That's it. Two. Out of the entire top half of the state.

For the uninitiated, Nordstrom cafes are the department store's in-house restaurants — not the espresso bars or the quick-bite counters you'll find in newer locations, but actual sit-down spots with cloth napkins and chicken salad that tastes like someone's mom made it. They were once a staple of the Nordstrom experience, a reason to make a whole afternoon out of shopping. Now they're going the way of Mervyn's and affordable Bay Area rent.

The closures aren't exactly shocking. Department stores have been shedding square footage for years, and a full-service restaurant inside a retail store is an operational expense that doesn't always pencil out. Nordstrom itself shuttered its San Francisco flagship in 2023. The market has spoken, and the market apparently prefers ghost kitchens and $22 grain bowls.

But markets don't capture everything. One Bay Area resident put it simply: "My mother took me to Walnut Creek and SF for the cafe all the time when I was a kid. I still eat there because it reminds me of her. I hope they never go away."

Hard to put a price tag on that.

There's a broader lesson here about what we lose when we let pure efficiency dictate every square foot of commercial space. Not everything that matters shows up on a balance sheet. Sometimes a restaurant inside a department store is just a restaurant inside a department store. And sometimes it's the last thread connecting someone to a memory they can't get anywhere else.

San Mateo, Walnut Creek — hold the line. Some of us are rooting for you.