Sam Wo Restaurant: It Lasted Longer Than Expected

At the new location on Clay (Chronicle photo)

We first posted about the Sam Wo Restaurant in 2003, lamented its closure for health and safety reasons in 2012, and lauded its re-opening in a new location in 2015.

However, the 117-year-old Chinatown institution may finally close for good due to reasons familiar to many small family-owned enterprises: the aging of its owners and their inability to find members of a younger generation to run the business.

[David] Ho has run the restaurant for more than 40 years, working long hours in the kitchen by himself during the throes of the pandemic. [Co-owner Steven] Lee said Ho has been talking about retiring for years, but recurring health issues and the impact of the coronavirus accelerated his decision. Ho will stay until the lease is up...

David Ho (with daughter
Julie) looks tired.

Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, said a closure would be a major historical loss for the neighborhood.

“Sam Wo is a legacy business,” he said. “So Sam Wo closing means that Chinatown will lose a little piece of what makes Chinatown ‘Chinatown.’ ”

To Yeung, the news is not necessarily a reflection of a struggling Chinatown, but rather a “bigger existential crisis for our community” — the lack of a next generation willing and able to continue longtime restaurants. (Neither of Ho’s children, despite working at the restaurant, will take over the business.)

Sam Wo meant more to my father, who passed through San Francisco during the War, but I'll be sad to see it go, too.