiders learning the neighborhood. They are the family behind East Bay Artisan, the bakery business known around here for its stand at the Danville farmers market every Saturday, and for running Cafe 1277 out of Treat Towers in Walnut Creek. This is their first sit-down restaurant in the San Ramon Valley, but not their first time selling food to people who already know their name.
The kitchen is now led by chef Jourdan De Sanctis, who previously worked at Danville Brewing and Norm's Place. The old menu ran through May 4 before the new seasonal one took over, and dinner service was described as coming soon when the change was first announced. What did not change: Sandy, a longtime staff member from the Peasant's Courtyard days, is still on the floor, along with other familiar faces.
In their farewell-and-hello statement, Worth's team put it plainly:
"With some familiar faces and a fresh new feel, we are excited to serve our Alamo community!"
That is a business trying to keep the trust it already has while updating everything around it. Worth's group still runs The Peasant & The Pear in downtown Danville and The Bourbon Pear in downtown Livermore, though The Little Pear in Walnut Creek closed this past January after less than three years. A fourth concept, The Golden Pear, is planned for the Rossmoor senior community, with renovations underway most of this year and no opening date set yet. The Courtyard Restaurant is the one bet in that lineup built entirely on staying inside a space Alamo already knew.
The One That Started From Zero
A few storefronts down, at 3160 Danville Boulevard in the Stone Valley Center near CVS, a different kind of change is underway. That space spent years as Forli Ristorante & Bar, an Italian restaurant known for its cuisine, live entertainment, and neighborhood bar, and it had cycled through different concepts and ownership over that span before its recent closing. Now signs have gone up for something called The Post.
There is no prior Alamo history behind this one. The company tied to the project, Alamo Restaurant & Bar Group LLC, was formed in September 2025 specifically for this location. Ali Reza Ghasemi is listed as CEO, with Danville-based Lala Hospitality Inc., led by Ghasemi and Lauren Ghasemi, serving as manager. As of early August, a reader had spotted crews still working inside past 8:30 in the evening, which suggests renovations were active but not finished.
The concept itself is described as American comfort food built around "sophistication with comfort," with a theme borrowed from an early-1900s post office. The website line sums up the intent:
"Whether it's a casual meal or a special occasion, you will find a place here that feels like home."
As of that same report, the site's menu page still showed unusually low prices and generic dish names, the kind of placeholder content that comes standard with a template rather than a finished offering. In other words, the concept is set, the name is set, and the actual food is still being worked out in real time.
Two Storefronts, Two Different Theories
| The Courtyard Restaurant (3195 Danville Blvd) | The Post (3160 Danville Blvd) | |
|---|---|---|
| Prior tenant | The Peasant's Courtyard, nearly 17 years | Forli Ristorante & Bar, years of Italian dining |
| New operator's local ties | East Bay Artisan family, established Danville and Walnut Creek presence | Alamo Restaurant & Bar Group LLC, formed September 2025 for this project |
| Staff continuity | Sandy and other familiar faces stayed on | Not yet known |
| Status as of this writing | Open, running a transitional menu into its own seasonal one | Renovations in progress, no confirmed opening date |
| The bet being made | Familiarity plus a refreshed concept | A themed concept with no built-in local following |
Put side by side, these are not two versions of the same story. One operator is trying to keep the goodwill a 17-year run built and slowly graft a new identity onto it. The other is betting that a fully new concept, with no history in this specific storefront, can find its footing on a stretch of road where most of the other tenants have been there for years.
Why Two Storefronts Can Move The Whole Town
Alamo Plaza Shopping Center, the anchor of the town's retail core, was acquired by EDENS in 2022 and runs over 200,000 square feet with Safeway as its anchor and more than 35 merchants under one roof. The plaza has leaned into that role since, adding murals as part of its revitalization and hosting a farmers market every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the lot near Bank of America.
That same plaza just hosted the Alamo Improvement Association's 13th annual Autos of Alamo Festival on Thursday, September 10, a free evening car show with live music from The Tuneriders and food from plaza restaurants, running from 4 to 8 p.m. The Alamo Improvement Association itself is a nonprofit built to give residents a voice in local planning decisions and to keep Alamo's character intact as things change around it, which is a fitting backdrop for a year when two of the town's most established restaurant spaces both got new operators.
None of this happens at a scale that would register in a bigger commercial district. In Alamo, where the dining options run along one boulevard and one plaza, two restaurant handovers inside the same year are a meaningful share of where people can sit down for dinner on a Tuesday. The Courtyard Restaurant is already testing whether familiarity survives a full ownership change. The Post is about to test whether a brand-new concept can earn a foothold in a spot that spent years building a different kind of following.
What To Watch For
If you have not been back to 3195 Danville Boulevard since April, the seasonal menu and any expanded dinner service are the things worth checking on next. If you are curious about 3160, the signs are up and the renovation work is visible, but nothing about an opening date has been confirmed as of this writing, so the honest answer right now is to keep an eye on the storefront rather than pencil in a reservation.
Either way, the same short stretch of road that has quietly defined where Alamo eats for decades is currently running two different experiments at the same time. That is worth knowing before you plan your next dinner out, and it is the kind of local detail that tends to matter later too, whether you are thinking about a restaurant reservation or just keeping track of what is happening in your own town.
If you ever want a conversation about what is changing in Alamo beyond the restaurant scene, from Emon Komeily at RE/MAX Accord, Let's Connect.
