"Lawrence Chu, also known as Chef Chu, garnishes a plate of sweet and sour pork at Chef Chu's in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. Chef Chu's is a family-run business, owned by Lawrence Chu, which has been operating since 1970 and is known not only for the food but also for hosting celebrities and tech innovators. (Tâm Vũ/KQED)"
"For more than ten years, I've been traveling all over the state, reporting stories about food and farming from every county in the state. Now, for the 58th and very last story in the series, California Foodways, I went back to where I grew up - Santa Clara County, to a special-occasion restaurant from my childhood: Chef Chu's. Earlier this year, I met my cousin Billy and his family here - his wife Kimberly, teenagers Will and Guinevere and toddler Imogen. They're regulars."
"There are a lot of similarities between running a restaurant and making a movie, he said. "Everyone knows the red carpet and when the movie's out, but they don't see how hard it is to begin. They don't know how hard it is in the messy middle. They don't know the pressures before anyone ever sees it sort of nicely colored and presented.""
Lawrence Chu garnishes plates at Chef Chu's in Los Altos, a family-run restaurant operating since 1970 and known for serving special-occasion diners and hosting celebrities and tech innovators. The lobby often bustles, with a glass window into the kitchen where 82-year-old Chu and his cooks work, a bar taking phone orders, and waiters in white shirts and bow ties moving between rooms. Chu opened the restaurant at age 26 while his partner was 20 and expressed an early ambition to expand. He witnessed technological and cultural changes over decades and compares running a restaurant to making a movie, noting unseen pressures.
Read at Kqed
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