The owners of Ludwig’s German Table have hit a seemingly endless series of roadblocks for their Mountain View location. They are not alone.

“Everyone talks about trying to be pro-small business but it feels like we get treated the same as your Apples and your Googles and your Facebooks.”—Ludwig’s German Table owner Ben Bate. The site of his forthcoming Mountain View restaurant has been delayed by the city requirements. (Photo by Magali Gauthier)

In early August, Ben Bate got some bad news.

The City of Mountain View informed him — seven months after he took over 383 Castro St. to open Ludwig’s German Table — that the building’s grease trap needed updating. Digging out the carport and sinking the 500-gallon grease trap will push the restaurant’s opening back another three to four months.

The grease trap was simply the latest request from the city that has frustrated Bate and delayed the opening of the popular German restaurant and beer garden from San Jose. There was debate over the type of plants that would be outside the restaurant, the color of the tables, the style of the chair legs. More recently, the city asked Bate to remove the Corinthian detail at the top of 21 white columns that anchor an outdoor trellis.

The cost to do this? About $12,000.

The future home of Ludwig’s German Table in Mountain View on Castro Street (where Bierhaus used to operate). Permitting delays might result in the restaurant not opening until 2020. (Photo by Magali Gauthier)

When I spoke with Bate and co-owner Nicole Jacobi in February, they hoped to be open in May or June.

“We’ll be lucky if we can open this year, to be really honest,” he said more recently.

They get regular emails and questions from customers asking when Ludwig’s will open in Mountain View. Bate said he wanted to share what the process has been like not to criticize the city, but to inform the public about what it takes to open a restaurant.

“There are things that are out of our control, unfortunately,” he said. “We want it open as much as the people that are asking.”

The City of Mountain View did not make any staff available for an interview, despite repeated requests.

Melody Hu, owner and baker of Petit Bakery Co., sits outside the site of her future storefront in Los Altos with a gluten-free vanilla elderberry cake. (Photo by Veronica Weber)

Ludwig’s is by no means the exception on the Peninsula, where restaurants are routinely delayed by protracted city regulations and bureaucratic red tape. The cost of opening a restaurant — before the first customers are even served — has become prohibitively expensive, particularly for small, local businesses owners without the backing of deep-pocketed investors. (In San Francisco, a Board of Supervisors committee held a hearing on Monday to discuss what they could do to address this, including easing the permitting, planning and building processes for restaurant owners.)

Melody Hu, who is working to open a gluten-free bakery in downtown Los Altos, sent an email out to subscribers earlier this month explaining why it’s not yet open.

“When I signed the lease for what used to be Mr. Cho’s Mandarin Dim Sum, I knew that several things had to change to transform the store into a cute little bakery. But I underestimated the time it would take,” she wrote.

Hu took over the 209 1st St. space in early 2019 and planned to open Sweet Diplomacy by this summer. Now she’s hoping for the end of this month but is hedging her bets for October.

“The city’s Building Department and the county’s Department of Environmental Health both want detailed plans on even minor changes in the store. For the plans, we had to find and create an ‘A’ team of architect, mechanical/plumbing/electrical engineers, and a good general contractor… all that took awhile,” she wrote. “The plan reviews and final inspections will also take awhile.

“I admire the public safety net that our government agencies have created, and although the process is lengthy to say the least, at the end I think it’s nice to live in a world where most public places are built to a high standard of safety.”