Hobee's is a chain of sit-down restaurants in San Mateo

San Mateo County, California

San Mateo County is a county located in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. It covers most of the San Francisco Peninsula just south of San Francisco, and north of Santa Clara County. San Francisco International Airport is located at the northern end of the county, and...

 and Santa Clara

Santa Clara County, California

Santa Clara County is a county located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 it had a population of 1,781,642. The county seat is San Jose. The highly urbanized Santa Clara Valley within Santa Clara County is also known as Silicon Valley...

 counties in Northern California

Northern California

Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...

. Paul Taber, the founder, bought the Dairy Belle in Mountain View, California

Mountain View, California

-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...

, and opened the first Hobee's restaurant in 1974. A sometime vegetarian and animal welfarist http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/02/19/MN90846.DTL, Taber gradually moved the menu away from traditional diner fare to more alternative options, including tofu

Tofu

is a food made by coagulating soy milk and then pressing the resulting curds into soft white blocks. It is part of East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and others. There are many different varieties of tofu, including fresh tofu and tofu...

, humanely-raised eggs from local farms, freshly baked blueberry coffeecake, and a strongly-brewed cinnamon house tea, which has become its trademark beverage. At the time of founder Paul Taber's death in 1998, Hobee's had grown to twelve locations and grossed over $12 million dollars annually.http://www.hobees.com/paul.htm Currently, Hobee's has eight operative sites throughout the Bay area south of San Francisco.

Hobee's regularly wins the best breakfast

Breakfast

Breakfast is the first meal taken after rising from a night's sleep, most often eaten in the early morning before undertaking the day's work...

 and best brunch

Brunch

Brunch is a meal eaten between breakfast and lunch. The word is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch.-Origin of the word:The 1896 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary cites Punch magazine which wrote that the term was coined in Britain in 1895 to describe a Sunday meal for "Saturday-night...

 awards from various Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

newspapers http://www.hobees.com/awards.html. In May 2006, Hobee's was named Best Breakfast/Brunch in Silicon Valley by the Mercury News.http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/special_packages/bestinsv/14594148.htm