Opening a sports bar in north San Jose near Brokaw Road and 880 seemed like a good idea to Steve Driggs because there really wasn’t much like it in the area. Indeed, after only two months, sports fans in the area have already claimed Driggsy’s as their neighborhood hangout. The bar occupies the former Carlos Goldstein’s Mexican restaurant, but Driggs and his wife changed the layout a bit by knocking out the interior walls. Now it’s a wide-open space with several tables, a bar, a couple dart boards and about eight different TVs broadcasting sports.
Articles by Aaron Carnes
Not a lot of dishes have an organization dedicated to preserving their historical authenticity. Pizza does, or at least Neapolitan pizza—the original modern version of pizza that came out of Naples, Italy, in the 1800s. The organization, Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, hands out certifications to restaurants all over the world that meet their very specific guidelines as to what constitutes a genuine Neapolitan pizza. Here in the Bay Area, only a handful of restaurants are so certified. One of them, Terrone Pizzeria, a casual upscale joint, was opened a few weeks ago in Palo Alto by three friends, all of whom were born in Southern Italy.
There are a lot of sit-down, $20-a-head Korean restaurants in the valley, but not so many places on the quick, inexpensive end of the spectrum. The owners of K Zzang decided to take this less-traveled casual route, though their motivation was largely due to the restaurant’s location: downtown San Jose.
Mexico has tacos. England has fish and chips. In the Philippines, the equivalent is is tapsilog, a very simple, common dish of garlic rice, eggs and tapa (cured beef). Although considered a breakfast meal, it is also eaten for lunch and dinner, and as a popular late-night snack—pretty much any time of the day someone is hungry.
Kyusu co-owner Monaye Win only lived in Burma until the age of 10. After that, his family moved to Japan, where he grew up, and then relocated to the United States, where they’ve lived now for 12 years. He is, however, quite familiar with Burmese cuisine thanks to his mother’s cooking.
Entering Pauly’s Famous Franks N Fries at its Curtner Avenue location, which opened late last year, gave me the feeling that I was looking at a blueprint for a new hot dog fast-food chain.
In 2011 Jeffrey Nguyen joined the fusion-friendly world of food trucks and opened Le Bon de Cuisine in San Jose, which took elements of Vietnamese and French food to make some delicious, unique street food.
Greek food is, in some ways, the opposite of Indian food. Instead of blending a lot of spices together and creating complex flavors, the trick is to use just a few to achieve a simple, pleasing taste. Maria Vlahopouliotis, the owner of Souvlaki Greek Skewers in San Jose, understands this not just from growing up in a Greek household but also from spending over a decade, until 2011, living in Greece, where she saw firsthand how the food is prepared.
Hidden in plain sight is the somewhat generic-sounding Asian Bistro in Campbell, a source for both Vietnamese and Chinese food. It’s located in an area not surrounded by other Asian restaurants, and from the outside, the building is unremarkable, so I was pleasantly surprised at how well Asian Bistro delivered on both cuisines.
Amor Cafe and Tea, the latest coffee/tea house in downtown San Jose, is able to offer in-house baked goods because it also owns a commercial kitchen in town, which it uses to make goods to sell at flea markets on weekends.
