After 43 years in the restaurant business, chef Gary Chu has only one regret. “I have no hobbies,” he said, sitting inside his longtime restaurant Osake in Santa Rosa on an early Saturday morning.
With a mug of coffee in hand, Chu looked back on decades spent in his family’s Chinese restaurants and later building a local restaurant empire with Gary Chu’s and Osake in Santa Rosa and Sake’O in Healdsburg. Now, as he considers a future without 14-hour days, he can’t help but grin at how deeply the restaurant world still calls to him.
“I love what I do. Whatever happens outside, when I come through these doors, I forget everything,” he said. The smile rarely leaves his face, making it easy to believe.
At 68, Chu is woven into the fabric of Sonoma County dining. In the 1980s and ’90s, his namesake Chinese restaurant in downtown Santa Rosa stood out as a rare destination north of San Francisco for elevated, California-influenced Asian cuisine. Szechuan lamb, tea-smoked duck and Champagne scallops shared the menu with crowd-pleasers like lemon chicken and the now-iconic Martini Prawns, a dish that’s been imitated across the region…