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By Elena Kadvany
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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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Palo Alto bakery Babka by Ayelet closes
Uploaded: Feb 7, 2020
Babka by Ayelet closed on Monday at Town & Country Village in Palo Alto, but owner-namesake Ayélet Nuchi hopes to reopen the Jewish bakery soon in Los Altos.
A selection of babka at Babka by Ayelet in Palo Alto. Photo by Veronica Weber.
Nuchi, who
the dedicated babka bakery in late 2018, said she closed after rental disputes with the El Camino Real shopping center. Court records show that Town & Country Village filed in September a commercial unlawful detainer against her business, which allows landlords to evict tenants for not paying rent. A judge ruled in Town & Country's favor, cutting short her five-year lease.
Nuchi acknowledged that she was behind on rent. The babka shop was successful, she said, often selling out by the afternoon, but she still struggled to pay her $7,000 monthly rent.
Jim Ellis, co-founder of Ellis Partners, which owns the shopping center, said management worked with Nuchi for about a year to restructure her rent so she could stay at Town & Country Village.
"We would have much preferred to see her continue to operate there," he said.
Nuchi, a native of Tel Aviv, served homemade babka in flavors like nutella, halva, raspberry-cream cheese and butternut squash. She is still taking online orders and hopes to reopen the bakery in downtown Los Altos soon, where she'll serve more Jewish pastries.
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