SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s iconic Cliff House restaurant that has served tourists and locals for more than a century from atop a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean is closing its doors at the end of the year.
Dan and Mary Hountalas, the restaurant’s proprietors since 1973, said in a post Sunday on the restaurant’s website they are closing Dec. 31 because of losses brought on by the pandemic and a dispute over renewing their long-term operating contract with the National Park Service.
Built in 1863, the seaside restaurant has been a San Francisco institution and a top tourist attraction. It has gone through several transformations. The first modest, wood-frame structure was destroyed in a fire in 1894. It was rebuilt and fashioned after a French chateau that survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake but burned down the following year. The third and present Cliff House, neoclassic in design, was built in 1909.