The Best - Other Great Choices - For Bostonians in Silicon Valley - For Silicon Valley People Visiting Boston
Amidst the sterile corporate concepts, there are some restaurants of great quality and personality in the Silicon Valley area. We'll point you to some of our favorites. We'll also share some comments for other east coast transplants on what you won't find out here (and what comes closest), as well as pointing Silicon Valley folks to some of our long-time favorites back in the Boston area. Our main eating area ranges from Palo Alto through downtown San Jose, so points east and south will be underrepresented here.
Manresa, 320 Village Lane, Los Gatos. This is Silicon Valley's destination restaurant for California cuisine - the one that gets people to drive an hour from San Francisco to try it out. The food is stellar with the distinctive culinary personality so often lacking in technically accomplished but cookie-cutter styled cuisine. Both the service and the wine list have greatly improved from a few years ago, making this our first choice for special occasions. Telephone: (408) 354-4330.
The Village Pub, 2967 Woodside Road, Woodside. For more traditional California/French food, the Village Pub provides an excellent combination of cuisine, service, wine list, and atmosphere. The menu changes regularly, but every dish we have had in our meals there - including the sweetbreads appetizer, the venison, the salmon poached in olive oil, and real honest-to-goodness dry-aged steak - has been superb. The wine list has great choices, with fine sommelier service. The nicely wooded decor and friendly, accurate service are additional benefits. Telephone: (650) 851-9888.
Dishdash, 190 S. Murphy Ave., Sunnyvale. A fabulous Lebanese restaurant, with more upscale decor and service than other restaurants of its type. There are so many great dishes here that are hard to find elsewhere, including outstanding lamb shanks in several preparations. The mansaf dish - lamb and rice with an aged yogurt sauce - is our special favorite. The wine list has many interesting choices, with Zinfandel working especially well with many of the dishes. Telephone: (408) 774-1889.
Amber India, 2290 W. El Camino Real, Mountain View and 377 Santana Row, San Jose. The more traditional items are done well, but it is the harder-to-find dishes that are the special treat. There's nice decor and a better than average wine list. The new Santana Row branch is even fancier in decor, wine, and food, with some Cal/Indian menu additions. The menus share a core set of dishes in common, but there are many dishes found only at one branch. Telephone: (650) 968-7511 for Mountain View, (408) 248-5400 for San Jose.
Zitune, 325 Main St., Los Altos. The long restaurant drought in downtown Los Altos is over at last with this stellar Cal/Moroccan. The Moroccan chef has previously worked at Gary Danko, and the influence is clear in the delicious, complex, beautifully presented cooking. Flavors are vivid without being overbearing, and the small wine list is very well-chosen, with fabulous offerings by the glass. Telephone: (650) 947-0247.
Some other favorites, often more moderately priced, include:
Get over the fact that that most pizza here is mediocre. It usually comes with a thick puffy crust, not the thin crust gems in either Boston or New York style. The best bets in the area are Pizza Antica in Santana Row for Italian style pizza, and Giovanni's, A Slice of New York and Pizza My Heart for more east coast styles. (Michael's originally from Detroit, so don't get him started on the absence of Detroit-style square deep-dish pizza in the area. At least Alan Richman understands. Anybody want to open a Buddy's or Cloverleaf franchise here?)
You usually can't get bluefish here at all, and the lobster and scallops are nearly always more expensive and lower quality than what you find in Boston. So instead enjoy Pacific salmon in its summer season (the local catch, alas, has been closed since 2008), or the Dungeness crab in winter, or the great petrale sole, squid, and sardines.
Overall the food here is so much better than in New England that it's a shame to quibble too much about what's missing. It's amazing what you can do with really long growing seasons. There's probably not a better place to cook in the country than the Bay area, so don't spend much time worrying about what's not here - enjoy the bounty of this place instead.
The obvious choice is fish and seafood restaurants. Lobster is great in Boston, and the local clams are among the best in the world, either steamed or fried. The local mussels and scallops are excellent as well. Bluefish is a very tasty fish that you'll rarely see in California. It's one of the least expensive items on most menus but also the best. It's oily and can be strong tasting, so if you're not a big fish fan, stick to the shellfish or the scrod.
Legal Sea Foods is one of the most famous places in town and still among the best, especially for simple preparations. Our most recent visit to the Cambridge branch in June 2009 was as top-notch as always.
Another outstanding place for seafood, more personal and much smaller than Legal, is Neptune Oyster in the North End. Our most recent visit in June 2009 featured a magnificent selection of fresh local oysters from around New England, a great lobster roll, and other delights.
For more complex fish preparations, the East Coast Grill in Inman Square, Cambridge is the place to go. It may seem somewhat "California-style", but Chris Schlesinger's place has a very distinct culinary personality. If you've gotten any of his cookbooks like The Thrill of the Grill, you'll know what we mean. Since their expansion a few years back, fish and seafood has become the main menu focus. Our June 2004 visit found us feasting on heavenly cumin-crusted bluefish with chorizo, clams, and potatoes; a spicy fish and vegetable chowder; and a killer grilled banana split. There are plenty of choices in case you don't like fish, including their barbecue and killer spit-roasted chickens, and other equatorial cuisine.
The East Coast Grill was perhaps the first in a series of Boston-area restaurants that feature boldly spiced food that is still ingredient-driven. It is a sensibility that is unfortunately all too rare in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it's a cuisine choice well worth seeking out. One of the new stars of this style is Rendezvous in Central Square, Cambridge. MIT alumni will recall this as the former site of the Central Square Burger King. Once you get over the culinary vertigo, the food is a real treat. Our last visit was in June 2009 - when we stay near MIT without a car, it is a lot easier to get to than the East Coast Grill.
The barbecue at East Coast Grill is good, but the incredible Redbones in Davis Square, Somerville is where we get our Boston barbecue fix. They specialize in Texas style barbecue with brisket and beef ribs, and it's better than lots of places in Texas. (Our favorites for Texas barbecue include Black's, the Salt Lick, Angelo's, Sonny Bryan's, and Goode Company.) There's good pork barbecue too, great side dishes like the jalapeno-spiked corn pudding, and a killer pecan pie. Michael's last visit in December 2006 found it as fine as ever.
To top it off, Redbones has 24 microbrews on tap, constantly changing and always interestingly chosen. Usually there are many beers in a similar theme, be it a Stout festival in winter, or geographic overviews of microbrews from Vermont to Washington. There are usually lots of beers here that you'll never find in California. Redbones is also easy to get to as it's just a couple of blocks from the Davis stop on the MBTA Red Line. No reservations can mean long waits, especially on weekends, but there's plenty of bar space.
Copyright © 2009 by Michael Good and JoAnn Close.
Last updated November 2, 2009.