To first-timers, Sweet Shop, a gingerbread-house-like building with brown shingles, looks a little out of place. What’s a store doing in the middle of an upscale residential neighborhood in Los Altos? It’s the only retail space around. But for more than 40 years, the location has held a sweet spot for the community.
Articles by Stett Holbrook
Silicon Valley’s mom-and-pop Chinese, Japanese, Ethiopian, Korean, Indian, Mexican and Vietnamese restaurants that populate the strip malls and shopping centers of Silicon Valley are what we do best.
Opening a restaurant is a risky proposition in the best of times. Statistics vary, but a study conducted by the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly in 2005 found that more than a quarter of all new restaurants closed or changed hands in the first year. In year two, the figure jumped to 60 percent. So you might think that opening a restaurant during a recession would be suicidal. Stett Holbrook profiles four new restaurants bucking the conventional wisdom.
Dean Devincenzi, one half of Double D’s in Los Gatos, is opening a high-end Mexican restaurant with partner Ron Garald in the landmark building formerly occupied by Trevese. .
The Oaxacan Kitchen was once a restaurant. Now it’s a food truck and part of Silicon Valley’s mobile restaurant elite.
I’ve heard about Chez Sovan for years as one of San Jose’s best hole-in-the-wall eateries, and now I get what all the fuss is about. It’s a friendly neighborhood restaurant with a devoted following and a solid menu of satisfying food. That’s a recipe for success.
When it comes to cool, grassroots food events, San Jose takes a back seat to San Francisco and the East Bay. Why that’s the case is a subject for another column, but for now let’s say it just is. But San Jose is about to get a whole lot cooler next month with SJ Eats, a food-truck rally on April 2 that will draw as many as 20 food trucks from Silicon Valley and beyond. If all goes well, the event could be the dawn of a regular food-truck market.
A new report released by the United Nations blows another hole in the myth that only large-scale agriculture can meet the world’s food demands. So what does this mean for you?
Chaat is fairly common in Silicon Valley. Maharashtrian food (food from the south central Indian state of Maharashtra) is far less known. India Chaat Cuisine does well.
Housed in a rustic, shabby chic building that was once a fire station and more recently John Bentley’s restaurant, Station 1 exudes a warm charm with its fireplace ablaze and wooden tables and wall. The food can be described as new American, but there’s a Japanese undercurrent that runs throughout the food, with delicate, well-composed plates that often appear broken down into their constituent parts.
