Not Palo Alto but just across the border. Oreganos at San Antonio and el Camino closed. A place called Noodle Talk Restaurant operated by Canton Prospect is coming. Relation to Noodle Talk the Hunan noodle place in Sunnyvale? Two noodle joints in the same mall?!
Not sure what the âprivate kitchenâ wording above âNoodle Talkâ on the sign means. Construction is ongoing. There are dining tables and chairs inside.
âprivate kitchenâ means they serve dishes that arenât just restaurant dishes, but also the kind of dishes you would see served in a home. AKA âhome styleâ. One sees it a bit in chinese restaurants, where there is a wide variation between the classic restaurant dishes and home cooking. Saw that on a couple of menus in beijing last week.
BBC is getting closer to completion. Sign says will def. open in 2016, this year, so theyâve got all fall to finish everything up. Looking inside, my heart fell. Theyâve taken out the big handsome turn of the century bar, and replaced the atmosphere with fairly straight-ahead unimpressive fixtures. The rooftop area will be the killer plus to the place, and the location, but⌠how the mighty have fallen.
Old Tokyo Subway spot - lots of construction. Will stay japanese.
Old Su Hong MP spot - no construction. Same with old Menlo Hub location next door.
Palo Alto Creamery on Emerson St. makes a killer patty melt (âFountain Burgerâ) with griddled onions and swiss on homemade rye⌠good strawberry malts too! They use an original '40s Hamilton Beach mixer and offer seasonal flavors.
Not to be confused with Peninsula Creamery on High St. - formerly situated in the same building on the corner of Emerson and Hamilton!
I know chef chu is much beloved by some people, but that seems like from the long ago far away time when regional chinese was not understood and appreciated in the bay area. Iâd love to hear a review / writeup / words of some sort by a Chef Chu aficionado who has also eaten at Mandrin Roots, Da Sicuhuan, Cooking Papa, etc ( just to mention a couple places within a mile occurring to me ) and can discourse on the relative merits. What a great idea for a thread !
A bunch of the âolder schoolâ places have closed ( a la mings ). Some, like Su Hong Palo Alto, have pivoted to highlighting their regional dishes. Tai Pan I think is far underrated, with a higher quality dim sum in genteel surroundings.
Yum Cha Palace is open. Got two menus- dimsum and a full dine-in menu. It seems like they have Cantonese chefs from how the menus read. They even got truffle/ crab XLBs, abalone congee, sea cucumber fish maw congee, bird nest tart, xo sauce, live crab/ lobsters (didnât expect these in Menlo Park. didnât even expect a real Cantonese restaurant in Menlo Park. no offense, Menlo Park residents) and the dimsum menu is comprehensive.
They carry fancy tea like Dragonwell with an additional charge like the larger Cantonese banquet restaurants that offer dimsum do, e.g. Koi.
Now, if it only tastes good. With the incredible disappointment of the new BBC, and the exciting menu but ho hum performance at Fey down the street⌠gotta try it!
Well⌠here are my disappointments with the new BBC.
They took out the old bar. The great thing with BBC was the atmosphere, now itâs just another grey box room. But⌠I havenât been up on the roof.
They donât have the beer selection they used to. Their beer selection, previously, was really quite good - now itâs about 6 of the âusual suspectsâ.
Food is all entree-centric. The old BBC was a great place to a beer, burger, and fries. Mostly a beer :-), and now it attempt to be a Dining Location. Thereâs no burger on the menu, for example.
In particular, we went in, sat down with the interest in trying the food, and couldnât decide on anything we wanted to eat. Weâre pretty happy with all the other places in that restaurant group - Reposado, Gravity, Peninsula Creamery.