|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The owner of Chez Nous has sold the cafe, which has become a gathering place for conservatives, to help fund what she believes is President Donald Trump’s 2028 bid for a third term.
Passport Cafe and Restaurant LLC, which filed on June 8, will replace the establishment at 2159 Roosevelt Ave as an “on-sale beer and wine eating place,” according to the public notice of application for ownership change on the storefront.
A far-right activist who attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Maria Rutenburg, has been a staunch Trump supporter who said that “if it takes selling the business to help Trump, I am all for it.” Part of her motive behind the sale is the boycotting of Chez Nous by some Redwood City residents.
While 80-year-old Trump has teased the idea of serving a third term, he has not formally announced a bid that would challenge the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Chez Nous opened at the Roosevelt Plaza Shopping Center in November of 2021 as a “refuge from the Draconian COVID lockdowns, a safe place to assemble,” said Rutenburg, the owner of Chez Nous.
In February 2022, as Chez Nous approached its three-month anniversary, Rutenburg was called out in a Facebook group, where people linked to her personal page and criticized her for not enforcing mask mandates, for storming the Capitol, for criticizing the Black Lives Matter Movement and for organizing a pro-police rally. Public scrutiny has since grown.
The lasting impact of neighborhood animosity laid the foundation for her decision that “the best way to make a difference is to sell the business and sell the money to [Trump’s] campaign,” she said.
Among the president’s propositions for running for a third term are a rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24, when he said sarcastically while wearing a red “Trump 2028” hat, “I won three times now I’m going to do it again.”
However, Trump told reporters outside Air Force One on Wednesday, Aug. 12, that he “would love to run” again, but that “the law is very strong” about blocking a third term.
Chez Nous also faced criticism from Roosevelt Shopping Center staff and customers for what’s been described as its loud parties with excessive drinking and smoking several nights a week.
Jarron Carlson, a music teacher at MidPeninsula Music Academy, which shared a wall with Chez Nous, said on July 23 that “random people” from Chez Nous events would wander in during music lessons, play their instruments, leave drinks and blast music while he tried to teach. Carlson also didn’t like how Chez Nous guests would smoke cigarettes outside the shop as children came and went for lessons.
A nail technician at Roosevelt Nail Shop, Jennifer Wong, said on July 23 that her clients come in wanting “peace of mind,” but that Chez Nous’ events would make the “whole wall” of the nail salon shake from Thursday to Sunday nights.
Rutenburg was a Jewish dissident who fled political persecution from Russia and settled in Redwood City in 1991 when she was 16. One of the things Rutenburg said she has always loved about America, and California in particular, is that it’s welcoming of different people and ideas.
In working largely as a lawyer and a real estate agent who manages properties throughout the Bay Area, including Roosevelt Plaza, Rutenburg never imagined she would open a cafe. Her mission with Chez Nous, though, was to build a gathering space for food and the exchange of ideas, which she said became “the biggest conservative books library in the Bay.”
“We’re trying to be a cultural place where people can relax and enjoy each other’s company, coming from completely different walks of life,” Rutenburg said in 2022. “I don’t want it to be just a political thing.”
Chez Nous means “our place” or “with us” in French, she said, and the cafe was a homage to traditional French salons stocked with literature, art and intellectual debate. She chose to center the theme of the cafe on Paris in the 1920s because “2020s is the MAGA movement. 1920s was a Parisian cultural, Bohemian feel,” she said.
The owner’s most touching memories in the shop were “to see young people nonchalantly grab a book and get lost in it for an hour,” she told the Pulse on Monday.
Rutenburg said that she doesn’t know who the new owner will be, as a business broker handled the transaction, but that the new shop will open in two weeks. Chez Nous shuttered in June.
Former San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy gets jail time for workers' comp fraudSeptember 30, 2026 11:07 am
Now Rutenburg published a post on her fb page, saying that she lied about the purpose of the sale and is laughing at “libs” for buying her lie.
This woman has no credibility