Chef Chu’s is located in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. (Tâm Vũ/KQED)

The following are excerpts from 12/19/25 KQED California Foodways:

By Lisa Morehouse, Will Hewlett

When the restaurant opened in 1970, it was a small family business, and the area around it was a relatively sleepy suburb. Now, it’s at the heart of Silicon Valley — but they don’t deliver, and there’s no online ordering.

Still, Chef Chu’s is an institution. It’s been visited by luminaries in entertainment, politics and business. Throughout all of the change in the last 55 years, Chef Chu’s has adapted and held on, and remained true to its identity as a family business.

[...]

Even early on a weeknight, the lobby at Chef Chu’s was bustling. One whole wall is a glass window, looking into the kitchen where 82-year-old Chef Lawrence Chu and his cooks work. At the bar, a staff member took phone orders, and waiters in crisp white shirts and bow ties moved efficiently from room to room.

As we waited for our table we checked out a long wall of celebrity photos including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev.

[...]

His oldest son, Larry, and the restaurant’s general manager, was born in 1973, a few years after the restaurant opened.

[...]

Many Silicon Valley pioneers became Chef Chu’s regulars. “Mr. Tramiel was the founder of Atari, Chuck Geshke who founded Adobe, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs — when he was just a kid — all these people from Silicon Valley ate at Chef Chu’s,” Larry remembered.

[...]

And the youngest of the kids, Jon Chu, tried his luck as a Hollywood director. Yeah, Jon M. Chu — the director of Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights and the Wicked movies.

For more of the story:  Read the full 12/19/25 KQED California Foodways article.