South San Jose’s Fish Market restaurant — a popular spot for grilled fresh fish, Dungeness crab and clam chowder — won’t survive the coronavirus era, company owners have announced.
The news came via the firm’s required notification to the state of California about pending employee layoffs. At this location, 73 workers are losing their jobs.
“The pandemic’s economic impact has caused Fish Market Restaurants to incur unforeseeable financial losses,” Dwight Colton, president of the company, wrote in his Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) letter. “The pandemic’s overwhelming economic impact has been sudden, rapidly escalating, and unforeseeable.”
Having to renegotiate the lease for this Blossom Hill Road location factored into the decision, according to a note on the restaurant website that expressed “profound sadness.”
“Our lease is set to expire within the year and after realizing the extraordinary costs of reopening each of our other locations and with no timetable to guarantee a return to full operations, a permanent closure has become our only viable option,” the owners wrote.
The shutdown leaves the chain with three Bay Area restaurants — Palo Alto, Santa Clara and San Mateo — and two in Southern California.
According to the website, the company’s founders launched the chain in Northern California in 1976, transforming a former pancake house on El Camino Real in Palo Alto into a seafood restaurant, market and oyster bar. That was followed in 1979 by the Santa Clara location, also on El Camino. The San Mateo restaurant opened in 1982.
The San Jose restaurant opened 15 years after that, in 1997. The farewell note said: “A special ‘Thank you’ to our loyal guests for your years of support, good humor, kindness and big appetites – we dedicate our 23 years in business to you!”
The three remaining Bay Area locations are offering outdoor dining, takeout and delivery, as are the San Diego and Del Mar locations. According to Bay Area News Group archives, the chain once had nearly twice as many as restaurants — nine — as the current-day count.
Details: The now-closed Fish Market was located at 1007 Blossom Hill Road. The remaining restaurants are at 3150 El Camino Real, Palo Alto; 3775 El Camino Real, Santa Clara; and 1855 S. Norfolk St., San Mateo. www.thefishmarket.com
