By Elena Kadvany
E-mail Elena Kadvany
About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in jo...
(More)About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in journalism. Though my first love is journalism, food is a close second. I am constantly on the lookout for new restaurants to try, building an ever-expanding "to eat" list. As a journalist, I'm always trolling news sources and social media websites with an eye for local food news, from restaurant openings and closings to emerging food trends. When I was a teenager growing up in Menlo Park, I always drove up to the city on weekends with the singular purpose of finding a better meal than I could at home. But in the past year or so, the Peninsula's food culture has been totally transformed, with many new restaurants opening and a continuous stream of San Francisco restaurants coming south to open Peninsula outposts. Don't navigate this food boom hungry and alone! Feed me your tips on new chefs and eats and together we'll share them with the broader community.
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Fans of Cho's unassuming potstickers and pork buns panicked in 2014, when the owners of the longtime Palo Alto Chinese restaurant
announced plans to close after receiving a 60-day notice from their landlord.
Customers launched a petition to keep the hole-in-a-wall California Avenue restaurant from closing. Happily, owner Cho and wife Daisy Yu soon secured a new space and were able to
reopen in downtown Los Altos in 2015. (Read a review of the new restaurant
here.)
Cho's on 1st Street in Los Altos will close in January. Photo by Magali Gauthier.
But come Jan. 25, 2019, Cho Yu plans to retire and shutter the restaurant, according to a
Facebook post.
"After 39 long years of serving the community his beloved food, Cho is finally moving on with his retirement," the post reads. "There are no immediate plans for reopening in the near future. We apologize if this inconveniences anyone."
Cho's potstickers, dumplings and vegetarian egg rolls. Photo by Magali Gauthier.
The post quickly drew comments from loyal customers lamenting the closure but also thanking Yu for decades of dim sum and memories.
"I've been eating Cho's potstickers since 1986," wrote Tyler Aguinaldo. "My kids grew up on them. I knew this day would come at some point...Congratulations on your retirement Cho. You will be sorely missed!"
Paul Kern, who said that he has eaten there since 1983, described how Yu always remembered his customers.
"His memory is astounding," Kern wrote. "Palo Alto/Los Altos just lost more of its quaint, small town character, and in my mind, there’s not a lot of it left."
Until Jan. 25, Cho's is open at 209 1st St. daily from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
