“Meats”, Sweet Potato Man, and the Sausage Inferno
Soo…I’ve been really busy. Between school, work, and job-hunting, I haven’t had much free time to keep up here, but I’ll try to start writing more again, it’s good for me. And for you.
Friday night, a bunch of us took Yi’s friend from high school out to dinner at Garden Fresh, the vegan Chinese restaurant. Despite it being Friday night, we managed to get a table for our eight person beast of a group, and after we placed our order, the waitress brought out cups of corn soup. FO’ FREE.
I never complain about anything that’s free, and it was super nice of them to just give us eight soups, so it was too bad the corn soup was about as good as this picture turned out - sort of a lukewarm, bland, corn-starchy soup-ish liquid. The last time we came, I had the hot-and-sour soup, which was actually decent, so if you go for a soup, go for the hot-and-sour. Look at me, dishing knowledge left and right. I’ll learn all of you yet.
As you can probably tell from that one picture, the lighting in the restaurant was a bit dim for my old dink of a camera, so I didn’t bother taking pictures of the rest of the meal, but we ended up sharing eight dishes: General Tso’s “chicken”, curry “chicken”, “fish”, claypot tofu and “shrimp”, tofu skins and asparagus, “chicken” chow fun, “duck”, and orange “beef”. The great thing (or maybe the worst thing) about American Chinese food is that you never really taste the meat anyway, as you mainly just end up tasting sauce, and so I didn’t really miss the meat in most of these dishes, and with the exception of the curry chicken, everything was pretty good. I particularly liked the orange “beef”, which wasn’t like beef at all but instead consisted of slightly scary slabs of black food matter swimming in a sweet and tangy sauce - it was pretty weird-looking, but I was digging the texture of the “beef”, which was nicely crispy on the outside.
After dinner, a couple of us went to the Aquarius and saw Never Let Me Go. Not quite as good as the book (really good book), mostly because of awkward pacing and too much music, but still pretty good. The Aquarius must have really thin walls, because club music from somewhere kept leaking in, creating a reaaalllyyy weird movie-watching experience where we were watching this sad, sad movie while bass-heavy music was pounding in the background.
The next day, Ali, Alli, Sam, Matt and I hit up Shiok!, the Singaporean place in Menlo Park. The exclamation mark isn’t a typo, Shiok! is JUST THAT EXCITED ABOUT SINGAPOREAN FOOD!!! Just like Pasta? doesn’t ever know what’s up.
We split two orders of roti prata to start, which came with a curry dipping sauce. I’m always down for dipping warm carbs into sauce, and this was pretty darn tasty - warm, flaky, buttery, slightly crisp on the edges, and perfect for sopping up curry goodness.
Noodle soups are one of my favorite things ever, so of course I had the laksa, a slightly spicy seafood curry soup with tofu skin chunks and noodles. I like my noodles a bit firmer than the ones in the laksa, but everything was pretty delicious, and I was especially digging the big, juicy prawns and spongy tofu skins. Sam thought that it could have used a bit more coconut milk, but I liked that it didn’t taste too rich, letting the seafood taste come through a bit more.
We used one of my restaurant.com coupons, taking $25 off our total bill, so each person ended up spending about $10 (incl. tax and tip) for the roti prata and their entree - WHAT A GOOD DEAL.
I still have all of these coupons to use. WHO’S CHEAP AND HUNGRY, YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.
Aldo (Italian, Los Altos)
Cafe 220 (Greek, Palo Alto)
Caffe Riace (Sicilian, Palo Alto)
Chouchou (French, San Francisco)
Crepes Cafe (French, Menlo Park)
Karakade Thai Cuisine (Thai, Redwood City)
Mudai Restaurant (Ethiopian, San Jose)
Pronto Wood-Fired Pizza & Rotisserie (Pizza, Redwood City)
Red Lantern (Asian Fusion, Redwood City)
Red Lotus (Singaporean/Asian Fusion, Portola Valley)
Rib Shack (Barbeque, San Bruno)
Rincon Sabroso (Mexican/El Salvadorian, Mountain View)
Rok (Volcanic Rocks, Sunnyvale)
Shanghai Club Restaurant & Lounge (Xiaolongbao, Burlingame) Shiok! A Taste of Singapore (Singaporean, Menlo Park)
Sunday morning, I went to Cupertino to get some recordings for my thesis, and after finishing up, I decided to finally hit up the sweet potato man.
Who is the sweet potato man?
The sweet potato man occupies this shack at the Lawrence Square Shopping Plaza, right in front of the supermarket there. Don’t be fooled by appearances, sweet potato man is the highest rated Korean place in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara on Yelp. He has an old metal stove that he sticks sweet potatoes into, and when you deferentially approach the master and beseech him for an order of sweet potatoes, he deftly grabs several burning hot sweet potatoes from the oven and tosses them into a paper sack. So simple.
YET SO GOOD. Pure, unadulterated sweet potato deliciousness. It was pretty much the perfect thing for the rainy weather, warming my hands, then my mouth and face, then the rest of my body. They were so good that I actually completely burned the roof of my mouth off because I shoved a huge chunk of burning hot sweet potato into my mouth and stubbornly refused to spit it out when it began burning - totally worth it. The sign at the stall said $2 for 3 potatoes, but the awesome sweet potato man actually gave me 4 potatoes. Delicious sweet potatoes, good deals, rain; all was right with the world.
I yam what I yam.
I then wandered into Paris Baguette (which is actually a chain of Korean bakeries), just because I love Asian bakeries.
Exhibit A for why Asian bakeries are kind of amazing:
THE SAUSAGE INFERNO.
While I was understandably intrigued by the EXTREME party-in-the-mouth that the name promised, I wasn’t feeling quite ready to take on a sausage inferno, so I just ate a bunch of samples and then ended up leaving with a korokke, a Japanese potato and vegetable croquette.
It wasn’t much of a looker, but it was one of the better korokkes I’ve had in a while - warm, crispy on the outside, and soft and comforting on the inside. A lot of times they’re soggy on the outside, which is just really sad. Aw.
ADDRESSES
Garden Fresh
460 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 462-9298
Shiok! A Taste of Singapore
1137 Chestnut Street, Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 838-9448
Sweet Potato Man
3531 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95051
Paris Baguette
3561 El Camino Road #75, Santa Clara, CA 95051
(408) 260-0404
