Chow closes its decades-old Church Street location

Chow has closed after 22 years on Church Street. Chow has closed after 22 years on Church Street. Photo: Jerry Telfer / The Chronicle 1997 Photo: Jerry Telfer / The Chronicle 1997 Image 1 of / 47 Caption Close Chow closes its decades-old Church Street location 1 / 47 Back to Gallery

Chow on Church Street has closed after 22 years.

The restaurant, which opened in 1997 and launched Chow outposts throughout the Bay Area, announced the news on Monday via Facebook with a brief message thanking customers. The closure means that there is only one Chow location — in Lafayette — left in the Bay Area.

“After nearly 22 wonderful years here on Church Street, we are closing our doors,” the note reads. “It has been a genuine pleasure for us to have been a part of your lives, to have been able to get to know you, and to have been able to feed you for all of these years.”

Reasons for the latest closure weren’t addressed in the message. Inside Scoop reached out via email to the Chow team for more details.

Photo: JERRY TELFER / STAFF Chow has closed after 22 years on Church Street.

The closure is just the last in a series of shut downs for the Chow brand.

Founded by Tony Gulisano with an emphasis on comfort food in a neighborhood setting, the restaurant expanded to the East Bay in recent years, peaking with its fifth location (Oakland) in 2016.

Things began to change in January 2018, when Park Chow in the Inner Sunset closed unexpectedly after 20 years. “This is not goodbye — we are looking forward to seeing you in another one of our establishments,” the company said at the time in a post on its website.

A few months later, the decade-old Chow location in Danville closed. A similar message was posted about the closure.

Then the ambitious Oakland outpost of Chow on Piedmont Avenue closed in 2017. In its final message, the Chow team apologized to the public for having “fallen short of the requirements necessary for survival.”

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com