Chef Wen Lin Departs Meridian for a Ferry Building Project

Wen Lin, executive chef at Meridian in Palo Alto since 2021, will leave the restaurant at the end of July to lead an as-yet-unnamed project at the San Francisco Ferry Building, both parties confirmed on Monday.

Lin took over Meridian’s kitchen during its second pandemic winter and is broadly credited with the shift away from the restaurant’s original chophouse format toward the seafood-heavy menu it runs today. The restaurant’s covers roughly doubled between 2022 and 2025.

Who is taking over

Sous chef Adaeze Nwosu, who has worked under Lin for three years and previously cooked at Meridian’s sister restaurant in Menlo Park, is promoted to executive chef effective August 1. Ownership says the menu will not change in the near term.

That is a more meaningful commitment than it sounds. Meridian has changed chefs three times in eight years, and each previous transition came with a full menu rewrite inside six months — a pattern that cost the restaurant a good deal of goodwill with regulars.

Lin’s Ferry Building project is expected to open in mid-2027 and is described as "small, seafood-driven, and counter-service during the day." No further details were available at press time.