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E&O Trading Co.

Over the course of three visits to the San Jose, E&O veers from OK to really good

by Stett Holbrook on Jan 29, 2010
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I HAVE avoided eating at San Jose’s E&O Trading Co. for years. I figured that its take on Southeast Asian food would do for Southeast Asian cuisine what some chains have done to Chinese food: sweetened it up, salted it up and dumbed it down to serve the masses. Why eat watered-down Southeast Asian food when Silicon Valley offers plenty of restaurants that serve the real thing for much less?

Several months ago, I read that Arnold Eric Wong had been hired to revamp the menu at the San Jose restaurant and other locations in San Francisco and Larkspur. Wong first came to fame as the chef at San Francisco’s Eos, then a standout for East-meets-West cuisine. He went on to become chef and co-owner of Bakar, an upscale French bistro also in San Francisco. I was still skeptical, but Wong has real talent and I figured that E&O would be worth a try.

On my first visit, I was pleasantly surprised. My pork banh mi sandwich ($10) was flat-out delicious, even if the spicy mayonnaise was applied a little too thickly. While it costs about five times more than it does at the typical mom-and-pop strip-mall banh mi joint with which Silicon Valley is so very blessed, it earned its keep with the inclusion of Niman Ranch pork, tangy pickles and a loaf of crusty but soft bread that beats out many of the baguettes served at lower-market places. Usually when I eat a banh mi sandwich, I try not to think about the factory-farmed meat between the bread slices, but that’s not a problem here. E&O gets points for including humanely raised meat and locally sourced, sustainably farmed produce on some dishes.

Green-papaya salads are standard fare at Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, but E&O’s Burmese ginger salad ($10) more than held its own. It’s made with crunchy green papaya, toasted coconut and Napa cabbage and tossed with a zingy lemon vinaigrette. I loved the supercrunchy peanuts sprinkled on top.

I have nothing but praise for the Hakka eggplant ($5), an easy-to-miss side dish of meaty, braised eggplant that stops just short of being too oily.

For dessert, the pineapple spice cake was dry as dust ($7), but then I’ve never had a good Southeast Asian dessert, so I wasn’t expecting much.

I love being proved wrong about restaurants, and it appeared that would be the case with E&O—or at least it seemed so until I came back for a second visit, and my enthusiasm for the restaurant wilted under plates of oversauced, oversweetened and underwhelming food. Let’s start with the starters. The roti paratha ($5), buttery, flaky fried bread that’s a standard in Malaysian restaurants, was dry and mealy here. The wok-tossed green beans and garlic ($5) lacked the juiciness and blistered skin that the high heat of a wok usually imparts. The chicken dumplings ($10) were leaden and dense. Duck imperial rolls ($12)? Greasy.

Entrees were slightly better. Shaking beef ($23), consisting of cubes of beef fillet tossed with garlic, onions and greens, is a dish that has become an upscale Vietnamese cliché since San Francisco’s Slanted Door restaurant made it popular 15 years ago. At E&O, the beef was tender and all that, but the pool of salty and cloyingly sweet sauce in which it swam soon became too much.

Firecracker chicken ($14) brought bites of chicken, asparagus (in January?), cashews, mushrooms and chiles. In spite of its name and the addition of whole dried red chiles, the dish hardly registered on my spice meter. I liked the red curry in shrimp noodles ($17), but the dried noodles, shrimp, carrots and shiitake mushrooms failed to combine to create a unified dish.

I avoided the shiso pepper–grilled salmon ($19), since the fish is farmed instead of wild. Why tout humanely raised meats and sustainable produce on the menu and then serve farmed salmon, a veritable poster child for environmentally disastrous food? The desserts on my second visit were an acceptable version of crème brûlée (yawn) and an exceedingly dense and rubbery coconut tapioca (both $7).

I wasn’t sure what to make of E&O. First visit good. Second visit, not so good. So I came back for a third visit. I’m glad I did. I found a couple of other winners on the menu that tipped the scales of gastronomic justice back in E&O’s favor.

I loved the Indonesian corn fritters ($8). A greaseless, barely there batter held whole corn kernels together in thick, crunchy cakes served with a delicious chile-soy dipping sauce. The chicken satay ($8) with peanut dipping sauce was served hot and juicy right off the grill. And I liked the Korean-esque barbecued beef ($11)—well-crusted sliced beef served with rather tame kimchi, excellent picked cucumber salad and watercress. My house-made guava soda ($3) made me happy, too. It was not too sweet but had loads of guava flavor.

I skipped dessert the third time. I know enough to quit when I’m ahead.

As for chef Wong’s reworking of the menu, turns out it never happened. He changed the menu at the restaurants in San Francisco and Larkspur but not in San Jose. Oh, well. San Jose gets snubbed again. But provided you order wisely, E&O still has enough to recommend it.

E&O Trading Co.
Address: 96 S. First St., San Jose.
Phone: 408.938.4100.
Hours: 11:30am–10pm Mon–Thu, 11:30am–10:30pm Fri, 5–10:30pm Sat and 5–9pm Sun.
Cuisine: Pan-Asian.
Price Range: Entrees $12–$24.
Web: www.sanjose.com/eo-trading



by Stett Holbrook on Jan 29, 2010
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