End of the line for Pisces

San Francisco’s Aqua Development Corp. chose not to renew the lease at 1190 California Drive for another 10 years because business was not doing well, said Corporate Executive Chef Laurent Manrique.

"It wasn’t as profitable as we thought it could be,” Manrique said.

The restaurant was never profitable, even during the peak of the dot-com boom, Manrique said.

The restaurant will be open for dinner through the end of the week, but Pisces won’t be sleeping with the fishes. The restaurant will re-open elsewhere as soon as he can find a suitable spot. There’s no indication yet whether it will re-open on the Peninsula or in San Francisco, Manrique said.

The restaurant group also runs Aqua in San Francisco and the newer Cafe de la Presse, in Union Square near the Chinatown gates.

Meanwhile, Burlingame is keeping a close eye on the building.

The restaurant often attracted people from out of town to the smaller shopping district along Broadway. There’s no indication how many people actually ate at the restaurant and then shopped at nearby businesses. Any restaurant, however, is good for the entire street, said Ross Bruce, president of the Broadway Business Improvement District.

As for a new tenant, Bruce doesn’t have a preference what moves in. Retail or restaurant will be good for the area, he said.

"I think we should keep an open mind,” Bruce said.

The train station has a long history of housing restaurants. It was the Trax restaurant and a Mexican fast food place before that.

There was a concerted effort to save the building from demolition approximately nine years ago, said Councilman Russ Cohen, also president of the Burlingame Historical Society.

Cohen said he visited the restaurant once on a special occasion. Councilwoman Ann Kieghran ate at the restaurant a few times. Both were surprised to hear of the closure — although Kieghran said she’d heard "rumblings” about it.

Both would like to see another restaurant in the building, but are open to all new ideas.

Kieghran suggests Chicken! Chicken!, the restaurant destroyed when a fire ripped through its Primrose Road building.

Dana Yates can be reached by e-mail: dana@smdailyjurnal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106. What do you think of this story? Send a letter to the editor: letters@smdailyjournal.com.