Historic Chinese restaurant closing

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- After serving Chinese food for over 100 years, a San Francisco institution is closing Friday.

Sam Wo restaurant opened a year after the 1906 earthquake in the city's Chinatown. It's been a fixture on Washington Street ever since.

It's a narrow shop sandwiched between two buildings. Customers enter through the kitchen, and then go upstairs to eat.

"It's just kind of hard for us to part with it because it's been in our family for such a long time and we share, you know, such a bond with the customers, and it's just, I don't know, we spend most of our time here because we're open from eleven in the morning until three in the morning, so it's just, ah, we spend a lot of time here,' Julie Ho, whose father owns the restaurant, said.

The shop's lease is coming up soon, so the owners decided to make a clean break because the Department of Public Health says the building needs a complete makeover, as does the kitchen.

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