Inside the $280-a-head San Francisco restaurant that has two tables, 14 courses, and a 43,000-person mailing list

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Lazy Bear is not your average restaurant. You sit where you're told, eat what's put in front of you, and make polite conversation with strangers throughout the meal.

And for a seat at San Francisco's most exclusive supper club, you leave nearly $300 on the table.

Founded in 2009, Lazy Bear started out as an underground supper club in the home of chef-owner David Barzelay. The lawyer-by-training invited his friends to feast, but the guest list quickly snowballed as word spread of his unique dining experiences. Six years later, Barzelay opened a brick-and-mortar shop off Mission Street and has packed the house for two nightly seatings ever since.

Getting in isn't easy. Each month, Lazy Bear posts a tweet revealing the date and time tickets for dinner the following month go on sale. Tickets for weekends often sell out within a day.

We spoke with Barzelay to learn how Lazy Bear became a coveted dining experience.

You might say Lazy Bear Supper Club is a restaurant that could only exist in San Francisco.

Barzelay, a law school graduate with no formal culinary training, developed his culinary IQ out of his dorm kitchen. He enjoyed combining familiar flavors in explosive dishes.

In 2009, he decided to turn his in-home dinner parties into an underground supper club that was open to the public. Guests sat around a communal folding table in a space he rented.

Barzelay said he never had any intention of growing the club into a business. But within two years, he was working full-time on Lazy Bear and started looking for an "above ground" space.

Lazy Bear reopened in an industrial space with high ceilings and no walls between the kitchen and the dining room. Guests eat at two long American elm tables for two nightly seatings.

Barzelay liked the intimacy of the supper club and wasn't sure if it would work at scale.

"When we opened with this communal model, we told everyone — and I think we at least half-believed it — that we were only going to do it that way for a little while," Barzelay said. "We honestly thought there was a pretty good chance that we couldn't fill it for very long. All the people on the waitlist would filter through, and we would go to a normal a la carte model."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider