Sitting on the lengthy, elegant bar of the Brass Door with a glass of Chardonnay, Carolyn Krieg recalled a narrative concerning the early days of the beloved 70-year-old San Ramon steakhouse that explains her dismay that it’ll shut for good on Christmas Eve.
That included the Brass Door, which had turn into a vacation spot for special-occasion household dinners and energy lunches for East Bay movers and shakers. A whole lot packed public conferences, persuading planners to maneuver the freeway to the east — and away from their favourite steakhouse.
“So, when you have something like that, you have to save it because it’s historic,” Krieg mentioned. “How could you let that go?”
Juan Chavez of Harmony wipes away a tear as he turns into emotional whereas talking about his time working on the Brass Door in San Ramon. The restaurant is closing on Dec. 24 after 70 years in enterprise, and Chavez, a busser, has labored there for 35 years beginning when he was 16. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
However final week, the restaurant’s proprietor, Shahla Azad, introduced she would in actual fact be letting the Brass Door go, ending operations after serving dinner on Dec. 24. On Fb, the “Brass Door Team” blamed an unresolvable lease dispute between the constructing’s proprietor.
“The Brass Door has been more than a business — it has been a gathering place for friends, families, celebrations, and countless memories,” the Fb announcement mentioned.
The owner, nevertheless, has provided a unique model of occasions. Nancy Schlesinger, the managing member of 8 to five Properties, additionally has deep, private ties to the Brass Door. Her household has owned the property for 78 years, after she mentioned her grandfather, Henry “Shorty” Schlesinger, gained it in a poker recreation.
An indication welcomes guests outdoors The Brass Door in San Ramon. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
Neither Azad nor Schlesinger would touch upon specifics of the dispute. However a lawsuit and a counter-complaint filed in Contra Costa County Superior Courtroom signifies the dispute has been brewing for years, with allegations of unpaid hire, lacking upkeep and pandemic-era woes.
RELATED: 12 long-lived Bay Space eating places we mentioned goodbye to in 2025
Regardless of the causes for the dispute, Juan Chavez of Harmony can be with no job after Christmas Eve — like all the opposite staff. Chavez was 16 when he started working there as a busser 35 years in the past. One in every of his common duties was to shine the entrance door. He turned tearful when he talked about how the homeowners handled him “like a son.” He additionally mentioned, “I made a lot of friends with patrons, and I feel lot of pain leaving that behind.”
Schlesinger mentioned her firm has begun to discover “new opportunities,” for one in every of San Ramon’s oldest and most beloved institutions, suggesting that the Brass Door might reopen with new homeowners. However Schlesinger and her lawyer wouldn’t touch upon whether or not staff may discover work once more at a reopened Brass Door.
Azad’s Fb announcement spurred a rush in reservations and clients sharing reminiscences about anniversaries or senior promenade dinners spent there. By means of the Nineteen Sixties, ’70s and even into the ’80s, the Brass Door was one of many few tremendous eating eating places east of the Caldecott Tunnel, earlier than San Ramon was crammed with housing developments, Bishop Ranch workplace park and 86,000 folks.
Memorabilia hangs on a bulletin board close to the doorway of The Brass Door in San Ramon, Calif., on Thursday, Dec.11, 2025. The restaurant is closing after 70 years in enterprise. The ultimate day of operation can be on December twenty fourth, 2025. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
Provided that the median life span for a restaurant is fewer than 5 years, in keeping with a 2104 UC Berkeley research, the Brass Door’s longevity has been fairly outstanding. Over time, it has expanded to accommodate 200 visitors in a big eating space, whereas surviving a hearth, modifications in shopper tastes and competitors from booming, high-end eating scenes in Walnut Creek and Danville.
On Dec. 11 within the afternoon, Krieg and her boyfriend, Richard Bittner, have been amongst these having fun with a last meal and gathering on the bar with Brass Door associates. There was a number of speak of the restaurant being like “Cheers,” the place “everyone knows your name.”
Busser Juan Chavez, of Harmony, stares on the entrance entrance of The Brass Door in San Ramon, Calif., on Thursday, Dec.11, 2025. The restaurant is closing after 70 years in enterprise. Chavez, who began working on the restaurant when he was 16, has wiped down the entrance door for the previous 35 years. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
Dennis Pennington, a semi-conductor gross sales supervisor who has been coming to The Brass Door for 29 years, seemed down the bar and mentioned, “I know eight people here right now.” He famous that Mike Doyle, a five-time former mayor of Danville who died in October at age 96, all the time occupied a seat on the finish of the bar and could be heartbroken by the Brass Door’s closing.
In a cellphone interview, one other former mayor and native historian, Invoice Clarkson of San Ramon, mentioned the Brass Door opened when San Ramon’s inhabitants was solely round 200, and it was a roadhouse for metropolis dwellers taking a drive “into the country” to get a pleasant meal. Extra considerably, it turned the place the place builders and metropolis and county leaders met to plan the area’s future.
“Literally,” Clarkson mentioned, there was “a back door” for these conferences. “Even when I was thinking of running for mayor and getting involved in local politics, I was told that that’s where all the deals were made. I can say that I never met anybody there, but that was its reputation.”
For a very long time, common clients included “cowboys and construction workers,” the latter of whom constructed the San Ramon Valley, Pennington mentioned. Now, he wonders the place he and his Brass Door associates will really feel so at house.
Clients get pleasure from a beverage within the lounge space of The Brass Door in San Ramon, Calif., on Thursday, Dec.11, 2025. The restaurant is closing after 70 years in enterprise. The ultimate day of operation can be on December twenty fourth, 2025. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Space Information Group)
