Longtime Singaporean restaurant and bakery in Menlo Park face eviction
A quiet block of downtown Menlo Park is in turmoil after a landlord gave three longtime businesses a 30-day notice to leave the premises, after the building’s ownership changed hands.
Shiok! Singapore Cuisine, Gerry’s Cakes and Ela Lingerie, three neighboring businesses on Chestnut Street, face eviction at the end of January.
Shiok! has been in operation for 25 years in Menlo Park. Current owner Dennis Lim’s mother Rosalind and sister, Maggie, opened the family-run business in San Carlos in 1999 with recipes from his grandmother. Its popularity spurred a move to a bigger location in Menlo Park just six months later. When his mother was ready to retire about 13 years ago, Lim took over the restaurant.
“I love to serve this food because I’m sharing the food I love, the food I grew up eating, with people who would never have known about this food,” he says.
Over the years, they’ve played around with the menu, figuring out a balance between introducing the novelty of Singaporean fare to their customers and converting them into regulars. There were some growing pains along the way, he says. They retired a few of the more traditional recipes after some customers complained about the scent of their shrimp rojak, for instance, and their belacan, a Malaysian chile paste, once triggered a call to the fire department.
But today, about 80% of his customers are regulars. “It’s very sad for me. If I close this, I won’t see these people anymore, and I’m no longer in the community,” he says.
Lim is looking for a new location with a reasonable lease, and says he can only support his staff of eight employees, many of whom have worked there for upwards of 20 years, for so long without income.
“Soon, we will all just have to go our separate ways,” he says.
At Gerry’s Cakes, which has been in Menlo Park for nearly five decades, owner Sohrab Molavi says he’s also feeling pressure to find a new location and clear out his current space, while continuing to fulfill existing orders for specialty cakes, which often come in months ahead of time.
“I hope they can give us more time,” he says. “It’s very difficult.”
The new landlord has not responded to requests for comment as yet.
Details: Shiok! Singapore Kitchen is open from 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 5:30-8:30 p.m. Monday-Friday and 5:30-8:30 p.m. Saturday at 1137 Chestnut St., Menlo Park; shiokkitchen.com. Gerry Cakes is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday at 1141 Chestnut St, Menlo Park; gerryscakes.com.