“Every seat outside would help.” Creative solutions surface to aid a beleaguered industry. Two pedestrians walk down Santa Cruz Avenue past Roma in downtown Menlo Park. (Photo by Magali Gauthier) Cities up and down the Midpeninsula are considering temporarily closing their downtown streets to traffic to give restaurants and other businesses more outdoor space to safely serve customers when they’re allowed to reopen. The cities, including Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Redwood City, ...
Read MorePriscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg donate $800,000 to their favorite Peninsula eateries so food can go to people in need Larry Chu with donated Chef Chu’s meals for staff at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View. (Photo courtesy Larry Chu) When Seiko Alba got an email from Mark Zuckerberg in late March, she was sure it was a scam. The Facebook CEO, a regular at her Palo Alto Japanese restaurant Dohatsuten, asked how she was doing. ...
Read MoreSupport your favorite eatery and avoid the supermarket crowds. Original Joe’s ravioli, sauces and other foods available for pickup and delivery. (Photo via Original Joe’s FB page) In a sign of the times, Palo Alto’s venerable Sundance the Steakhouse now sells toilet paper alongside filet mignon and ribeye steaks. The 45-year-old steakhouse, closed to in-person dining during the shutdown, has pivoted to serving boxes of raw meat and seafood for customers to cook at home, ...
Read MoreFrom ‘maddening’ to a lifeline: Local restaurants share uneven experience with federal PPP loans ‘Without help, a lot of restaurants aren’t going to make it.’ Galen Fletcher, owner of Sundance the Steakhouse, received a loan in the first round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which will help him pay laid-off staff while the 45-year-old Palo Alto restaurant is open only for takeout. (Photo by Magali Gauthier) Galen Fletcher counts himself among the lucky ones. The owner ...
Read MoreGhost kitchens, fast growing and controversial, offer a lifeline for some restaurants during COVID-19 “It’s been very life-saving for us to have this relationship now” Virtual Kitchen Co. opened a ghost kitchen in Palo Alto in January, allowing restaurants from San Francisco and Oakland to deliver on the Peninsula. (Photo by Magali Gauthier) Long before the coronavirus hit the Bay Area, the owners of San Francisco Indian restaurant Dosa partnered with Virtual Kitchen Co. ...
Read MoreVirtual pizza making? Instagram live cocktail hour? During COVID-19, local businesses turn to online classes For local bars, bakers and breweries, virtual classes provide connection — and maybe even survival. Tian Mayimin of Little Sky Bakery in Menlo Park demonstrates how to make pizza at home during a free Zoom class on Friday, April 10. I’ve never met Tian Mayimin of Little Sky Bakery, but on a recent afternoon I watched her make pizza from scratch in ...
Read MoreLongtime Mountain View market owner offers six ideas for how to help small businesses during COVID-19 Guest opinion by Steve Rasmussen Steve Rasmussen, owner of the Milk Pail Market, poses for a portrait in the grocery store with his daughters Erika and Kai on June 4, 2019. (Photo by Magali Gauthier) Small businesses add pizzazz and vibrancy to our lives. Keeping restaurants, nail salons, day care centers and other small local businesses alive through ...
Read MoreKilliney Kopitiam’s opening in downtown Palo Alto was stalled due to the coronavirus shutdown. (Photo by Magali Gauthier) Singapore’s oldest cafe was about to open in Palo Alto. Then, the coronavirus hit. ‘We were pretty much ready to go.’ Killiney Kopitiam falls into Covid-19 limbo on the Peninsula. When six Bay Area counties first ordered all residents to shelter at home for three weeks in mid-March, Killiney Kopitiam—a Singaporean cafe in downtown Palo ...
Read MoreWhat will it take for local restaurants to recover? Famed Peninsula brewer Dan Gordon sounds the alarm after closing in Palo Alto In Q&A, Gordon Biersch co-founder on why he decided to close, the Catch-22 of federal loans and the fate of Bay Area restaurants Owner Dan Gordon (left), formerly of Gordon Biersch, extensively revamped the old brewery-restaurant space in downtown Palo Alto to open Dan Gordon’s in March of 2016. (Photo by ...
Read MoreWe got hungry while sheltering in place. Here’s what we’ve been eating. The crispy tonkatsu at Curry Hyuga in Burlingame, which opened as a takeout-only operation in late March — in the midst of the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order. (Photo by Elena Kadvany) Eating during the coronavirus is like entering a parallel universe, where masked people deliver meals curbside, we pay for groceries from behind plexiglass barriers and phrases like “no-contact delivery” have become the norm. But it’s ...
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