Wanted: Experienced operator and chef with an interest in maintaining a restaurant legacy of more than a century.
The restaurant in question? Sam Wo, the Chinatown institution known for bouncy beef rolls and supremely satisfying bowls of the rice porridge called jook, which opened sometime in the 1900s.
Chef-owner David Jitong Ho has been at the helm for more than four decades with help from his children, Julie and Jason Ho. But with the chef planning his retirement and both kids pursuing other careers, the restaurant’s investors have spent the last year looking for someone to take over.
If a suitable buyer doesn’t emerge in the next few months, the legendary restaurant will close in the new year.
“Then it’d be another empty storefront,” said Steven Lee, an investor and co-owner of Sam Wo.
Lee isn’t sure exactly when Sam Wo might close if no one steps in to save the day, but the lease on the narrow, two-story space ends Dec. 31. He expects the restaurant would stop serving food after the end of the year to focus on cleaning out the narrow two-story space. The historic items inside would likely go up for auction.
There’s some good news for fans, however: Even if Sam Wo closes, Lee plans to keep the brand alive, mostly likely as a packaged food line. “The name will still be going on, but we’re going to lose a tourist attraction in Chinatown, because people come from all over the world to go to Sam Wo,” he said.
The restaurant’s closure would mark the end of an era. It is known as one of the oldest restaurants in Chinatown. It’s also famous as the home of “San Francisco’s rudest waiter,” the late Edsel Ford Fong, who even inspired a Conan O’Brien sketch.
The restaurant closed in 2012 at its previous address, 813 Washington St., when Ho couldn’t modernize the building to meet health and safety standards, and reopened in 2015 when he partnered with Lee to move to the current location at 713 Clay St.
Ho announced his plans to retire a year ago, telling The Standard he was exhausted after 42 years. “If I tell you I can continue to work, I am lying to you,” said Ho, then 68. “My body cannot sustain the physical demands anymore.”
In the year since, the owners have been contacted by multiple parties interested in purchasing the restaurant, Lee said. But none have been the right fit to continue the Sam Wo legacy of serving affordable, comforting cuisine in the country’s oldest Chinatown.
“We’re very particular,” Lee said. “There’s what Mr. Ho calls the ‘Sam Wo way of cooking’ — it’s very simple Chinese food, but we want to make sure they take the care to do the right style.”