This year was an interesting one for Biz Beat, with a greater mix of unusual businesses, in addition to its usual focus on restaurants and food. It started at Santana Row’s Fitoor, with fantastic Indian dishes presented in ways that reflected the chef’s cruise ship experience, and ended with the revival of Charlie Rose Baseball,...
The Biz Beat: San Jose’s Charlie Rose Baseball hits a home run
Nearly 70 years ago, Charlie Rose started repairing baseball gloves in his spare time at home as a sideline to his television repair shop. The TVs are long gone, but Charlie Rose Baseball in San Jose lives on as the go-to specialty store for everything you need to play and love America’s great national pastime....
The Biz Beat: Stromboli is the star of San Jose pizzeria
If the averages hold, Anna Di Maggio will have made more than 21,000 strombolis since Tony Di Maggio’s Pizza in San Jose reopened on June 13, after a fire destroyed the roof and temporarily closed the business. At 80, Anna has been working at the family-owned restaurant since she and her husband, Tony, founded it...
The Biz Beat: San Jose’s The Thrift Box overflows with unique finds
Every Wednesday, at least 30 eager shoppers line up on Lincoln Avenue in Willow Glen outside The Thrift Box, buzzing with anticipation as they await opening time. Regulars know the drill: With the store closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, the staff uses that time to tidy up the inventory and restock the displays with the...
The Biz Beat: Los Gatos eatery blends authenticity with experimental
You’d have to be born without a sense of wonder to resist the pull of the glass enclosure housing the BurgerBot at the rear of the dining room at Breaking Dawn Brunch in Los Gatos. It’s built to slice onions, tomatoes and lettuce and dispense condiments and pickles to top burgers coming on a conveyor...
The Biz Beat: Sunnyvale Turkish restaurant embodies meyhane tradition
Turkish food is a vibrant blend of flavors, shaped by the country’s key position along the ancient Silk Road. It’s where Sephardic Jews and Muslims in the south, Greeks across the western sea and Slavs along the Black Sea’s southern edge converged to create a rich culinary tapestry. Sunnyvale’s Meyhouse Restaurant captures this melting-pot heritage...
The Biz Beat: San Jose’s Scratch Cookery specializes in spicy chicken
The buttermilk fried chicken at Scratch Cookery in San Jose comes in ascending levels of heat, from a mild house seasoning to a melt-your-head combination of habanero, scorpion, Carolina Reaper and ghost peppers. It seems somehow fitting that the restaurant was born from a fire that leveled the townhouse where owner Connor Vu lived. “It...
The Biz Beat: San Jose German restaurant is Oktoberfest all year
Stepping into Teske’s Germania Restaurant, with its long wooden bar that stretches along half the entryway, there’s a strong sense of gemütlichkeit, an untranslatable German word meaning “warmth and good cheer.” Co-owner Cynthia Baumann likens it to a Bavarian lodge, where the food is authentic, the beer flows freely and everyone is welcome. “I think...
The Biz Beat: Downtown San Jose clothing store suitable for all occasions
For more than 105 years, Hammer & Lewis Clothiers has existed in an indefinable place in culture and time. Its two San Jose locations offer Cary Grant-worthy suits, the shiniest of dress shoes, classic flannel Pendletons and jackets flamboyant enough for Burning Man celebrants. It is de rigueur for zoot-suited pachucos and aficionados of fine...
The Biz Beat: San Jose’s Recycle Bookstore — an oasis of printed culture
Emma, the Instagram-famous Persian cat that roams Recycle Bookstore in San Jose, is “prissy, finicky, very loud and opinionated.” According to store owner Eric Johnson, there is a long tradition of cats in bookstores, dating back to the practical need of stopping mice from nibbling away at the inventory. But Emma, Johnson said, has a...