A purported serial grifter opened Cook Shoppe in San Francisco's Castro in May 2019 after Chow abruptly closed. Two unknown restaurateurs with fake-sounding resumes leased the former Chow space and promised an additional restaurant called Gramercy Park Brasserie across the street. The Cook Shoppe menu closely mirrored Chow with slightly higher prices and included burger, lasagna, and steak frites, and photos suggested competent food and pastry work. Within three months Cook Shoppe closed and was cited by the California Alcoholic Beverage Control for serving alcohol without a license. The venture appears to be one of multiple short-lived, shady business launches tied to the same individual.
Opening a restaurant, promising to open another across the street, and spending a bunch of money doing so doesn't exactly seem like a smart sort of long con, just given how difficult and often unprofitable running a restaurant can be. But that was the apparent scheme concocted back in 2019, when two seemingly unknown restaurateurs with fake-sounding resumes snapped up the former Chow space on Church Street near Market.
The dumb spelling aside, this should have been the first red flag, given that both this and the restaurant White had already announced in a space across the street, Gramercy Park Brasserie, were semi stolen from prominent restaurants in New York Cookshop and Gramercy Park Tavern. Suffice it to say, Gramercy Park Brasserie never made it open, but Cook Shoppe did in May 2019, and the plan seemed to be replicate Chow's success by offering a fairly similar menu at slightly higher prices a menu that included a burger, lasagna, and steak frites.
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