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An old-school diner is getting a new-school twist.
Beloved local breakfast chain Hobee’s will soon offer dinner and craft beer at its newest location in San Jose’s Germania Hall. Established in Mountain View in 1974 by Paul Taber, Hobee’s is best known for its giant cubical slices of blueberry coffee cake. With the soft opening of Hobee’s newest location on Nov. 16, the company looks to attract new clientele while still staying true to its family-friendly, community-oriented roots.
“Even though it’s Hobee’s and we’re true to the legacy, we’re going to evolve and do a few things differently here,” co-owner Camille Chijate said. “(We plan to) infuse more modern ideas while keeping the soul of the place like a Hobee’s.”
Taking over the former location of Ludwig’s German Table (a property owned by Germania Verein, The German-American Club of San Jose) the newest Hobee’s will have a bit of German influence – expect to see pretzels on the menu soon. The dinner menu will feature some of Hobee’s lunch favorites, as well as new flatbread pizzas, appetizers, shared plates and pastas. For dessert, Hobee’s will roll out elevated twists on their classic coffee cakes.
“(The menu) depends on the night shift that we hire,” Camille Chijate said. “We want them to have a little bit more free reign and try new things.”
The craft beer program will likely feature beers from San Jose-based Narrative Fermentations, Oakland-based Original Pattern and Sunnyvale-based Laughing Monk, as well as hard kombucha and cider.
“We are kind of leaning towards women-owned, people of color, LGBTQ, and also just hyper-local, if we can get those,” Camille Chijate said.
The San Jose location is currently open for breakfast and lunch, and Camille Chijate estimates dinner and beer service will be available in February or March. A ribbon cutting will be held in January. Attached to the restaurant is an event hall with a capacity of about 150 people. Hobee’s is allowed to use the hall for free when hosting community events and fundraisers and is the preferred caterer at private events held in the space.
Gigi Chijate, Camille Chijate’s daughter, spearheaded the design, decor, construction and remodeling of Hobee’s San Jose, and their wife, Zoe Chijate, is running the restaurant and is the director of catering.
“Gigi and Zoe have really been the inspiration and dedication behind this new store,” Camille Chijate wrote in an email. “They have been committed to it for almost a year and a half and are the next generation of Hobee’s.”
While the new San Jose Hobee’s is the company’s fourth restaurant in operation (with other locations in Palo Alto, Redwood Shores and Sunnyvale), it’s the third Hobee’s in San Jose – the Town & Country location closed in 2012 and the Montague location closed in 2022. Since the Montague location’s closure, Camille Chijate wanted to reopen a Hobee’s in San Jose, but the pandemic made expansion uncertain. When the original Hobee’s Mountain View location shuttered last year, she knew it was the right time to expand to San Jose.
“We thought … all these employees from (the Mountain View) store will just come work down here, we don’t lose any customers, we don’t lose any employees,” she said.
But opening the new location took a lot longer than expected, with a “big tax problem on the seller’s side … that took almost half a year to resolve,” Camille Chijate said, as well as issues transferring the ABC license, which took another six months to resolve.
A San Jose native, Camille Chijate took over ownership of Hobee’s, with her husband Daniel Chijate, in 2017 after working for the company for 28 years. She went to college for broadcasting, but “it didn’t fill (her) heart or soul,” so she moved back home and took a job as a host at Hobee’s. Within a week or two, she became a server, and shortly after that, she became a manager.
“It was really the kind of place I needed at that time in my life,” Camille Chijate said. “The people that worked there were like family. Everyone was very positive, very supportive, very fun-loving, very hard working, but at the same time, everyone looked out for each other. We knew all the customers. I mean, seriously, half of our wedding guests were customers from Hobee’s.”
It’s the personal connections at Hobee’s that make each day meaningful, she said.
“Somebody came into this restaurant the other day, and they’ve been coming to Hobee’s since 1974 when it opened,” Camille Chijate said. “And this woman was telling me the stories about how her and her husband used to go to Mountain View, and they didn’t even live here anymore, but when they come to town, they always have to eat at one, and she had tears in her eyes. Being a part of somebody’s life that way, it’s so symbolic. Hospitality, to me, is a very worthy endeavor.”
Over the next five to 10 years, Camille Chijate plans to open a couple more Hobee’s locations, particularly looking at Santa Cruz, Morgan Hill and Gilroy, before passing the company down to her children. Will Hobee’s ever come back to Mountain View?
“I’m looking all the time,” she said. “If we found a restaurant that was up to code in Mountain View (and) looked like our vibe, we would definitely go look at it.”
Hobee’s, 261 N. 2nd St., San Jose; 408-791-1117, Instagram: @hobeesrestaurants. Open Tuesday to Sunday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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