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Silicon Valley, CA


mdt

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What are your tastes and desires? San Jose is a huge city with a lot of restaurants. Where are you staying? You'll have a car?

Yea, I guess that information would help. Staying downtown at the Hyatt and I will have a car. I have no specific restrictions on the type of places, except for the super expensive. Looking for lunch and dinner (mostly) spots that may offer something different from the DC dining scene.

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well, manresa is in nearby los gatos, but that would probably be in your super expensive category.

edited to add- coming from san jose, i really hate it when people reference the dionne warwick song. but then, i'm cursed like that; i went to college in waco, texas. yes, yes. . i've heard it all before.

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Yes, Manresa is "super expensive."

There is a lot of good Indian food in Silicon Valley, including Amber India at Santana Row (there is also a Mountain View location, which I have not visited), and Dasaprakash in Santa Clara. The lamb roganjosh and butter chicken at Amber India are fantastic. Dasaprakash is the favorite of many of my foodiest friends, and of the Indians I know locally.

There is a good Cuban restaurant, Habana-Cuba, in San Jose. The marinated pork, Lechon a la Cubana, is falling-apart tender and savory. Highly, highly recommended. (It's only $9 at lunch, and $15 at dinner.)

Whatever you do, stick to the wine list and do not be lured into ordering a cocktail. They don't have a liquor license, and used some kind of Korean monkey vomit in a mojito, and it was gaksome. (It's been a couple of years since I went, so maybe they do have a license by now. Still, I'd stick to wine: their list is good, and you can order almost anything by the glass.)

45 minutes away, Santa Cruz is a nice place to visit, and there are a good number of bistros that offer the typical (wonderfully typical, that is) homage to Alice Waters: fresh, seasonal, farm-fresh California cuisine that is very affordable.

Santa Cruz excels in little bistros that serve local/organic/seasonal cuisine, and the best of these, in my opinion are:

Oswald Bistro (no website)

Gabriella Cafe (I also do their website work for trade...I only work for restaurants I love.)

Soif Wine Bar: lots of little plates, wonderful food by a skillful chef (with a wine store on the premises, too).

Ristorante Avanti (no website):

(I did take those photos) -- they have been doing the local/seasonal/organic thing longer than anyone in town...since 1986.

These are all within a two-mile radius of downtown Santa Cruz.

Finally, there is an excellent cheese shop that also serves breakfast, lunch, and desserts all day: River Cafe and Cheese Shop, just a block off the Highway One/Highway 9 intersection on River Street. (They are also clients of mine. Everyone loves Amy and Heidi!) Try the steak sandwich with gorgonzola-cognac sauce. Yum!

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[Parcel 104]

I had a terribly disappointing and over priced dinner sitting at the "Food Bar" of this enormously popular restaurant on Thursday evening. I sampled four courses along with two amuse. I left longing for a second tier restaurant in the D. C. area.

Sometimes, it is an education to visit another city's "best" to realize just how fortunate we are with what we have right here! I really would have thought that San Jose/Santa Clara could have done better than this.

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I had a terribly disappointing and over priced dinner sitting at the "Food Bar" of this enormously popular restaurant on Thursday evening. I sampled four courses along with two amuse. I left longing for a second tier restaurant in the D. C. area.

Sometimes, it is an education to visit another city's "best" to realize just how fortunate we are with what we have right here! I really would have thought that San Jose/Santa Clara could have done better than this.

You would have been well served to spend 15 minutes in the car on the way to Manresa. Alternatively, you could have gone to www.cheztj.com in Mountain View.

I've lived in Palo Alto (10 miles from there) for 20 months and I don't believe that anybody I know who is into food has eaten there.

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Managed to work in dueling breakfasts last week: Mountain View's favorite: Hobees versus Menlo Park's favorite: Stacks. I've been fond of Hobees since my second day in California, some 20 years ago, and both the coffee cake and cinnamon-orange tea are as addictive as ever. Stacks serves up some killer breakfast as well, but the bare menu descriptions make most of their platters sound like side plates, and not the generously-portioned mains that they are. Good hashbrowns, but great and large pancakes - a short stack will fill you up.

Over the hill, it seems that part of Bonny Doon's response to volume success has been to increase their range of DEWN "club" wines not distributed to normal retail channels, and to focus their weirder character experiments there. Not all of them stuck our fancy, but Gubeen and I did take a fancy to the '04 Mourvedre. Because it seems that BATF's TTB does not legally recognize Pigato as a varietal, BD chose to split the word Pigato across the front and back labels in a bit of self-congratulatory gamesmanship. I didn't have the heart to tell them about the "chine nual", but the kids working the tasting room didn't look old enough to know what LISP was anyway.

The need for some authentic Mexican food before we left town led us to take a chance on El Titanic (1505 S. Winchester Blvd., San Jose), a neighborhood joint whose taco truck was parked outside and being used as a supplemental to prep costillas and chicken for the charcoal grill out front, while the inside kitchen delivered on the balance of the menu. Ahhhh, proper carnitas on fresh corn tortillas...so simple, and yet difficult to find on the East Coast. Gubeen's chiles rellenos were beautifully lightly battered and fresh, and bore nothing in common with the dessicated refuse she'd been served the previous week in Maryland. I washed down my lengua and carne asada tacos with a Mandarin Jarritos and tried to remember the taste, as it'll be a while before I get back to California again. Good thing we didn't notice the guy at the other end of the block selling fresh tamales until we were leaving!

Yet to come: our dinners at Manresa and Chez Panisse...

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I'll be a solo diner in Palo Alto Monday night (though with a car and willing to drive a bit). Any recommendations? I'll take anything good that's not super expensive, more interested in someplace low key and where I can eat at the bar, and bonus points if it's the sort if food I can't get easily here.

Thanks!

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