State Route 82

<Picking this up again a year later like nothing happened>

I finally made it to Orenchi Ramen. The rumors of notoriously long lines have been holding me back since I found out about this place, but I had a Thursday off work and no hungry kids around so waiting a while for lunch did not worry me. Strategically, but apparently not strategically enough, I arrived exactly when they open at 11:30 but still had to stand around a good 25 minutes before I was seated.

So is this mind-blowing ramen? Well, kind of. It’s undoubtedly good -- probably the best around these parts -- but maybe not THAT much better than the runners-up with shorter lines. I went for their traditional house ramen, which is served in a tonkotsu pork broth. The noodles and soup are great, but the absolute highlight are the perfectly cooked eggs. On the downside they are a bit stingy with the roasted pork (I recommend ordering some extra).

When the stars line up next time I will definitely come back to try the tsukemen which they only make a limited batch of every day.

Last weekend featured the first ever Sunnyvale Eichler home tour. As a fellow Eichler enthusiast, My reactions from checking out the four houses on the tour ranged from “Man, I need to make more money” to “Ehh... that’s not the tile I would have picked”. The highlights in my book were the completely redone 1973 house on Lorne Way, and a very cool atrium on Sage Court. These houses are great and it’s nice to be able to see more of what people are doing with them.

Every time I go to Jane’s Beer Store in Mountain View I always end up thinking that I need to go there more often. These are of course good times for being a beer drinker in general. You can find good stuff pretty much anywhere. Going to the nearest BevMo will keep you well stocked with not much effort, and just grabbing some beer at Trader Joe’s while grocery shopping doesn’t actually mean you have to be ashamed of what you come home with. Even the crappy liquor store closest to my house has a small, but effective, section of microbrews.

But Jane’s takes it to another level. Behind the shady looking exterior -- the covered windows makes it look like a porn store, but I assume the point is to keep the sunlight away from the bottles -- there are hundreds of beers. From a deep selection of American microbrews to more advanced choices, like imported danish hipster selections from breweries like Mikkeller and Evil Twin. For those times when you’re ready to cough up $12 for a single bottle of some kind of imperial stout.

The bearded metalhead behind the counter is always friendly. Even when I keep asking for recommendations for lagers rather than the latest super-hoppy IPAs he’s eager to point me in the right direction. I easily walk out with six beers that I’ve never tried before every time I go to the store, which is perfect.

And they always have some serious headbanging tunes blasting on the store’s speaker system (I’m sure the kids don’t call it death metal nowadays, but you know what I mean). Awesome and scientifically proven to be good for the beer.

/ Per

So I guess we’re at a point now where pho places name themselves in a way similar to plumbers used to do to guarantee showing up first in the phone book. Let me recommend “AAA Pho” or “Pro Pho” for the next time you’re opening a restaurant.

Pho #1 is newly opened right next to Bon Chon Chicken (clever plot to suck in the people sick of waiting in line for fried Korean chicken, I’m sure). There used to be a soul food place in this exact spot, which sported the strange sign “We still serve pizza!”. I never got a chance to try it. Probably for the best, but who knows.

I went for the classic beef broth pho with rare beef, brisket and meat balls. There’s not a whole lot to say about the execution -- it’s served in the exact same way as every other pho place. The magic is really in the broth though and comparing to the closest competition I’d say Pho Wagon is better, thanks to a beefier tasting soup, but when going up against Pho Nam up the street it’s a tight race for who’s tastier. The menu has some interesting looking options, so it seems worth coming back to try more things. More pho choices close to home is never a bad thing.

/ Per

Not surprisingly, getting hold of really good barbecue around here is tough. I’ve been scanning everything online to try to see if there’s anything I’ve missed, but all BBQ places around here basically get two reviews:

- Review 1 (by the clueless Silicon Valley native) -- “Great place! The barbecue sauce is yummy.”

 - Review 2 (by the bitter southern expat)  -- “I’ve lived in South Carolina, West Texas and in Kansas City all my life before I moved to San Jose. There I ate barbecue every day. What this place serves truly is garbage.”

I don’t particularly trust either one.

You do run into restaurants that throw around the word “BBQ” quite often, but a lot of times they basically just do burgers and diner type stuff, so being a bit skeptic is a good strategy. The best I’ve found so far is Sam Bar-B-Q on Bascom in San Jose / Cambrian, who do good ribs and pulled pork, and have a cool model train running around the main room. And the Armadillo Willy’s franchises that can be found all over the place are not entirely horrible, but not exactly exciting either. But so far I think the best ribs in the south bay are actually from the Weber in my backyard, using the recipe from amazingribs.com.

Welll, maybe not perfect, but this is arguably the best sandwich in Sunnyvale, at least when you’re in the mood for banh mi. Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall Cam Hung Sandwich & Coffee is hidden between a nail salon and a liquor store off Wolfe Road -- the perfect location for a place like this, of course.

The dirt cheap ($3.50!) sandwiches are in the typical banh mi fold. The bread is fluffy / crunchy and comes loaded with the obligatory pickled daikon and carrots, cucumber, cilantro and a few slices of the important fresh jalapeno. When it comes to fillings I’ve gone through the grilled pork, the sweet pork and the shredded chicken so far, and they are all good choices depending what you’re in the mood for. There’s a row of pate cans lined up on the counter, but I still need to figure out which sandwiches they are used for.

Besides the bahn mi, they have a wide variety of other vietnamese stuff to explore, from coffee and spring rolls to sodas and weird shrimp flavored chips.

/ Per

Cupertino’s OG Sliders goes all out when it comes to hitting the “modern american locally sourced comfort food” marks. Artisinal burgers -- check, serious selection local craft beer -- check, truffle fries -- check, fancy shakes made with reasonably locally sourced chocolate -- check, indie bands doing post-ironic covers of pop songs on the sound system -- check, sriracha aioli -- check. Actually, I’m not sure they have sriracha aioli, but it seems like a good guess.

(Side note: OG Sliders has nothing on Campbell’s pretty new Orchard City Kitchen when it comes to this stuff though. That place should just put up a wax figure of Sean Brock by the entrance).

And while I enjoy making fun of this whole thing, there’s nothing I’d rather have around here than some restaurants that would feel equally at home in The Mission or in downtown LA somewhere. OG Sliders absolutely fills a void and they do a good job.

Thumbs up for the pulled pork sliders, which are more inspired by char siu than southern BBQ. I also dig the wild boar variant, and trustworthy reports claim that the portobello works well too. The aforementioned truffle fries are great. Plus I always like a restaurant that the kids are excited to go to that also has some real good beer yours truly can enjoy. The “OG” doesn’t have anything to do with Ice-T, but ice tea is served as well.

Location-wise, they’re in what clearly must have been a crappy english pub six months ago (it actually works well for what they are trying to do), in that always-dying mall across the street from De Anza college.

/ Per

The ABC7 headline says it all: WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE WILL ALLOW SLEEPOVERS, BOOZE.

“Americanized” is the worst thing you could ever call a restaurant slinging any kind of asian food. But sometimes you really need some level of americanization -- like when your vegetarian-for-life wife needs to eat and it has to be guaranteed free from dried shrimp or fish sauce.

I wouldn’t call Pho Wagon americanized on the level of Mongolian Beef or General Tso’s Chicken or anything, but for a San Jose area vietnamese place it certainly is friendly towards us clueless white people. No chance of accidentally ordering extra blood sausage with your pho here.

The food is good though. I generally go for bun with grilled pork and shrimp, and the wife opts for vegetarian pho. The Sunnyvale and Willow Glen locations are more or less interchangeable, and both are pretty pleasant (to quote a review on Yelp: “It actually looks like a restaurant”).

/ Per

There are many reasons to dislike Whole Foods, definitely too many to cover here. But if you for some reason end up at the Whole Foods Cupertino location, a good move is to cross the street and go grab a sandwich at Ike’s Lair.

Ike’s is a small chain of sandwich shops scattered across California, usually next door to a college campus -- in this case De Anza. I could totally see some college kids staying alive by eating a giant sandwich here every day.

The menu is huge, with a clear Californian twist. Lots of chicken, avocado and vegan options (apparently the best vegan meatballs in the world, according to PETA). Personally, I’m a fan of the “Foxy Boxy” with sliced ribeye and horseradish, but there’s enough variations that you could try something new every time and don’t really need to play favorites.

Their signature dutch crunch roll is ingenious, with a crust that is crunchy but still perfectly avoids any risk of roof-of-mouth shredding. The “dirty sauce” they put on everything can have a tendency to overwhelm the rest of the sandwich filling though, so consider going easy on that.

Does Ike’s have the perfect sandwich? Not really. But it’s for sure better than anything you can get a Whole Foods.

/ Per

Korean fried chicken chain Bon Chon Chicken’s second California location is hidden in the corner of a Sunnyvale strip mall. The Korean trick is apparently to “double fry” the chicken which gives it an impressively crunchy crust, and leaves it one step tastier than the typical american style wings and with a big fan base.

The options on the Bon Chon menu are wings, drumsticks or white meat strips, dipped in either a soy garlic sauce or a spicy sauce based on dried peppers. The best choice is to go with wings with the spicy sauce -- just soy garlic is a little wimpy. And the pickled daikon that comes with it works perfectly to keep the heat in check if needed.

So the chicken is great, but the sides are less exciting. Kim-chi cole slaw sounds pretty cool, but it doesn’t really work. I prefer to keep things simple with some biscuits instead.

The place itself has got that fine “this spot should really house an H&R Block office, but we decided to open a restaurant instead” Silicon Valley feel, and it’s always packed, so I usually opt for take out and spend the time waiting for the double frying to complete browsing the comic book store next door (good selection of vintage stuff, weak on the TPBs).

/ Per

Some friends introduced us to Dohatsuten by calling it “the ramen place over by the Costco”. It’s true that the location is pretty close to the Mountain View Costco, but fortunately it’s a whole lot better restaurant than a description of that caliber would make you think.

The highlight at Dohatsuten is their signature ramen -- what I’ve dubbed the “triple pork attack”. Besides the more typical egg, veggies and (maybe less typical) dried chili peppers, it’s loaded with pork belly, stewed pork, and spicy garlic ground pork. More pork than a Swedish christmas dinner! Come to think of it, go for the tonkotsu broth too and you get yourself a quadruple pork attack. That should do it.

So it’s another pretty unusual take on ramen, and highly recommended to check out. Donhatsuten also has a bunch of other good stuff on the menu. Especially the fried rice dishes served in cast iron skillets look great, but I have not had a chance to try them yet.

/ Per

The best pizza we’ve found in Sunnyvale is at A Slice of New York. Experience has made me suspicious whenever I see the words “New York” in the name of a pizza place in California, but this is actually the real deal. Their crisp thin-crust Neapolitan style pies have a lot of fans and it’s well deserved. It’s not Pizzeria Delfina or Mozza fancy or anything, but it’s good and solidly in the New York tradition.

I tend to stick with the basics and add one or two classic toppings at the most -- pepperoni, sausage or just plain cheese all do the trick. There are no anchovies on the menu, but I assume they could hook that up if asked.

However, the best thing you can eat at A Slice of New York is not the pizza but the cannoli. They have it shipped in from Wyandanch, Long Island (I suspect it’s from The Cannoli Factory), and assemble in house. The shells are super crisp, and filled with a sweet traditional ricotta based filling laced with chocolate chips. I would almost say I’d be ok with worse pizza as long as I could get the cannoli for dessert, but luckily I don’t have to make that bargain.

And check out the FAQ on the ASoNY website for the founder's take on the philosophy of the place, and make sure you read it with a pretend NY accent.

/ Per

Few people know that Downtown Sunnyvale’s Murphy Avenue actually has the highest density of Irish pubs in the western world outside of Dublin. You really have to wonder how that happened. At some point some genius must have looked down the street, thought “Of course there’s room for a third Irish pub on this block”, and gone for it. Anyway. There are some good spots on Murphy too. I’m a fan of the kids book / toy store Bookasausus (excellent Lego selection) and Leigh’s Favorite Books next door. For food Ramen Seas is the place to check out.

Ramen Seas’ specialty is, not surprisingly, seafood ramen. The main bowls are a seafood / pork broth served with either just clams or a combo of shrimp, clams and scallops. They also offer miso and tonkotsu broth, and at the moment I must confess I prefer their spicy tonkotsu over the rest, because I don’t eat ramen every day and it’s hard to resist a chance for tonkotsu when it’s right in front of you there on the menu.

It’s not the South Bay’s best ramen or anything, but it’s definitely good, and the seafood twist makes things interesting even if you’re a ramen perfectionist. The place itself is nice and dark too, in the typical izakaya style. 

Like all ramen spots it tends to be packed at lunch time, but a bit lighter at night when the tech workers at the nearby offices have gone home. They’re also about to start keeping open on Sundays which will be good when you’re hungover from last night’s Irish pub crawl.

/ Per