Month: June 2014

The Grub Shack is located in downtown San Jose on Santa Clara St, a few blocks from the SAP Center/San Jose Arena/The Shark Tank,  and serves up an updated. more gourmet  take on Hawaiian BBQ.  GS has been on Theresa’s Yelp radar for a while, and a recent trip downtown motivated us to stop by on a Thursday night.

The Atmosphere:

The restaurant offers counter service with 2 tables and 8 stools along the wall. There are also cocktail style tables outside where you can stand and eat. The setup is like other Hawaiian BBQ joints, where you eat and run or do takeout.   Definitely not a place where you sit and chat at length after dinner. Staff was friendly and efficient.

The Food:

The standard Hawaiian BBQ fare like Kalua Pork, Garlic Shrimp, Loco Moco, and Tuna Poke are offered as well as burgers and hot dogs. They ran out of the tuna poke, which is something we really wanted to try, so we opted for the 12 shrimp plate/platter and the Kalua Pork Fries.

The garlic shrimp plate come in 2 sizes, 6 and 12 shrimp. We opted for the 12 since we were sharing. The shrimp was tossed in a light garlic sauce accompanied by a couple of lemon wedges. While it can not compare to Gianvanni’s shrimp truck on Oahu, GS’s shrimp is pretty tasty.  Plates come with 2 scoops of rice (brown or white) and their house macaroni salad. The rice  does a good job of sopping up the extra garlic sauce on the bottom of the plate.

The macaroni salad was adequate, not really distinguishing itself, and similar to what you would get at other Hawaiian BBQ joints minus the heavy dose of MSG .

The Kalua pork fries were mentioned (and photographed) a lot on Yelp, so it was on my must try list.  This is another “don’t get your cholesterol checked the day after” dish.  The portion is very substantial, but I guess it needs to be to justify the price ($9.50). The fries are topped with Kahlua pork and jalapenos and drizzled with sour cream and their own GS sauce.  The fries themselves were thin cut and were “seasoned” somehow, having a slight hint of flavor similar to, but not exactly teriyaki.  Perhaps they were tossed in a thin glaze after frying, but when combined with the pork and sauce, it made for a tasty dish, and not a just a bunch of stuff piled on top of plain potatoes.  The pork was definitely the standout ingredient of the dish, and based on our experience, I think I would order the pork plate on our next visit. If you do order the fries, I would definitely recommend you share. We could not finish it, and had to leave some behind. Unless you are a big eater, plan to take home leftovers or share plates.

Verdict:

Based on this experience, we would return to Grub Shack. The ingredients were of higher quality than your typical Hawaiian BBQ, but it also means you will pay a bit more.  For suburbanites like us, the location is a minor negative, since it sometimes does not justify the time needed to  fight traffic and park during business hours or on days an event is taking place at the SAP Center.  The same reasons makes it impractical for us to “swing by” to do take out for dinner (which we would totally do).  But for a quick hit and run dinner, Grub Shack fills the bill.  So if we happen to be downtown for a Sharks Game or other type of business, I would definitely put this on the short list of places to hit. A GS food truck would solve the location/accessibility issue. Wish they had a suggestion box.

There are several new shops and restaurants opening in the San Antonio plaza at the border of Mountain View and Los Altos and one of those restaurants is Pacific Catch, which has additional outposts in Campbell, San Francisco, San Mateo. As the name implies, fresh fish is the main attraction, and the concept is seafood with a Californian/Asian fusion flare.

The Hawaiian poke is the standout and signature dish here. There are 7 different varieties of Hawaiian poke, including one with salmon and another with white tuna.  You can order a single serving or opt for the trio, where you can mix and match 3 types of poke, and comes accompanied by fried wanton chips, seaweed salad, and cucumber salad. (see pic below)

The Original is the standout in the bunch, having a nice sesame soy taste.  The white tuna poke (yuze citrus, fresno chiles, white soy sauce, red onions) tasted more like ceviche, although a wee less vinegary, and a bit muddled. I would have preferred the white tuna plain. The Lomi Lomi (salmon, tomatoes, sweet onions, cilantro, red chiles) had the right concept, but suffered from over salting, namely having large chunks of sea salt within the dish, delivering small salt bombs in an otherwise decent poke.  I am not sure if this done for texture or if the batch we had was not done correctly, but mixing large grains of salt into a poke seems counter-intuitive to me. It should be the fish and not the salt that stands out.  The Ahi Macadema Nut (sweet onions, fresno chile, and macadamia nuts) was the second best of the ones we tried. The nuts provide a nice textural contrast and did not suffer the faults of the Lomi Lomi and macadamia variety.  We like the original so much that on a return trip, we opted for a double order of the original poke when ordering the trio.

 The menu is heavily tilted toward fish, as you might expect, with a daily fresh catch of the day special, sushi rolls,  fish topped salads, fish tacos, fish n chips, sandwiches  and “Pan-Asian” rice bowls.  For non-seafood eaters, they offer sticky ribs, and you can get the rice bowls and salads topped with chicken and steak as well.  The rice bowls can also be ordered with greens instead of rice for those watching your carb intake, or you can do half/half .  The wasabi ahi sandwich was surprisingly good, although it’s very rare, so if you don’t like sashimi, you should skip it or perhaps order it well done.  All the ingredients were high quality and fresh tasting.  Portions are fairly generous, so if you do order the poke as an appetizer, plan accordingly.  Splitting a poke trio and an entree with a dining companion would be the way to go, and should be more than enough food. While I did not try the sushi rolls, they looked to be on the larger side, so one roll with some poke should be enough to fill you up., unless you are a big eater.  The salads are meal sized and come in large bowls

Poke is definitely the draw at Pacific Catch and it is a must order if you do dine there. They even sell poke to go (priced by the pound) if you want to take some home or want to grab some without dining there.  While the other items on the menu are tasty and well executed, there was not anything unique about the preparation or flavors that provided a “memorable wow” or “fun” factor, but they did hit a home run with the poke.

Add shaved snow to the list of frozen desserts that you need to try. I think this originated in Taiwan, or perhaps from Taiwanese creators as an alternative to shaved ice.  While similar in concept to Hawaiian shaved ice or the Sno-Balls I grew up with in New Orleans, the shaved part is not just plain frozen water. It has more of a creamy sherbet feel to it. The blocks are frozen and then a machine takes thin shavings, which are piled onto plate. The net result is a texture that is not coarse or icy like shaved ice, but a “snow” like texture which does not rely on toppings or a syrup to flavor the dessert.

Snozen has the normal snow flavors that I have seen at other places like chocolate, vanilla, mango, taro. But they also have peanut butter and black sesame as well.  The snow serves as a base on which you can add various toppings, such as fresh fruits, mochi,  and various “drizzles”, like chocolate syrup, caramel, etc.  Something unique is their black sesame drizzle, which is black sesame paste combined with condensed milk.  It’s pretty darn tasty, even with taro snow.  While you can freely mix and match, they also have cutely named, pre-configured combinations, like the Elvis special, which is peanut butter snow with fresh bananas and chocolate drizzle.

What I like about Snozen’s version of shaved snow is it is not overly sweet and the flavor is not so overpowering that I feel like I am eating shavings from a creamsicle or frozen juice bar. There is also a slight richness similar to ice cream or frozen yogurt. This makes sense, as you don’t want the snow base to overpower any of the toppings that are added.

Prices are on par with other frozen desserts, and the large size (pictured above) is more than adequate for sharing between two people. If you are in a large group, I would order a few different flavors/combinations and share family style to try out.

Parking can be an issue, as it is located in a townhome/condo complex where street parking is limited and often taken by residents; however, outside of business hours, you can park in the CalTrain garage that is located beneath some of the condos. Or you can park further up  Pacchetti Way toward California Street.

We’ve been here a few times and have never been disappointed with our selections.  So skip dessert at the restaurant and go to Sno-Zen.  There is another Snozen in downtown San Jose, and another opening up in the Silver Creek area as well.