Month: September 2013

Decided to seek out and try some new brunch places and found Pastis in Palo Alto. Located on California Street, not far from La Bodeguita Del Medio, a restaurant we had been to before. Pastis bills itself as an authentic French bistro serving brunch and light lunch fare.

A good sign of Pastis’ French authenticity was the wait staff all communicated in French. In fact, several Yelp reviewers stated that French ex-pats frequent Pastis. Further research on Yelp revealed the pain perdu (aka French toast) was popular and a signature dish.  We decided to also order the open faced croissant sandwich and the French  onion soup.

Open face croissant with ham, cheese, 2 sunny side up eggs

French Onion Soup

Pain Perdu with Chocolate Hazelnut spread and bananas

The pain perdu had the proper custard texture/feel and ranked above the run of the mill “French toast” you get at greasy spoons and diners. A minor complaint was I felt there should have been more banana in the dish, but this is more of a personal preference than anything else. The eggs on the croissant were properly sunny side up and worked well was an open faced sandwich. Surprisingly, what I liked the best was the French onion soup.  More often than not, American interpretations of French onion soup are salt bombs topped with globs of rubbery cheese. Pastis’ French onion soup had the proper amount of salt, nice beefy broth, and just enough melted cheese on top.

Menu prices are typical for a restaurant with a Palo Alto address (although not as high as Parisien cafe pricing). In exchange you get food that is well prepared with fresh high quality ingredients and an authentic French touch.  After Sunday brunch, you can walk out onto California for the farmer’s market, or on other days explore California Avenue.  Pastis certainly delivers on the French experience and is a good brunch spot.

Theresa and I decided to hit the Livermore Outlets one afternoon and arranged to meet our friend Kulwinder for dinner.  After throwing around a few suggestions, we settled on Sauced, which is located in the main downtown area.

The restaurant was packed on a Saturday night, with over an hour wait for a table. The restaurant is split roughly in half, with half being traditional tables, and the other half being the bar with a bunch of counter height table and stools.  There are several TVs set up along the walls, so you can catch your favorite games while downing a beer and some appetizers. Several tables ordered the pulled pork nachos, which looked tasty and was huge. The place definitely has a Southern feel to it. They even serve you water in large Mason jars.

Seating in this area is open, so you can grab a table as soon as people leave.  We were pretty hungry when we arrived, so we hovered a bit near some folks in the bar area and pounced on their table as soon as they left.

The menu consists of several forms of BBQ meats, your usual BBQ sides, and appetizers.  Their signature meat is “burnt ends”, which from what I gather are the fattier ends of the briskets that crisp up during the cooking and are then chopped up and mixed with sauce. Quantities are limited, and by the time we ordered, they were out. Evidently it sells out quickly on weekends.  We decided to share the two meat combo platter and a full rack of ribs amongst the three of us.  The two meats we chose was the pulled pork and the brisket. Sides were mac n cheese, cornbread, and fries.

All the meats had a nice smokiness to them, with most of the fat rendered out, but not overly dry, indicating a low and slow cooking BBQ method. The pulled pork was Carolina style, with a sweet and slightly sour sauce mixed in it.  The brisket came “dry” (i.e. no sauce), but none was really needed unless you wanted to punch up the flavor a bit more with one of their homemade BBQ sauces (see below).   The rib meat fell right off the bone and was glazed with a bit of the Tin Roof sauce. The sides complemented the meats well, but nothing really stood out as outstanding. The cornbread had a honey glaze on top, which was a bit different than other cornbreads I have had.  Portions were generous, and I would recommend sharing the platters among your party.

On the table were 4 different homemade sauces: Pig Candy, Tin Roof, Hot Tin Roof, and Georgia Gold.
The Pig Candy was fairly sweet sauce, while the Georgia Gold was very vinegary.  The Tin Roof would be the middle of the road in terms of sweetness and acidity. It is also what the ribs were finished with. The Hot Tin Roof had a kick to it, but was a fast burn, meaning it did not linger with you like a Thai pepper would.

Overall I would recommend Sauced if you are ever in the Livermore/East Bay area. While the BBQ at Smoking Pig is better, Sauced’s BBQ is very good.  Coupled the food with the atmosphere, especially in the bar area where we were seated, it all adds up to an enjoyable experience.  This would be a perfect place for happy hour, watch a game, or just chow down on some BBQ while downing a few beers.

 

Been meaning to try The Melt after hearing the hype in the media a couple of years back.  The Melt, a chain of restaurants based on grilled cheese sandwiches was started up and financed by the founder of Flip Video, Jonathan Kaplan.  I guess after making a fortune in selling Flip video cameras and then selling the entire company to Cisco, Kaplan turned his attention to the problem of making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich in a fast food environment.  He came up with a high tech solution.

He sunk some money into engineering a machine to take the guess work out of making a grilled cheese sandwich. Instead of relying on the traditional method of flipping it on a hot griddle, workers just place the assembled sandwich in to what amounts to a fancy panini press and close the lid. At the appointed time, it pops open, letting the workers know it’s done.

Other techie touches includes an order board, where you can see the status of your order with expected wait times and the ability to send in your order online.

You can order the standard grilled cheese on white with cheddar, but there are other cheese choices. You can also add turkey, short ribs, and ham into your sandwich for a small charge.  There are also 4 soups to choose from, including the traditional tomato soup.

I ordered the “classic” grilled cheese on white and a cup of tomato soup, while Theresa got the S’hroom sandwich and added short rib.

“The Classic”

“S’Hroom” with added short rib

“Two Tomato Basil” soup

I found the classic to be not really remarkable and the tomato soup very average.  Theresa’s sandwich was better, with the sourdough, swiss, and short rib adding a bit more punch, but it would not rank among the better hot sandwiches I have had.  One nice thing I did notice was the bread was much less greasy to the touch compared to other places and had a nice crispness/toastiness to it. Maybe as a result of all that engineering and testing?

Prices can be on par with other sandwich places, but if you add meat to your grilled cheese, and soup on top of that (a pickle being the only side included with your sandwich), your bill will go north of $10.  The portion (both sandwich and soup) is not very large, so more than likely you will get hungry in about 3 hours, making it a not so great value in my book.

While the quality of the ingredients are better than your typical greasy spoon or company cafeteria and the high tech cooking machines draw people in, I would not characterize the sandwiches as a “must have” experience (e.g. like when Krispy Kreme first came out or getting your burger fix at In N Out.). I think the format will do well in high traffic areas like Stanford Mall, and cater to those looking for something beyond just burgers or pizza.  I would have to have a real craving for grilled cheese before I would return to The Melt, and since it is a 25 minute drive away, I would probably opt for something closer to scratch that itch or even make my own.

Tucked in a strip mall close to where Theresa works is BiBimBowl, which offers Korean rice bowls and tofu soup.  I

Diners can build their own bowls by choose the type of bowl (regular, stone, sizzling platter), rice (white/brown), protein, and sauce/spice level.

I have always like Dol Sot Bi Bim Bap because the stone bowl it comes in crisps up the rice and adds texture to the meal and BiBimBowl delivers a decent one.  Reasonable pricing and fairly fast service makes this a popular place for lunch, with the restaurant filling up fairly quickly by noon, so expect a wait if you get here a little after noon.  There was also a fair amount of to-go business as well, so if you don’t feel like waiting for a table, that is always an option. If a Korean food craving strikes you while in Mountain View, give BiBimBowl a try. If it matches my experience, you should not be disappointed.