{"id":424244,"date":"2026-08-05T06:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T06:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424244\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T06:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T06:46:20","slug":"stanley-lui-leaves-new-taraval-cafe-and-moves-on-to-his-next-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424244\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley Lui leaves New Taraval Cafe and moves on to his next act"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many small-business owners, Stanley Lui has a love-hate relationship with his cafe. As a kid, Lui can say for sure, he hated it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lui\u2019s parents, both immigrants from Southern China, bought the restaurant in the early 1990s. Almost every day at 5:30 a.m., they would get up and wake one of the three kids to go to the restaurant that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were days where I\u2019d pretend to be really deeply asleep so they wouldn\u2019t take me,\u201d Lui said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Lui was there, he slept in the red booths or played with the calculator as his parents worked. \u201cIt was the classic immigrant experience, where the parents are working and you\u2019re just essentially trying to stay out of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

As customers came through, Lui got shuffled from table to table to make way for customers. Eventually he began chatting with the regulars. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was that, or boredom,\u201d Lui recalled.<\/p>\n

But Lui also learned that,\u00a0unlike his siblings, he loved to cook.<\/p>\n

When he went away to study at University of California, Davis, Lui had his own kitchen for the first time. He cooked for roommates, neighbors and friends. One roommate told him, \u201cI think I eat better here than I do at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every day, Lui trolled the Food Network website, looking for recipes that he could afford to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his sophomore year, Lui decided to host his first Thanksgiving dinner. He ran through logistics, created spreadsheets and planned out timing. At one point, he realized he did not have enough ovens, and had to borrow his neighbor\u2019s; thankfully, the neighbor was also over for dinner. Against his better judgement, Lui got a giant turkey. Over 20 pounds, he recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent more time just wrestling with the turkey than actually cooking it,\u201d Lui said. \u201cIt\u2019s so slippery, I was just slipping and sliding with that thing in the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AStanley Lui works at the New Taraval Cafe on July 30, 2026. Photo by Junyao Yang. <\/p>\n

Around 2010, health issues forced his father to retire, and Lui took over the New Taraval Cafe. He was 21. The first couple of years, Lui said, he sucked at running the restaurant. It was like Thanksgiving dinner, every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had to learn bookkeeping. He had to learn how to organize the kitchen in a way that appeased the city\u2019s health inspector. Most importantly, he had to get food ready for customers in a short amount of time. \u201cThat\u2019s why I can\u2019t play Overcooked<\/a>,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He got better at the job. In the early days, Lui was so scared of small talk that he\u00a0prepared talking points to bring up to the customers. He studied up on football so he had something to talk about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, years later, he has played therapist at the counter, witnessed first dates and break-ups and mediated heated discussions about the Great Highway (he asks guests to keep their politics outside).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of older customers where the restaurant is the center point of their day,\u201d Lui said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, he realized that it was conversations with customers \u2014 the same ones he had with regulars as a kid \u2014 that became his most treasured experiences.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people ask me \u2018What\u2019s the best thing at this restaurant?\u2019 I always tell them, \u2018I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the food,\u2019\u201d Lui said. \u201cIt\u2019s our ability to facilitate a comfortable space for everybody. That is the most meaningful thing, and that\u2019s why I\u2019ve kept it going for so long.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AStanley Lui waves goodbye to a customer on July 30, 2026. He has decided to leave his family business and explore other opportunities. His last day will be August 15. Photo by Junyao Yang. <\/p>\n

This is Lui\u2019s 17th year working at the cafe, and Aug. 15 will be his last shift. The New Taraval Cafe will remain open, under the management of longtime employee (and co-owner) Orlando Gomez.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA part of me has been continuing this out of a feeling of obligation, both to my family and my customers,\u201d said Lui, 38. \u201cMy strong emotional attachment to the restaurant really kept me from exploring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI never felt I could fully dive into something else,\u201d Lui added. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to invest yourself into something else when you always have that looming over you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, he is ready to move on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AStanley Lui talks with a customer on July 30, 2026. Photo by Junyao Yang. <\/p>\n

On a recent Thursday, Stanley Lui served eggs Benedict and Irish breakfasts with a San Francisco marathon medal around his neck.<\/p>\n

Lui had just finished his first-ever marathon and he was showing it off, he said. He filled up coffee mugs, brought out takeout boxes, chatting, laughing and sometimes lingering with customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would not be strange for me to come join you and just have a seat with you as you\u2019re enjoying your meal,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, on Aug. 16, a day after he leaves New Taraval Cafe, Lui will host a gathering at Ocean Beach near Noriega Street.<\/p>\n

He will invite customers and friends to celebrate the end of an era and remind them that their friendship can exist outside of New Taraval Cafe, where Lui no longer has to \u201cleave a conversation mid-sentence\u201d to bus a table or get a check.<\/p>\n

Lui will not be away from food for long. His next step will be working at Chocolate Covered<\/a>, a chocolate gift shop in Noe Valley \u2014\u00a0as an employee, for a change.<\/p>\n

In college, Lui said, he majored in chemistry.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cOh,\u201d this reporter said, \u201cfood is chemistry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me tell you a secret,\u201d said Lui, immediately. \u201cEverything is chemistry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s heard this from people before. \u201cWhen people say that, I feel it puts me into this box where \u2018chemistry to food\u2019 is the natural progression,\u201d Lui said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I could have done anything. I can do anything. Maybe because of chemistry, maybe not.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like many small-business owners, Stanley Lui has a love-hate relationship with his cafe. As a kid, Lui can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[387,18362,159053,101,103,102,104,106,105,18069],"class_list":["post-424244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-business","tag-people-we-meet","tag-people-we-meet-sunset","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sunset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}