Few sandwiches have as much to live up to as the pastrami Reuben, considering it’s a staple of such legendary spots as New York City’s Katz and Carnegie delis and Greenblatt’s in Los Angeles. Happily, in the Bay Area, the sandwiches at Refuge Pastrami, with locations in San Carlos and Menlo Park, can stand up to such pedigreed pastrami Reubens.
Restaurants News - page 47
It’s fitting that Hult’s tasting menu choices are named for elements such as “water” or “air”—it reflects the farm-to-table sourcing and culinary approach of Michelin-starred executive chef Michael Ellis.
The popular San Francisco-based ice cream company Smitten opened its newest spot inside the Los Altos Whole Foods market in late December. The new spot, like its sister location in SF’s Hayes Valley, dishes out ice cream that’s custom-frozen for each customer using a blast of liquid nitrogen.
Goldilocks would be pleased by Sunnyvale’s Satkar. The restaurant may be tiny, but the size of its menu, not to mention the balance of spices in their homestyle North Indian cuisine, is just right. The flavors are strong, and prepared spicy or mild at the customer’s request, yet on my recent visit, I never found any of the food to be overpowering.
Avocados aren’t exactly typical in Indian cuisine—who’s ever heard of avocado vindaloo?—but California’s bounty of the rich, creamy fruit did inspire a dish at Rasam’s. The new upscale Indian restaurant in downtown Sunnyvale focuses on traditional Indian cooking techniques but uses many local ingredients.
Garlic bread and pizzas wouldn’t usually be the first things that spring to mind as Asian fusion dishes, but on the menu at the new downtown San Jose eatery Nomikai they keep company with other dishes that fall a bit more obviously into the genre, like sweet chili chicken wings, octopus dumplings or kimchi fries.
It’s a new eatery, but Iroriya draws on a traditional Japanese technique that goes back to meals cooked hearthside, over open fires. The restaurant specializes in Robatayaki, a style in which the food (mostly fish and veggies) is grilled over charcoal—and sometimes hay—on skewers.
The Mmoon also rises. The family-run empanaderia, which had operated a downtown San Jose restaurant since 2010, decided to close the downtown eatery this summer and consolidate, focusing their energy on their Los Gatos location.
Along El Camino Real, from Santa Clara to Sunnyvale in particular, has become one of the South Bay’s best bets for ethnically diverse dining choices and it now has another option to add to the list: Thali, a Gujarati-style restaurant that opened a few months ago. Many dishes are sweet, salty and spicy at the same time. Salt, sugar, lemon, lime and tomato are used generously in Gujarati food.
Randy Musterer fully embraces the idea of “American” sushi and makes a point to be as innovative and non-traditional as possible. Before opening Sushi Confidential in downtown Campbell in April 2012, he held sushi making parties for friends, worked part time as a sushi chef (while working full time in the bio-tech industry) and started a sushi catering company in 2006. But the idea for Sushi Confidential was to push the boundaries as much as possible.
