Cupertino: Fire-ravaged Holder’s Country Inn reopens in restaurant space 2 miles away

After his restaurant, one of the South Bay locations of Holder’s Country Inn, burned down in early August, owner Efren Flores vowed to get back into business quickly — for the sake of his devoted customers and longtime employees.

And he did, reopening in a vacant space just two miles away in Cupertino. “It was challenging, but we managed to pull it off in record-breaking time — three months,” he said.

Most important, he said, “We were able to keep 100 percent of our staff.”

He planned for a very quiet soft opening Thursday, but word got out and the place was packed with regulars eager to greet him and the staff. “I felt like a celebrity. I wasn’t expecting that kind of crowd. It means a lot.”

The new restaurant is located on Wolfe Road in the former Steins space. Seating capacity is not just similar, it’s precisely the same. With the patio, Flores can seat 214 customers here — the same as on De Anza Boulevard, where the restaurant had been located for 23 years.

The Wolfe Road lease is flexible, giving him time to decide whether this will be an interim home or the permanent home.

According to the restaurant’s history, the Holder empire started in 1957, when Jack and Anne Holder moved to the Santa Clara Valley from Oregon and opened Uncle John’s Pancake House in Santa Clara. A decade later, they branched out with ​the original “Holder’s Country Inn,” which had a 32-year run at the old Town & Country Village in San Jose. That restaurant relocated to the De Anza site in 1999. Some of the Holder properties remain under family ownership; others have been sold but retain the name.