By Elena Kadvany
E-mail Elena Kadvany
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I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in journalism. Though my first love is journalism, food is a close second. I am constantly on the lookout for new restaurants to try, building an ever-expanding "to eat" list. As a journalist, I'm always trolling news sources and social media websites with an eye for local food news, from restaurant openings and closings to emerging food trends. When I was a teenager growing up in Menlo Park, I always drove up to the city on weekends with the singular purpose of finding a better meal than I could at home. But in the past year or so, the Peninsula's food culture has been totally transformed, with many new restaurants opening and a continuous stream of San Francisco restaurants coming south to open Peninsula outposts. Don't navigate this food boom hungry and alone! Feed me your tips on new chefs and eats and together we'll share them with the broader community.
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Beet Cafe, an Eastern European eatery tucked inside the former AOL building on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, closed last month after AOL's lease ended. The owners are now searching for another space where they can reopen.
Irina Khart, who owned Beet Cafe with her husband, said they are "looking for a new location, anywhere on (the) Peninsula."
The former Beet Cafe inside the AOL building in Palo Alto. Photo by Veronica Weber/Palo Alto Weekly.
Software company Cloudera has
reportedly leased the 395 Page Mill Road building.
The Ukranian couple, who first came to the Bay Area about eight years ago, opened Beet Cafe in 2013. In Ukraine, Khart was a frequent cook and had dreamed of opening her own restaurant.
At Beet Cafe, they served everything from pirozhki, blintzes and borscht to shawarma wraps and smoothies. They also did corporate catering.
Stuffed cabbage rolls filled with rice, ground turkey and stewed in a tomato sauce at Beet Cafe. Photo by Veronica Weber/Palo Alto Weekly.
Read more about Beet Cafe in this 2014
feature story, and stay tuned for any news about the cafe's potential reopening.
