San Jose’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, Adega, will close permanently. Here’s why.

Two days before the Michelin Guide International announces its coveted 2023 stars for excellence in dining, the owners of Adega — San Jose’s only starred establishment — announced they will close the restaurant permanently on its eighth anniversary and pivot to focus on their more casual concept, Petiscos.

Adega, which opened in 2015 in the city’s Little Portugal neighborhood, will close Dec. 16, owners Carlos and Fernanda Carreira said. They will transform that flagship restaurant into their second Petiscos in early 2024; the first Petiscos opened in downtown San Jose in November of 2020.

They also plan to expand the Petiscos concept — Portuguese small plates — elsewhere in California. The restaurant just last week received its own Michelin acclaim, a Bib Gourmand award for “excellent food at reasonable prices.”

“Adega demands a lot from everyone. Constantly creating new dishes and menus needs 100% dedication and physical presence from our team,” Carlos Carreira said Sunday in an interview. “We feel that by focusing on expanding Petiscos to other markets we cannot dedicate the time that Adega requires and deserves.”

The announcement by the Carreiras won’t affect Tuesday night’s Michelin announcement because the star decisions have already been made.

The Carreiras confirmed Sunday that the expansion plans include executive chef David Costa, the top toque at both Adega and Petiscos, as well as his wife, Sandra Murillo, formerly of Nemea, an upscale Greek restaurant downtown that closed after the pandemic. Jessica Carreira of the ownership family will remain as pastry chef. And the family’s Santa Clara Street bakery, Pasteleria Adega, which opened in 2019, will continue churning out pastéis de nata and other Portuguese sweets, along with lunch savories.

Adega has packed a storied history into eight years.

In 2015, the wine-importing Carreira family purchased Sousa’s, a legacy home-style restaurant on Alum Rock Avenue, from Leonel and Aira Sousa, who had run it for 33 years. They had daughter Jessica’s future in mind. She was, at the age of 20, already overseeing the dessert menu of Portugal’s Michelin-starred Restaurant Eleven in Lisbon. They also hired Portuguese-born chef Costa, who also had cooked at Eleven.

Taking advantage of that expertise, they launched the restaurant with an upscale menu and soon found recognition. Just a year later, in 2016, Adega became the first restaurant in San Jose to earn a prestigious Michelin star — and the only Portuguese restaurant in the western United States to hold that status.

Two years later, Adega lost the star. As with all such ranking decisions, Michelin offers no specific information to restaurants about the reasoning behind such a change.

The restaurant regained the star in 2021.

“This was even more joyful than the first time,” Carlos Carreira said at the time, because the priority for him, Fernanda and the whole kitchen team had not been on industry accolades but on keeping their Alum Rock Avenue restaurant and two others afloat in the challenging COVID-19 business climate. “It was the last thing on our minds to be recognized. We were just trying to not go out of business.”

Since then, Adega has focused on offering tasting menus and dropped its a la carte menu. Diners may select between a seven-course seasonal menu for $199 or a five-course menu for $150.