Indonesian eatery in Redwood City closes
Less than a year after opening in Redwood City, the highly anticipated Indonesian restaurant Warung Siska has closed.
Owner Anne Le Ziblatt said it became impossible to operate the 917 Main St. business amid the Bay Area’s labor shortage, which has contributed to other local restaurant closures.
Without enough staff, Warung Siska was caught in an “unending cycle,” Ziblatt said. The restaurant couldn’t open more than five nights a week, and the limited hours meant the business wasn’t reaching its revenue projections. Without more sales, the owners couldn’t afford to hire more employees to cover when someone called in sick or requested time off. Ziblatt and managing partner Ervan Lim often filled in as the sole frontof-house staff the past six months.
“It wasn’t realistic to continue to operate that way. It was like a tower being held together with a lot of Band-Aids,” Ziblatt said.
Warung Siska was the first full-blown Indonesian restaurant to open in the Bay Area in years. Ziblatt, who opened Vietnamese spots Tamarine, Bong Su and Nam, initially teamed up with Lim and chef Siska Silitonga of popular Indonesian pop-up ChiliCali. From Ziblatt’s former Nam Vietnamese Brasserie space, Warung Siska served chicken sate, Balinese roast duck and other Indonesian fare. Its debut coincided with a booming underground Indonesian food movement in the region, with the hope of bringing the underrepresented cuisine into the mainstream.
In January, Silitonga announced she had parted ways with the restaurant. Ziblatt said at the time that Silitonga was brought on as the restaurant’s “opening chef to develop our culinary program and write recipes for us,” and had planned to depart in early 2022. In an Instagram post following this story’s publication, Silitonga said this was false and that she had been a partner in the business, which carried her name.
Ziblatt said she considered alternatives to closing, including further paring down the counter service concept to be able to function with fewer employees. But she didn’t think the worker shortage, which restaurants throughout the Bay Area have been grappling with since last year, would end anytime soon. Many workers moved out of the Bay Area during the pandemic or decided to leave the hospitality industry for good.
The lack of staffing affected quality at the restaurant, Ziblatt said.
“When you’re shortstaffed, you don’t do your best work. The people there are stretched thinner … and that affects the experience,” she said. “It’s this self-fulfilling cycle.”
While the downtown Redwood City restaurant space is closed, Warung Siska will continue to offer delivery through website Locale as long as the demand and staffing are there to justify it.