Random Revisit: Xanh

Posted on 11/30/2013 by Randomly Edible

Hot on the heels of a scheduling error, I found myself at HNVX just a week after my first visit. Exactly nothing at all had changed, just as I suspected it wouldn’t. The decor was still just as rave-y, the waitstaff was still as quick and polite as before, and the menu was just as extensive. Clearly I would need to look harder if I hoped to find something new to complain about.

” It’s like trying to eat spaghetti with a rubber mallet and a football “

My wife and I met our previously-scheduled friend just inside HNVX and followed the host person to a cozy table. By “cozy” of course I mean “nestled between a pillar of glowing purple glass bricks and a wall textured like an avocado”. Naturally. After scanning the menu, we formulated our attack plan for dinner and relayed the order to our waitperson. We selected papaya salad (I was outvoted), pineapple beef short ribs, and a bowl of “Pho You, Pho Me”, HNVX’s questionably-named interpretation of classic Vietnamese noodle soup. Because we liked them so much last time, we also ordered some crispy potstickers and Kobe rolls.

I can’t tell where the papaya ends and the salad begins.

The papaya salad arrived first, and I reluctantly but politely scooped some onto my plate. I took a tentative bite… and wow! What a great dish. I quickly cleaned my plate and took another helping. Delish! It was crispy, light, and had a mild sweet flavor that was superb and palette-cleansing. And here I thought I didn’t like papaya. I’d certainly order that again.

Somebody at HNVX isn’t quite sure what spoons do.

Next up were the short ribs, and they smelled great. Curiously, a spoon was provided. A spoon? I can think of a dozen different ways to eat ribs, and exactly zero of them involve the use of a spoon. Come to think of it, that was the same story with the colossal prawns on our last visit – they came with an utterly useless spoon. Seriously, why? It’s like trying to eat spaghetti with a rubber mallet and a football.

Ignoring the pointless utensil (accidental pun!), the short ribs were excellent. They were marinated and grilled to perfection, and the quality of the beef met even my absurdly picky standards. They didn’t last very long though, but we also had potstickers and Kobe rolls to keep us busy. Regardless, thumbs up on the ribs.

It was pho-nomenal.

Finally, and with much anticipation, the pho arrived in a huge bowl. We ladled it out into smaller bowls (note puddles of sloshed soup in above photo) and got to work. It was magnificent. There are probably better examples of the breed lurking somewhere in the dark corners of the Bay Area, but for my money I’m quite happy indeed with HNVX’s rendition. The beef was tender and flavorful, the broth was rich, and there were plenty of noodles to go around. The next time we come here I will definitely be getting this, and I won’t be sharing.

I’m happy to report that my second visit to HNVX was better than the first one, and the first one certainly wasn’t bad at all. With a wider sampling of the menu literally under my belt, I’ve upped the Om-nom-eter™ a tick from its previous reading.

Xanh
110 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
(650) 964-1888
www.xanhrestaurant.com

Willow Street Pizza

Posted on 11/21/2013 by Randomly Edible

Willow Street Pizza is one of those places I never think of visiting until I’m standing right outside its door. This South Bay mini chain isn’t remarkable in any particular way, but it’s consistently above average and always sends me away satisfied with my choice to eat there. All of the Willow Street restaurants are also dog-friendly, which is a big plus in my book.

One afternoon in November, my wife Shawn and I found ourselves being dragged around Los Gatos by our two pint-sized dogs. We were finished with our primary objective – visiting every interesting shrub and fire hydrant the city had to offer – and so we moved on to locating a place to have lunch. We needed somewhere with outdoor seating, patio heaters, and tolerance of pooches. It didn’t take us long to narrow down our choice to Willow Street Pizza.

As we approached the restaurant, we noticed that there were plenty of open tables on the patio. Excellent. Shawn went inside to speak with the hostess and get us seated… and instead came out with a pager. “It’ll be 20 to 25 minutes” Shawn said, not trying too hard to hide her irritation. I looked around at all the empty tables as if to say, “Are they on crack?” Shawn shrugged. I shrugged. We waited.

Look at all those happy, invisible patrons. No wonder there’s a wait.

” I looked around at all the empty tables as if to say, ‘Are they on crack?’ “

20 minutes went by in a flash, with “flash” being defined as the amount of time it takes a set of human buttocks to go completely numb due to sitting on cold bricks while waiting outside a restaurant. Mercifully, the pager went off around then and we were whisked away to a nice, clean table underneath a toasty heat lamp.

Our server swooped by promptly, apologizing for the wait and setting us up with fresh bread. Well, that’s more like it. My Like-O-Meter had been dipping dangerously, but now it was working its way back up to a more reasonable level. I was barely through tearing off a piece of bread when our server stopped by again to take our drink order. Shawn chose a made-to-order ginger ale, and I went for the Shipyard Smashed Blueberry ale featured on the seasonal beverage board.

It was like getting wasted on breakfast muffins.

Actually no, it wasn’t ale… it was a malt beverage. Well it sure tasted like ale, and a good one at that. It had outstanding blueberry flavor, but not in a weird way. And sheesh, 9.0% alcohol? That’s a strong one. While I was engrossed in the flavor of my blueberry malt thing, Shawn ordered us a Gorgonzola salad with cranberries and a pepperoni and olive pizza. Perfect.

Gorgonzola and cranberries go surprisingly well together.

It didn’t take longs for our food to arrive, and it was very good. That beer though, wow! Yeah, pretty strong.. Big bottle too, 22oz. The gorgonzogla salad was surprisingly good for just being a salad. I mean, it’s a salad right? Who notices things like a salad? but anyway we liked it. And there’s cranberries in it! Oh yeah, that’s in the name. Loving this beer.

Very slightly oily but extremely flavorful. Overall a great pie.

we got the pizza when I was halfway through my ale. Really tastes like blueberries. no not that I meant the beer. Hey when did the pizza get here? It was fairly shimple but very nicely made, and I’m sure someone made it by hand. real good that pizza with good crust. Man. and this beer still isnt empty. here Shawn you need to take the car keys. WOO has someone turned up the patio heater I think? lol

well we had to wait while to eat but we finally did so great! THe blueberry ale was one of the best salads i’ve had, and the cranberry piza was good with my beer Hey whos dogs are these. i rate Willow Street Pizza pretty good but not acceptional, defently worth going back. omg this ale has BULEBERRIES

Willow Street Pizza
Multiple locations around the Bay Area
www.willowstreet.com

Willow Street’s Los Gatos location is a nice place to be, provided you can get seated.

Kotetsu Ramen

Posted on 11/12/2013 by Randomly Edible

Kotetsu Ramen is a bit of a contradiction. The food is high quality, it’s authentic, and everyone seems to love it. On the other hand, this place is questionably located and largely incomprehensible. I’m sure I’ll figure out what I think of it by the end of my review, but as of right now I’m on the fence.

“Reminder: Lunch” my smartphone declared at me. Well that’s odd. I hardly need help remembering to eat, so the notification must be for… Ah yes, I was supposed to meet my friend Kevin for lunch. “Are we still on for today?” I texted to Kevin, pretending to remember our lunch meeting. “I think it’s your turn to pick.”

“Let’s go to that ramen place we talked about last time, Kotetsu” came the reply.

” It seemed more like fried chicken fat that accidentally included some meat “

I looked up the address, jumped in the car, and started off down the street… and three minutes later I arrived. Well that was quite a bit closer than I thought it was – Kotetsu Ramen gets a thumbs up for convenience at least, assuming you live exactly where I do. Unfortunately, the convenient location just so happens to be a 1970’s strip mall that adorns the side of El Camino Real the same way an old piece of spinach adorns one’s teeth. The mall is not bad or scary really, it’s just ugly. If you’re ever in the market for an abandoned 1988 LeBaron station wagon with wood-look paneling, you’ll often find one or two specimens here.

I met Kevin in front of Kotetsu at 11:25am, right on schedule. “We need to wait out here, they don’t open for another five minutes” Kevin said, the “closed” sign on the door backing up his statement. Actually, no – scratch that. The sign didn’t say “closed”, it said “close”, without the “d”.

I am confuse.

Close. Hmm.

Did this mean “close by my house” or “please close this door”? Or was it a misspelling of “clothes”? My eye began to twitch slightly as my brain attempted to process this information and came up with nothing. To my relief, a nice man opened the door from the inside, removed the grammatically dubious sign, and invited us in.

Don’t mind me. I’m just some guy taking pictures of you while you eat. Pretend like I’m not here.

The inside of Kotetsu isn’t huge, but it’s well laid out, nicely lit, and absolutely immaculately clean. It really is a nice place to be. A lot of restaurants could learn a thing or two from Kotetsu and keep their dining areas a bit tidier. There’s a distinction between “not dirty” and “obsessively clean”. Customers (e.g., me) can tell the difference, and that’s one thing that really sets this restaurant apart.

The service at Kotetsu was as crisp and flawless as its cleanliness; within 2.8 seconds of being seated we had glasses of ice water and a competent waitperson at our beck and call. I opened the menu and started to browse through it… and immediately I knew I had a problem. Quite a lot of it was written in Romanized Japanese, which is Japanese words written using the English alphabet. This was a bit of an issue because, as you may have guessed, I don’t know Japanese. I gave Kevin a helpless “Please tell me you can read this” look, but he returned it with a shrug that conveyed “What, and you think I’m supposed to be able to?” Super.

I began carefully scrutinizing the menu, scanning for words I recognized and attempting to identify food items from the pictures. Let’s see… ramen…. ramen… ramen…. Yes, those are all words I know but they are not helpful. Ah, here’s pork… and this one here says chicken. I decided on the least alarming thing I could identify, a chicken plate something-whatever, and Kevin ordered a ramen thing that seemed likely to include pork.

This is the plate of items I must have ordered.

Our meals arrived quickly, and they looked fairly delicious. Well mine did anyway, but Kevin’s frightened me. To be perfectly honest, this kind of food really isn’t my cup of tea. Despite this, it was clear that the preparation was high quality and executed with the utmost care by expert hands. I wasn’t overly thrilled, but I’ll try anything once. My dish did indeed turn out to be not unlike chicken – fried chicken to be exact – and it included mayonnaise, some kind of potato salad, and assorted vegetable bits. The chicken was crispy, light, and had very good flavor, but it was extremely fatty. It seemed more like fried chicken fat that accidentally included some meat instead of the other way around. Kevin seemed to think that fatty chicken was just the style of the particular dish I ordered, which is possible, but I didn’t love it. I made my way through most of it and it grew on me as I ate. It’s still not my thing, but I can see how some people might appreciate it. The potato salad (if it actually was potato salad) was excellent.

“Yes, I’ll have the partially submerged meat flower with kelp please.”

Across the table, Kevin was enjoying the heck out of his ramen. It certainly did seem to have plenty of pork – large, flat pieces of it adorned the inner edges of the bowl in an epic fan of meatiness. The cuts of pork contained a fair amount questionable gristly bits throughout, and each was rimmed in a ring of fat. This dish was certainly not anything I would ever order for myself. It was becoming quite apparent, however, that I was the odd one out in the restaurant as far as my opinions went, as everyone else within eyesight really seemed to be chowing away with glee. Indeed, Kotetsu’s ratings on Yelp are consistently high, which tells me that this is a very good restaurant that simply doesn’t serve anything I like.

Coming up with a rating for Kotetsu Ramen is tricky. Objectively I give them decent marks for overall quality of preparation, cleanliness, flavor, and what appears to be a high degree of authenticity – let’s say 8.5 out of 10 pounds of fried chicken fat. On the flip side of the coin, I dislike the location, the menus need a lot of work to make them useable by a wider audience, and I just don’t personally care for the style of food (the latter of course is not the fault of Kotetsu). I’d be willing to go back to this place with the help of a translator, and if I can find a dish I like I have no doubt it will be made very well indeed …whatever it is.

Kotetsu Ramen
2089 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 557-0822
www.kotetsuramen.com

That’s a bowl of stuff alright. Enjoy?

Random revisit: The Gazebo

Posted on 11/05/2013 by Randomly Edible

It’s no secret that I love The Gazebo‘s crazy breakfasts, so I was a little hesitant to go there for lunch. I wasn’t worried that it would let me down or anything like that – I just didn’t want to miss out on any epic breakfast win. Still, any visit to this place is bound to be a good visit, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The Gazebo is only open until 2pm, so the only late lunch you’ll have there is no lunch at all. My wife and I showed up at 1pm to try and avoid whatever crowd may have been present, and we were rewarded with an immediate seating. There were only one or two empty tables in the whole place though, so they weren’t exactly lacking for patrons.

” What’s that rice thing they’re eating over there? “

I’m a big Monte Cristo fan, which figures because it’s probably the least healthy “sandwich” imaginable. For the uninitiated, a Monte Cristo is simply a ham and cheese sandwich dipped in egg batter and pan fried. It’s typically served with powdered sugar and some sort of fruit preserves, so it has the whole sweet-and-savory thing going for it. I scanned the menu in the hopes I’d find one… Bingo! Monte Cristo, front and center. I’m having that.

The Gazebo’s version of the Monte Cristo has two kinds of cheese and both ham and turkey.

My counterpart liked the sound of the BBQ Kahlua pork sandwich, but she had also spotted another dish that got her attention as we were walking in. “What’s that rice thing they’re eating over there?” she asked our waitress, pointing to another table. The waitress told us it was their breakfast fried rice, and that it was still available if we wanted some. It was just too tempting to pass up, so we went ahead and ordered a side of it. There’s nothing wrong with having some leftover Gazebo food in the fridge back at the condo.

Everything but (probably and) the kitchen sink.

Our food arrived and we were just impressed as we have always been with The Gazebo. The Monte Cristo ranked as one of the best examples of the breed that I have ever encountered; it had the perfect amount of batter and wasn’t the slightest bit greasy. The Kahlua pork sandwich was relatively standard but also very delicious, and there wasn’t a trace of any disgusting fatty pork bits that so often plague such dishes. The real star of the show turned out to be the breakfast fried rice – we liked it so much we’re inspired to try making it at home one of these times. It was jam packed with bits of ham, sausage, egg, and who knows what else. We loved it.

The Gazebo’s excellent standing in my list of favorites remains unchanged. They are quite obviously just as adept at mid-day meals as they are at breakfast, and I can’t recommend enough that you pay them a visit.

The Gazebo
5315 Lower Honoapiilani Road
Lahaina, HI 96761
(808) 669-5621
www.mauihawaii.org

Kahlua Pork. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Xanh

Posted on 11/04/2013 by Randomly Edible

Xanh is a Vietnamese restaurant. The sign outside specifically mentions this, I assume to prevent would-be customers from confusing the place with a Piers Anthony novel. Really though, Xanh is more of an Asian fusion type of eatery centered around Vietnamese themes. Don’t let the extremely posh post-modern decor fool you; there are some tasty eats to be found here.

“We need to get going. We’re meeting people for dinner tonight, remember?” my wife said.

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I lied. “I was just going to get dressed.” I changed into some socially acceptable clothes, grabbed the car keys, and drove us to downtown Mountain View.

I had no idea there was a night club on board the Starship Enterprise.

” We felt somewhat on display as we thumb wrestled crustaceans “

As we walked into the back entrance of Xahn, I was immediately struck by the über-chic decor and the muted beatnik electronica rhythms pulsing through the restaurant’s invisible sound system. The overall ambience is about halfway between a black-turtlenecks-only spoken word coffee bar and a full blown rave. Excitingly hidden colored lights abound throughout the establishment, pointing at all sorts of interesting angles and highlighting pretty much everything.

They’re trying too hard to be hip,” said my better half.

“Well, yeah, but they’re kind of doing it,” I replied. As I looked around the crazy decor I noticed a quiet section of wall where half a dozen Michelin Guide dining awards hung. That was a surprise, and also a good sign.

This particular wall is decorated like an alcoholic police car.

The people we were supposed to meet hadn’t arrived yet, so we decided to have a drink while we waited. Although the wide selection of on-tap beers made me very happy, I immediately felt way too old to be sitting at the clinically modern bar. In fact, nearly everybody I know would be either too old to be at this bar or simply not old enough to drink. Take your current age in years and subtract 21; that’s how many years ago you should have hung out here, but certainly not now. If you asked me to describe the bar’s decor with a single, hyphenated phrase (Let’s just pretend like you did), I would call it “techno-sterile.”

We decided that a table would be a better place for us to hang out, so we sat down and began reviewing the extensive menus. “XANH” was stylistically written in large, modern font across the cover of each menu. I couldn’t help but notice that, when viewed upside-down (i.e., from the other side of the table) it spelled “HNVX”, which just so happens to be the sound a Rottweiler makes when choking on a kazoo. It’s an odd thing to print on a menu cover.

Primiti too taa nnz kkr muu?

We ordered some crispy pot stickers and Kobe rolls as appetizers, and in just a couple of minutes they arrived at our table; HNVX certainly receives high marks for prompt service. As advertised, the pot stickers were crispy and delectable, the chicken-and-shrimp filling was excellent, and the soy vinaigrette was a wonderful addition. The real star for me were the Kobe rolls, which were very much like traditional spring rolls with the added bonus of delicious steak. The crispy shallots sprinkled across the plate were like miniature oniony potato chips, only better. The provided clear sauce was so mild, however, that it almost had no flavor at all. It wasn’t bad per se, it was just mostly a why-bother type of affair.

Each pot sticker was inexplicably perched atop a weird and stumpy spoon-ladel. Alrighty then.

As we finished the appetizers, I noted that our dinner double date was now officially 30 minutes tardy. Suddenly, my spouse declared, “Oh, I just realized that we’re supposed to be meeting them next weekend, not today. Sorry! Should we order dinner?”

Oh for the sake of… You know what though? This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We got to eat at a new restaurant and try a couple things on the menu we normally wouldn’t have. We confided the scheduling error to the understanding and patient waitstaff, booked another table for the following weekend, and ordered some shrimp with garlic noodles (one of HNVX’s most popular entrees) to share.

Release the Kraken!

The garlic noodles were quite good, but honestly they were not the very best I’ve ever had. I would certainly order them again, and in fact I’d recommend that you do so as well, but for me they weren’t a drop-everything type of dish. The shrimp were also very tasty but again, not alone worth seeking out this restaurant for. One of my problems with this entree in particular was how difficult it was to eat. The shrimp themselves were large enough to require license plates, but the only utensils we were provided were a fork, a spoon, and a pair of slippery metal chopsticks. Our options were to A) pick up a shrimp with chopsticks and chew on the end of it, B) stab a shrimp with a fork and chew on the end of it, C) attempt to saw a shrimp in half using a spoon, or D) eat the entire dish with our hands, primate style. None of these options worked out very well (we had a minor noodle explosion at one point) and we felt somewhat on display as we thumb wrestled crustaceans amidst the stylish and surgically clean decor.

In the end I found that I had enjoyed HNVX (ok, Xanh) quite a bit in spite of its idiosyncrasies and “sleepy rave” decor. I rate it 32 out of 40 backlit vodka bottles, making it worth the trek to Mountain View if you’re reasonably near the area. The food was very good, the service was quick, and the bill was reasonable. I’m looking forward to exploring the menu further when we head back here next weekend, but I need to shop for black turtlenecks and glow sticks first.

Xanh
110 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
(650) 964-1888
www.xanhrestaurant.com

UPDATE
This restaurant is so nice I reviewed it twice: Random Revisit: Xanh

These little gems were Kobe-licious.

Randomly Edible

Mostly a food blog. Sort of.

Tag Archives: restaurants

Random Revisit: Xanh

Willow Street Pizza

Kotetsu Ramen

Random revisit: The Gazebo

Xanh

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