July 20, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Cookbook restaurant given abrupt 30-day notice to close or move

by Jay Thorwaldson

Waitress Karen Robinson greeted customers Friday morning with tears in her eyes as she broke the news that the Cookbook restaurant in Palo Alto's Town & Country Village shopping center must close on July 31.

"It's like losing a family, my friends and my job," Robinson, who has worked there for nearly 15 years, said of the impending closure.

Cookbook owner James Kim, looking grim but controlled, had notified his staff of 10 employees on Friday morning of the final days of the restaurant, which he had purchased out from under a bankruptcy in 1986. The original Cookbook had opened at the present location, near the back of the shopping center at El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road, in 1980. It currently served only breakfast and lunch.

Kim said he received a letter a couple of weeks earlier, but consulted with his attorney before notifying staff on Friday.

He said the closure means his plans for retirement income are blown away -- he had hoped to sell the business and create a retirement nest egg. He said he will not be able to finance a relocation -- which could cost $100,000 to $200,000.

But he said he might be interested in helping others launch a new restaurant or consult about how to improve a restaurant.

The restaurant, known for its comfortably spaced tables to allow for conversations and small meetings, has been a regular meeting spot for city officials, committees of both the Kiwanis and Rotary service clubs, a group of owners of vintage "hot rod" cars, a group of local attorneys who discuss points of law, and even a men's prayer group.

"It's a real bummer," Ken Bottari, a member of the "Rod Talk" old-car group, commented on learning of the closure.

On Saturday, a customer brought in a 4-foot banner reading, "Goodbye to the Cookbook," and customers began signing it. Customers on Saturday said they planned to write to the shopping center owner, Ellis Properties of San Francisco, saying they intended to boycott the entire shopping center in the future. The center was sold to Ellis Properties in late 2004. The Weekly reported (Nov. 3, 2004) that merchants were "holding their breaths" about possible rent increases and changes.

Jim Ellis of Ellis Properties told the Weekly on Friday that a new tenant, "Day One," a pregnancy and infant equipment supply store, with one other store in San Francisco, will be occupying the Cookbook space. The store will focus on providing equipment and information for expectant mothers and parents of infants up to 2 years old, he said -- with orientation meetings that will make it "almost a community gathering space for new and expectant mothers."

He said while the notice to the Cookbook was short, "We don't take our decision lightly. While it is perceived by the Kims as abrupt, we have carefully thought about it, and the change is a good first step for us and the center to bring in new blood."

Tenants upstairs -- including Geohazard, Inc., and some offices -- will not be affected, he said.

Ellis said he has filed plans with the city for a renovation of the center, but will maintain the rustic feel.

"We're not looking to make a lot of waves" with the improvements, he said. "We mainly will be doing a lot of deferred maintenance, just fixing it up and providing some open spaces for people to sit." The center will keep its antique street-light logo, Ellis said.

Mayor Jim Burch, at a breakfast meeting at the Cookbook Friday, also was taken aback by how the notification was handled.

"It's a shock that after all these years they should be given such short notice," he said. "It's definitely inhumane and not what we would expect. Put yourself in his (Kim's) shoes: What would you do?"

Kim, 60, was born in Korea but moved to the United States in 1950. He never thought of running a restaurant, but started out as an electrical engineer and worked for Siemens and, later, Toshiba, rising to be a regional manager.

By then he and his wife had two children, and he took stock of his life: "I looked around and calculated where I'd be when my kids were in college."

He decided to make a leap into the restaurant business.

"In 1981, with no money, I started a small restaurant in San Francisco, in the Pacific Heights area," he recollected.

Faced with restricted growth potential there, in the mid-1980s he began seeking a larger restaurant, and found the Cookbook -- which had opened in 1980 but was in trouble. Just as he was closing the deal, "They went out of business -- they didn't tell me that. Their reputation was very bad.

"But I knew it was a popular place when they opened, and my goal was to make it better."

He said he consciously decided to space the tables comfortably apart so people could converse and not, as one patron once said, have people at the next table "join in your conversation."

His children have both completed college -- one with a Ph.D. in education from Stanford -- and are married.

His long-term wait staff have developed first-name friendships with customers, and the center's new owners "didn't consider that this was a local hangout, and there are not many left."

Kim had been on a month-to-month rental agreement for the past five years, as the former owners sought a buyer. Earlier he had been on a 10-year lease with an option for 10 more. He said he had repeatedly asked former Manager Ron Wilson -- son in law of the center's founder, the late Ron Williams, for a new lease.

"But he told me, 'Don't worry about it. You've been here a long time,'" Kim said.

The 30-day notice especially hurts, he said: "It takes awhile to open a restaurant, and it takes time to close one down," he said. "I wish they'd at least asked me how long I would need. Look around. If they had given me three or four months...."

Weekly Editor Jay Thorwaldson can be e-mailed at jaythor@well.com.

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