One of San Jose’s quirky restaurant gems — the Naglee Park Garage — has closed after 12 years serving the historic Naglee Park neighborhood and the San Jose State University community.

“It was a hard decision,” co-owner Louis Silva said Wednesday. “It’s a very special space and we did a lot of nurturing there.”

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Big Bay Area job gains in August On the restaurant’s Facebook page, he and co-owners Chris Esparza and Brendan Rawson posted: “It is time for us to move on to new endeavors and to pass the baton to someone else to take this local neighborhood spot to the next level.”

The foodie hangout, housed in a former garage at South 11th and East San Carlos streets, found a wider audience when the Food Network’s Guy Fieri taped one of his “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” shows there in 2009.

Fieri is quoted on a Triple D locations website: “One of the coolest thing about searching the US for authentic diners is finding out the history of some of them. Such as this, which was actually once a garage auto shop. How cool is that? Now they serve amazing meals such as Lamb Meatballs, local Brussels Sprouts and Herb Marinated NY Steak!”

Silva will continue to co-own and operate the Park Station Hashery in the city’s Rose Garden neighborhood with entrepreneur Long Nguyen. That restaurant opened last September in the former Antonella’s.