DIVE LUNCHES IN THE SILICON VALLEYDIVE LUNCHES IN THE SILICON VALLEY
NOTE: These reviews were written over a long period of time in my spare time. I have not updated this list in a while, and I have not verified that each of these places is even still on this planet, so place a call before going if you're not sure!
My heartfelt thanks go out to Ross and Cheryl, the fellow adventurers with whom I discovered the fine art of dive lunching. In addition, I'd like to recognize the brave hordes of the Diving Club that have joined me in the quest for ideal lunches, and who contributed (usually too loudly) in the assessment and rating of the restaurants in this guide: Cathy, Marc, Pete, Sue, Jim, Gerardette, Lisa, Mike, Pete, Kimya, Patty, Rich, Karla, Wain, Gus, Colleen, Mike, Peter, Ann, Debi, Manuel, Jan, Barbara, Sue, Jan, Bruce, Lynanne, Kelly, Charlotte, Dianne, Donna, Greg, Cheryl, Anthony, Sue, Paula, Lauren, Marilyn, Joe, Sonia, Karen, Lori, Robert, Cliff, Jim, Charles, Patty, Kelly, James, Sarita, Cheng, Gary, Chris, Jim, La Cretia, Sally, Debbie, Jill, Peggy, Alexa, Maria, Bruce, Toni, Pierre, Lynnee, Val, Jim, Rene, Don, Ron, Bill, Mike, Margaret, David, Chris, Margaret, Robert, Rob, Kiyoshi, Alex, Nikhil, Karen, Terry, Cheryl, Alan, Rich, Maggie, Dave, Manette, Torry, Albert, Mark, Melinda, Greg, Judith, Ken, Jan, Dave, Laurie, Ken, Chuck, Chris, Dick, Thaine, Mike, Bill, Rob, Bruce, Annie, Dave, Paul, Visek, Arlene, Annie, David...
A thousand apologies to anyone who I've inadvertently left off this list.
Well, more than a hundred apologies.
Okay, just one good apology.
My name is Bill, and I am a dive-aholic.
It began as a joke in March of 1988. I had just moved back into California after spending eight long years in a culinary wasteland in the Pacific Northwest, and I called up an old friend to meet for lunch. Since this friend is a true, self-proclaimed, and devout lowlife, I asked around in my new place of employment for recommendations for a restaurant. "Not just anyplace," I told a co-worker, "But some low-class dive where I can take a low-class friend to eat." This co-worker thought about my request, then told me that her uncle had spoken of a Mexican restaurant inside a local bar that might fit this description. She offered to go with us and show us the place.
We drove a few minutes out of town to a dumpy-looking brick building with a rusting sign hanging out front that advertised "7-up, Beer, Wine, Mexican Food". We crossed the dirt parking lot, opened the door, and as our eyes grew accustomed to the lighting inside, we realized that we had entered another world.
The floor was a checkerboard of black and white linoleum tiles, except for one spot where a rectangular patch had been made with brown speckled linoleum. We walked the length of the bar to our table, and noted a wild array of oddities: color-coded bathroom doors, mismatching tables and chairs, and horrendously ugly tablecloths and placemats. With some fear in our eyes, we sat down, ordered lunch, and a round of Dos Equis while we waited. We laughed as our eyes scanned the room, finding more and more tacky little things on the floors and walls. The place was not crowded since we had gotten there a few minutes before twelve o'clock, so we chatted with the friendly waitress (and tried not to stare at the dark roots in her hair).
By noon, we noticed that the place was packed, and that a line of people extended out of the door and into the parking lot. We were surprised to note that a large number of these patrons were wearing suits, obviously coming to the out of the way spot for lunch from the nearby high tech companies. This comforted us somewhat, but could not prepare us for the wonderful plates of heaven that were soon delivered to our table.
The food was terrific! Seldom had I had such light and creamy refried beans, tasty enchilada sauce, or spicy home-made salsa with my chips. Best of all, when the bill was brought to the table, we thought that perhaps that was the tab for just one of us; we got out of there for about five bucks each.
It quickly dawned on us... how can a restaurant stay in business for 20 years or more with no advertising and no decor? It has to be the food and the friendly people running the restaurant that would make people want to return again and again, their advertising being done by word-of-mouth of satisfied customers. There must be more of these little gems hiding around the valley, we reasoned, so it should be a simple matter to locate others. Over the next few weeks we scouted out these dives, and quickly developed an eye for them: neon beer signs in the windows, faded signs, avocado-colored appliances, indoor-outdoor carpeting, cheap paneling; soon it was quite easy to spot them from a quick drive-by.
We spoke with other people about our adventures, and found out that most people have their favorite little holes in the wall, so within a month we were investigating by references alone. Our little group began to grow, and we also met other groups of divers at a few of these joints. Eating lunch in these little dives was not an isolated act... it was an undocumented trend in the valley.
Clearly, there was and is a need for a definitive guide to dive lunch spots in the Silicon Valley. I hope you enjoy this trip through a seedier, but enjoyable, part of the Valley culture.
The region covered by this guide is the Silicon Valley, loosely defined as anything that is within a 20 minute drive of the intersection of Central Expressway and Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale. Part or all of the following cities are in this range:
Alviso
Campbell
Cupertino
Milpitas
Mountain View
Palo Alto
Redwood City
Santa Clara
San Jose'
Sunnyvale
In order for a restaurant to qualify as a dive, the following criteria must be met:
1. The decor must be tacky, outdated, or clashing
2. The food must be good
Using these simple rules, the divers have visited these restaurants and given them ratings, as listed below. Of course, these ratings are highly subjective and may change at any time on a whim.
| * * * * * | Top notch dive! |
| * * * * | Excellent lunch or decor |
| * * * | Good, but lacking something |
| * * | If you're really hungry or stupid, go ahead |
| * | Stay away from this toxic waste dump!!! |
As with any restaurant review guide, this book took time to prepare. As such, the reviews reflect a moment in time; this is the way these restaurants appeared at the time the review was written. However, since many of these places have remained untouched for decades, it is unlikely that they will have changed significantly.
The Diving experience is often so visual that it's easy to miss the point without pictures.
Our group of friends in the Diving Club were a group of people from all over the valley, and many different high tech companies. Intel, Canon, S3, Octel, and Ricoh were just a few of the companies on the invitation list each week. We never knew how many would show up at a place like Manny's Cellar, or at the Guadalajara Restaurant, but at times as many as 25 would appear.
Visiting a dive is a bit of a time warp, like you've recaptured an era gone past. Many dives have been in business for decades, and often never bothered (or dared) to change their decor. Looking at this view of Manny's taken in 1992, for example, it's hard to believe that time stood still in this spot for so long.
Often, just looking at the signs out front gave us a feel for what we could expect once we stepped through their front doors. Bini's and Andy's Oakwood Barbeque, for example, had these crusty-looking old signs in front that left no doubt that they had been around the block and through a few floods or earthquakes. The entrance to Manny's was a giveaway that we were entering dive heaven. Often, a dead giveaway was when the number of neon signs outnumbered the windows, such as at Vivi's. At Henry's High Life, the walls themselves are the signs.
Inside the restaurants, the eyes are often treated to amazing sights, like the dartboards on the wall at Bini's or the mad array of paper menus at La Paisana, but nearly always there is a feeling of comfort and familiarity like you've gone to visit cousins living on the other side of the tracks. Bini's was so big that it was hard to read the wild array of menu boards at the far end, but the wonderful people working there would read it to us from memory if we wanted.
Sometimes these dives end up in a funny part of town by accident. How did the Cuban International end up in the middle of Japan Town, San Jose? Or the Cambodian Chez Sovan end up across the street from five Mexican restaurants? Sam's Log Cabin is a hot spot for local judges and lawyers, but you'd never know it from the neighborhood around it. Our first dive, Lina's, is found off in the middle of an industrial part of Milpitas.
You just never know where you'll discover your favorite dive.
The history behind this joint is obvious: the original owner must have been to Bally's in Las Vegas, and made the assumption that he could duplicate that wonderfully gaudy atmosphere in San Jose. When he realized that he only had $1000 in his bank account, he decided to build his Bally's West in the ugliest part of downtown San Jose. 4th Street has a sculpted three-level ceiling painted bright red, a large fake crystal chandelier, and a disco ball in the dancing area to reflect the strobe lights. It has gross fuzzy black and silver wallpaper that is peeling off the walls in many places, and tacky rattan circles with dust-covered plastic flowers in the middle hung next to each table. There are at least two different colors of paneling hung next to the western-style doors leading to the noisy kitchen area. This would be a great dive if it weren't for the bland food, which is typical Nebraska cuisine: white gravy spills over the mashed potatoes onto overcooked veggies, and a tiny spot of cheap cranberry jelly is served in a little plastic cup. See this place, bring your camera, but don't stay to eat.
A velvet painting of an Aztec warrior sitting on a dead eagle greets you to this odd little hole-in-the-wall. The wait for Amigo's wonderful belly bombs is rather long, giving you plenty of time to enjoy the cheap folding tables, dead leaves on the plants, and the funny little French door separating the dining area from the kitchen. They have a refrigerator near the tables, so it's easy to pick out a Dos Equis or Simpatico to drown the burning from their tasty salsa. If you're rushing back to work from a racquetball game, you can plug your blow dryer into the power outlets that protrude from the wall. El Amigo Burrito is a good lunch dive.
Not many would drive out of their way to locate this low-caliber cafeteria. The food is edible, but thoroughly ordinary. The salsa is wimpy, the rice is hardly spiced, and the special of the day (a chicken burrito), while filling, was somewhat pricey. We did enjoy the lowly atmosphere, however: the many colors of linoleum tile discordantly arrayed by prehistoric indoor-outdoor carpet, and an odd home-made plaque on the wall. One in our party argued that the distorted creature on the plaque was a turtle, while another disagreed and said it looked like a dove -- for me, it finally explained what a turtle dove is. Service was slow enough that it gave us time to count the number of burned out or missing lights in the place. Out of 30 fixtures, only 17 had lights. Very strange.
The nose immediately knows that it has entered into a place worth exploring as the scent of spicy sauces assaults that sense. Immediately upon sitting at a pair of plastic-covered tables, a couple baskets of chips and some spicy salsa appeared before us and we dug in greedily while looking over the menu. There were no big surprises on the menu, and soon we were wading in enchiladas, tacos, and chile rellenos served with creamy beans and fluffy Spanish rice. Everything was very good, though it leaned towards being ordinary Americanized versions of these dishes. The mostly tasteful decor in this restaurant clashes with a few truly ugly touches: for example, two identical paintings on black velvet hang beside the main entrance. Each is disgraced by a disgustingly cute scene of a child pulling a burro's reins. The back wall is covered in a crude scene that vaguely resembles a sunset. Best of all, the hallway past the kitchen looks like an ancient ruin. Truly weird, but earning Amigo's a place in the Dive Hall of Shame.
Hooray! I've been waiting for a long time for Andy to make his wonderful barbecued beasts available to the hungry lunchtime crowd, and my dream has finally come true. The cooks here have put together the perfect combination of ribs that are juicy on the inside and out with a superior barbecue sauce that lingers in the mind throughout the rest of the afternoon. Their barbecued chicken is similarly wonderful, and their garlic bread is so strong that the Vampire's Union has lodged a formal complaint against the City of Campbell. From the outside, Andy's looks like a biker bar nearly hidden underneath highway 17, and the piano bar in the lounge as you enter the building does nothing to discourage that impression. Passing the bar, you enter the dining area, which is a dark, dingy room with no windows (well, that's not exactly correct: the one window in the dining area has been painted over). The walls (and the one window) are painted a horrid shade of mustard yellow, accented with loving care by a crooked picture-framed collection of Hagar and Herman cartoons. Some of the tables are constructed with 2-by-6s, some are ugly formica topped garage sale specials, and all are besieged by mismatched chairs. Andy's is the kind of place that one feels compelled to visit repetitively until one can no longer fit through the front door.
Angie's is the kind of place that could give an interior decorator nightmares! The color scheme, and I stretch the meaning of the phrase to describe it as such, is a wild melange of incompatibles: the horrid chartreuse bench seats have inlaid tile fragments (except where missing) and brownish linen seat covers. The crude wooden picnic tables butt up against olive green padded walls up to the height of a shelf colored an odd reddish-pinkish-orange, which in turn contrasts with very-off-white walls. Up high, above the tables, are $0.69 metal brackets, only a couple of which have miserly silk plants with frayed edges dangling from them. We went to the juke box to put on some mood music, but most of the music is Mexican, so we ate our lunches to the lilting strains of "Felice Navidad". Speaking of the food, it is excellent, and notably inexpensive. For three bucks you get your choice of a mini-pizza, spaghetti, lasagne, manicotti, cannaloni [sic], or ravioli. On top of that, tasty, raspy garlic bread comes with lunch at no extra charge! What a great deal. It is obvious why Angie's has been around longer than humans have walked upright: the wonderful smell of Angie's garlic bread must be what drew prehistoric man down out of the trees.
This tiny little building is just the right size and in the right location for a nice little dive. The building looks like a miniature house that has been converted to a restaurant sometime in the last four decades: the moulding is old and bowed, and the exterior slightly sun-baked. The sign out front still bears the label from the Chinese restaurant that lived here last year. The owners have decorated the interior with cute oddities like straw fans with tiny bowls glued to them, and have a boom box laying face-down on top of a giant refrigerator in the corner. Unfortunately, the new owners have not perfected the art of serving food yet. The portions were too small, and the salsa had no kick to it. My tostada had a tiny spot of meat -- I was not fooled by their attempts to hide this fact under a mound of lettuce. Since these are new owners, we'll give them some time to get their feet wet in the business. Let's watch this one and see what they're like in the future.
This can best be described as a "dive with training wheels". Willy's has the right idea: crude, simple decor and good eats. Unfortunately, they try a little too hard to achieve that atmosphere, and the food is less than overwhelming... it's just plain whelming. They are new in town, so give them time. The entry way put me in a good mood immediately: there is an ancient gas pump between huge wooden posts, and the floor is bare cement. I looked around, half expecting an old hound dog to come around looking for attention. Dozens of license plates nailed to the posts partially obscured the view of the rest of the dining area, so I went up to the counter to order my lunch. I carried my soft drink, served in an old canning jar, to a brightly covered table and continued my examination of the room. The benches are made of plywood, the red-and-white checkered tablecloths are stapled to the tables, and the walls are nearly covered with photographs of fat human male bellies and thin, attractive human female forms; very Texan. The food was ready quite soon, so I inhaled a Hickory Chicken sandwich, served in a plastic basket with a bag of moderately stale Granny Goose potato chips. Though I thought the sandwich somewhat ordinary, my companions thought more highly of their food, in particular the Smoke Pork Shoulder and the Jalapeno Cheeseburger. I feel compelled to note that the food is slightly overpriced, by about a buck per dish, but I guess that they need to pay for all those lovely license plates somehow.
Babe Ruth would probably be proud to know that decades after his death he is being immortalized with pictures of his baseball exploits scattered on the walls of a homey little hole-in-the-wall in the old part of San Jose'. Babe Ruth's pictures are joined by a jigsaw puzzle of Hank Aaron in a picture frame, and by a Garfield (yes, the obnoxious, smug cartoon cat) poster that happens to read "Babes and Bullets". A modest amount of cash supplied us with delicious lasagne and ravioli lunches, and a side of thick slices of garlic bread that had us remembering that meal for hours afterward (but happily so). The decor reminded me of early college days: tables made from 2-by-4s and painted glossy black to fool people into thinking that they weren't home-made, and mismatched bar stools from the ninth aisle at the San Jose' flea market. Babe's gets a special new award for having more neon beer signs than windows.
The excellent food contrasts with this restaurant's cheap seating arrangements at wobbly tables placed so close together that you can smell the greasy chorizo at the next table over. The walls are papered with an obnoxious pin-striped yellow and orange, and there are used-car-lot plastic flags hanging over the window to the kitchen. I just loved the neon "Cerveza Lite" sign in the front window, and the appetizing presence of goat and cactus on the menu. While I was not brave enough to try the goat, I did thoroughly enjoy a huge plate overflowing with creamy refried beans, tasty Spanish rice, and one of the most filling enchiladas I can recall. I rolled back out of there completely satiated, though I felt like napping when I got back to work...
This place is a wonderful local pub in the best "Cheers" tradition, with friendly barkeeps, football pennants for the local teams, wide-screen TV, and neon beer signs in every window. The menu offers a variety of soups and sandwiches, and all at our table seemed happy with their choices. The food is served on styrofoam plates; even your bowl of soup is precariously balanced on one of these wobbly plates along with a couple of ancient packages of crackers. A bright orange extension cord runs up one wall next to bent venetian blinds, and another wall has exposed (but painted!) wiring conduit. There is an odd rectangular spot left unpainted on yet another wall opposite an obnoxious flowered juke box. If you get bored while waiting to get onto one of BB's pool tables, just pick up a magazine at the pine-board rack near the homemade front counter, or watch the "Silent Radio" display over the bar.
Bamboo Garden looks deceptively normal at first, until your eyes get accustomed to the dark lighting at the far end of this long restaurant. There, they have a walk-up counter that looks like something out of a 50s burger joint, with paper menus and menu boards along the annoying orange formica counter. Escaping back into the seating area, I was located next to one of the home-made partitions in the middle of the dining area. These partitions have rough, warped, and unfinished pine boards nailed on top of 2-by-4 boxes, and are skirted by particle-board paneling laid with the stripes running horizontally (contrasting ever so daintily with the panels on the walls that have the stripes running vertically). For a touch of class, Bamboo Garden has a disco-style mirror ball with colored track lights pointed at it. My food arrived, so I slowly pulled a half-dozen tiny paper napkins out of the dispenser on my table, and dug into a very tasty plate of Tai-Chien Chicken. The spice was assertive, somewhat hotter than most Szechwan restaurants are brave enough to serve to the average taste, and the sauce was nice and heavy. The vegetables were still crisp, and chopsticks had no problem picking up lumps of the semi-sticky rice. Good food, safe atmosphere: this is a perfect lunch for beginning dive connoisseurs.
A plain paper poster Scotch-taped to the wall above the register declares "Showing Up is 88% of Life", but I've gotta tell you about the other 12% at this old Star and Bar gas station converted to a restaurant. The paneling here is so cheap it is possibly home-made, but the owners have politely covered most of it with pictures of race cars and bodybuilders, not to mention a cork board with 10,000 yellowed business cards pinned to it. The food here is Americana but prepared by the Oriental owners in unexpected configurations: my Tsing-Tao beer was served in a frosted A&W root beer mug and my sausage sandwich came with a bowl of Mexican salsa. Odd as it was, the food was wonderful, though a little bit pricey for a dive lunch. Well worth driving out of your way to find.
This is the penultimate English pub, right down to the short-tempered lady who runs the place and yells at you if you ask for food any way but the way she wants to serve it. You don't even get a choice of salad dressings, fer crying out loud. Fortunately, her way is damned good, and really doesn't need modification in my view. The meat pies are definitely the specialty of the house (no, "pasties" is not pronounced like Carol Doda's tassles). A little on the small side, but crammed with potatoes, crumbled beef, and heavenly spices, and just right for lunch. The interior is homey and comfortable, right down to the dark brown carpets and the beer coasters sutffed under the legs of the tables to stabilize them. The walls are nearly covered with T-shirts, and the kitchen is visible from any seat in the place. A great find.
What a boorish pit in the middle of such a lovely area! The view from this eyesore includes the sleaziest Radio Shack in existence, and the traffice pouring through a constantly crowded intersection of two major roads. The parking lot is pitted and uneven, and the metal awning over the front of the restaurant is rusted. The inside is even uglier! An ice box on cinder blocks and plywood platform face the main entrance, and the main counter is unlit, making it a little tough to figure out what the selections of the day are. The welcoming sight of an extension cord running around a support beam and going to a bug zapper is barely illuminated by the light from a repulsive light fixture with a train on it. When the food arrived, two sandwich orders from the group had been combined into one odd concoction, so we had to wait while they remade a couple of lunches. Fortunately, the service is pretty quick, so soon we were up to our lapels in tasty, gooey Cheesesteak Sandwiches, and drowning them in imported beer. These cheesesteaks are among the best around, though a bit on the small side. I take this as a good thing, since the cholesterol level in one of these sandwiches is nearly enough to kill an aerobics instructor on a diet.
This tiny hole-in-the-wall looks a little scary from the outside, being midway between the adult book store and sex toy shop. Inside, however, it is clearly a homey (and homely) little nook that immediately makes you feel welcomed. The front counter was hand crafted by far-sighted basketball player who couldn't find his glasses: not only is the thing is on 2-by-4 stilts such that you have to stand on your toes to see the ugly refrigerators behind it, but it is also veneered with the most gaudy flower-patterned paneling anyone's ever seen. The wall above the four cheap tables is glamorized by the presence of a seascape laminated onto wood, a gold-framed oval mirror, and a S.J. Mercury add that been taped to a painting, destroying the painting underneath. With a decor like this, it's no surprise that The Burger House has good food. The cheesesteak sandwiches are spicy and just the right size for a lunch, though a touch expensive even with a big handful of french fries included. The 'fridge contains a random selection of soft drinks -- I suppose whatever the owner felt like buying at the supermarket earlier that day. I hate to see a rising star like this disappear, so give them a shot. You won't be disappointed.
The Christmas decorations are still up in late March, there are neon "Mexican Fast Food" signs all over the place, and odd-looking metal bars running from floor to ceiling in unexpected places, but I'm afraid that Burrito Grande does not rate as a good dive... it's more like a high school cafeteria, including a one-way mirror between the principal's, uh, manager's office and the dining area. They do serve the most massive burritos in town, however, so you certainly don't leave hungry, but the filling is mostly rice and pinto beans.
The general feeling when you step into El Calderon is like walking into the home of a close friend who does not feel compelled to make the house spotless before you are allowed to step inside. The strong ethnic flavor of the decor completes the feeling of family closeness, especially the shrine in the back room honoring an elderly grandma-type lady. This shrine is really weird: the picture of the lady is in an ornate brass frame, but the matte is a sheet of uncut casings for "Aguila Negra" batteries. Another quaint touch is a child's crayon drawing taped to the inside of the arched passage between dining rooms. Other oddities include an ugly black velvet painting of a rough bandito, and a painting of a dancing Aztec warrior that is so large that it attempts to convince the viewer that quantity is more important that quality. The comestibles are superior, especially their Tostadas, Tamales, and Chile Rellenos. Of particular note, they take the time to remove the seeds from the chiles used in the rellenos. The only criticism I have of their food is that the Spanish Rice was undercooked and not particularly tasty, but what the hell? Who needs rice when you can overeat all the other yummy dishes? I love El Calderon.
I couldn't go along with the crowd and give this sleazy joint a generous two-star rating; the cracked bones in my chicken burrito were simply too disgusting. This place would be pretty funny if it wasn't so gross! The Disney World poster on the back wall is nearly covered by the old folding curtain leaning against the wall, and there is a tiny black-and-white TV on top of the huge refrigerator where you pick out your soft drinks. The place is fortunately protected by iron bars that only cover the bottom half of the front windows, but I'm convinced that nobody will come in and steal the 8-cup Mr. Coffee machine on the counter or the plastic forks and paper plates. For you gringos, the 7-Up menu board translates such obscure Mexican phrases as "TACO REGULAR" to the significantly more understandable "REGULAR TACO".
Now here is an authentic restaurant: I could barely communicate with the waitress, and I'm still not positive that I got what I ordered. The table is amply stocked with chips and salsa, of course, and also hot spiced carrots. I think I was served an enchilada with quesadillas (that's what I ordered); whatever it was, it was very good, with large portions that forced me to leave the plate partially occupied at the end of lunch. Lunch still came in around $5. The surroundings here are more than odd: they're a bit on the sick side. I can accept the mismatched pieces of paneling contrasting with ugly mustard walls, for example, and I'm not disgusted by the incongruous sight of a giant poster of a hamburger and coke that is covered in Saran Wrap on the walls. I even found the plaque with a rider on a burro with a frame but no matte to be on the cute side. I have more trouble understanding why they have giant, crude paintings on the walls of Spaniards torturing natives by holding their feet over flames. At any rate, I encourage you to fight the downtown parking hassles and track down a very good lunch at Las Cazuelas.
As soon as you enter the door, you are forced to maneuver around a huge fish tank set on top of a plywood and 2-by-4 pedestal. Once you get inside Chef Wang's, however, its easier to overlook the ancient indoor-outdoor carpet and the crowded tables in this small but friendly restaurant. If you want to know about the daily special, look over the napkins and cups stacked on the pedestal in the middle of the dining room and you'll see a computerized LED display telling you not only about today's special, but also that smoking is not permitted. The service is very quick, and the Hot and Sour Soup is perfect. That's right... perfect with a capital "AAAhhhhh!" The rest of their food is also very good: the Ginger Scallops are tangy, and the sauce on the Curry Beef delivers a nice shock to the palate. Good stuff!
Here is a dive that almost defies description: there are only a few tacky doodads on the walls, the tables seem clean and neat, yet the overall impression that you get upon entry into Chez Sovan is that the decor is just wrong. It's probably the odd half-height room within a room that is the kitchen that cuts into the dining area. Or maybe it's the way that the 7up clock faces the golden plastic Hindu temple on the adjacent wall. The eye scans the room to find the rest of the traditional dive ingredients: a neon sign that reads "Welcome to Miller Time" that it nearly obscured by an ancient air conditioning unit, bars in the windows, and mismatched patches of paint on the walls and ceiling. The extraordinary food soon makes you forget the backdrop, however, as the polite waiters deliver scrumptious stir fried veggies and meats with garlic sauce, and catfish wrapped in banana leaves. Our party could not finish all that we ordered, and still got out of there for less than $7 each, including a good tip. Gee, as I type this, I can hardly wait to make another visit to Chez Sovan!
I believe that I have found a major warehouse for Naugahyde and formica: it is being stored (and used) in Chick & Rib, a cute but out of the way little dive just south of downtown San Jose'. The cook is rather slow, but Cara, the friendliest waitress in town, will keep you amused with stories of how the owners of this dive have redecorated since acquiring the restaurant. For example, they intentionally left up the odd interior overhang, but replaced the tiles with cheap paneling and stapled a canvas fringe to it. Gee, what an improvement! The waitress did not even notice that there are two different kinds of tiles on the floor, neither of which match the linoleum in the far back. It's almost redundant to mention the huge exposed air conditioning unit, the many neon beer signs, or even the colossal buffalo head with a baseball cap on, all of which are kept safe by bars over only one window. You can also get your gift shopping done here, as there are many clocks on the wall for sale, each on a shellacked board with a picture of Elvis or John Wayne behind the clock. The food finally arrived, and it was worth the wait. There's far more than one person can eat, and the prices are low. An omelette is served jammed with cheese and meat, and the side of home-cooked potatoes is heavily spiced and quite delicious, but their ribs are the real reason to find them. The ribs are generous and simply wonderful. Make the time to visit this gem.
The super food at this peculiar little dive is sure to keep it in business a long time, assuming that lots of other people share my love of their total lack of concern for decor, and the way that they took me seriously when I ordered my food extra-spicy (that plate of Sar Cha Chicken warmed my abdomen for two days). Their other dishes are also unusual in that they serve them in a notably richer sauce than other restaurants in the area; if I was the kind to nit pick, I would say that their dishes tend to taste too much like one another. The atmosphere in this gem is truly unique: it's like they are simply too tired to worry about things like the missing glass in the immense fish tank, so they simply lined it with cardboard, then nailed a mirrored vanity tray to it so that it would look, uh, nice? Well, the fish box does nicely match the random 8" decorator strips along the ceiling, the plywood walls, and the Coors beer sign near the cash register. A spicy find in an icky part of town.
This location was previously occupied by China Stix, which moved down the street into a more upscale location. Fortunately, the new owners haven't figured out that Wild West decor and Chinese food are a terrible combination. The dining area is still flanked by an ugly Western-style bar with mirror tiles behind it. A tiny hallway is nearly blocked by an ugly metal rolling cart, but one can still see through into the postage stamp of a kitchen. Mismatched speakers high up on the walls complete the picture of a restaurant that is nearly normal, but just a bit off centered. China Way serves a good and inexpensive lunch. I am fanatically addicted to Hot and Sour soup, so I was pleasantly surprised that their mild Beef with Cabbage soup left me longing for another bowl. The Kung Pao Chicken is very good, and would be excellent if it were just a little less greasy. Also, when I ask for "extra hot", I'm a little upset when I still need to spoon on more pepper oil. Even with every seat in the restaurant taken, service was still fast and courteous, so China Way gets a thumbs up.
A sign in the original dining area reads "Yes, this is a real Charcoal Broiler ... for your Gourmet Pleasure" and that is only a slight exaggeration. The food at Clarke's is very tasty, though far from "gourmet, and you have a wide variety of choices including broiled or deep-fried chicken sandwiches, burgers on standard or French rolls, and fried vegetables of diverse inception. The service is exceptionally fast, giving you little time to appreciate the bizarre atmosphere before your drippy buns show up. There are four dining areas at Clarke's. One is apparently the original tiny dining room, as it has glass windows that look into the obviously more recent patios that are encased by semi-transparent plastic tarps (don't worry if it's the dead of winter... these patios have the very finest flea market wall furnaces in them to keep the icicles off your hair). The fourth dining room? Well, there's a table in the parking lot for reasons lost to modern civilization. The lighting is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this joint: there are neon beer signs, mismatched tiffany lamps, dusty fluorescents next to track lighting, and even an adapter screwed into one track light fixture for plugging in the extension cord that leads to the next tiffany lamp. Oh, and look closely at the discount coupons on the paper cups your soft drinks are served in: there's one for $2 off at a water slide in Reno, 25% off for the drive-thru tree in Myers Flat, and so forth... unfortunately, the coupons have expired! Yup, Clarke's is definitely a dive worth experiencing more than once... and I have!
Sometimes it is evident that a dive is still developing its character; such is the case with Coconut Willies, a cute little bar blessed with a noisy location in one of the cruddiest parts of San Jose'. Willies' tables are made of cheap veneered plywood, and are bolted to the floor through a remnant of worn carpet. There are more people at the bar than at tables, so as soon as you seat yourself, an attractive and friendly waitress tries to take your order over the sound of dice cups smashing on the bar; she then disappears into the back to help prepare it. The view through the cracks in the scarred front door is the constant flow of West San Carlos traffic, and plastic ferns grace the long bamboo rods that run from bar to ceiling. Our observations of some tiny stuffed apes were interrupted by the arrival of enormous platters of food, clearly more than any person should eat for lunch. The clam chowder was adequate, and the club sandwich excellent; as with any bar, the tiny soft drinks are mostly ice. Watch this space -- Willies has promise.
Some dives seem like they're in disrepair, but Colonel Lee's just feels comfortable, like an old pair of slippers: worn and frayed, but at once comfortable and familiar. Our group pulled a few of their cafeteria-style tables and tacky old plastic-covered chairs together in the middle of the dining area so that we could absorb the odd mural on the South wall. The distorted cows and sheep embodied in that mural remind one of the timelessness of mankind, and how Michelangelo's early works probably looked... when he was 5. Other oddities include the ice cream machine that proclaims "Please do not use the machine when the ice cream is watery" and the paper wrapper on the chopsticks that reads "I love shopping at swap meet". The food is cheap, which is appropriate since you pile raw veggies on top of frozen meet in a bowl and take it to the Colonel's chefs to cook on an open cooking stone. Invariably, the food is delicious, making your masticating stop at Colonel Lee's a wonderful experience.
This is one of the tiniest pizza parlors around, so reserve your rickety table in advance. There are only 5 tables crammed into this slightly oversized hallway, and due to the lack of storage space, the pizza boxes are stacked on top of a picnic bench along one wall, and excess chairs are placed upside down on top of the boxes to keep them from falling over. Dusty cobwebs cover the indoor wooden patio awning, and some of the slats are loose and threaten to fall onto the cash register. The air conditioning duct runs right over your head, and the vent faces you like some evil giant worm that wants to eat the tasty pizzas that Colosseum bakes. The homemade unfinished pine platforms that the two TVs rest on are only surpassed in tackiness by the Spuds MacKenzie posters taped to the walls with long strips of Scotch tape. It almost goes without saying that Colosseum has a neon Budweiser sign in the front window.
Ugh! Save yourself some money and buy the Chef Boy Ar Dee canned ravioli at your local grocery store... why pay Coppolas' outrageous prices for crappy food? The tacky beer signs on the wall and the plastic protectors on top of checkered red-and-white tablecloths don't make up for the lack of good price/performance ratio. The garlic bread was so stale that I thought I was going to chip a tooth on it. I feel more than a little out of the mainstream, however, since I have read other reviews of Coppolas that ranted about the "wonderful" food. I just don't happen to agree with these other reviews, nor did any of my lunch companions, but it's only fair to mention these contrasting views. Also, I should mention that I used to like Chef Boy Ar Dee... when I was ten years old.
The ultimate in post-retirement dining, the Cozy Kitchen's decor includes the best in paneling circa 1964, an ice cream freezer in the middle of the kitchen area, and a cash register that rings up $5 by pressing the $1 key five times. The doors are both clearly labeled with EXIT signs in faded red paint, and all counters tilt a different direction (we believe that Cozy's has perfected perpetual motion... if you release a tennis ball on any of their counters, it will continue to roll downhill on the others forever). Of particular note is the hand soap dispenser immediately over the plastic cup lids and coffee creamer containers. The ancient neon sign above the front door says it all: there is no name, just the words "ICE CREAM". The food is typical middle America... everything is horribly overcooked, and some kind of creamy sauce covers everything, including the mixed vegetables that have been boiled to the point where the carrots are indistinguishable from the peas.
The view out the back window of a junkyard with "Welcome" scratched into the cement greets visitors to this excellent little hole-in-the-wall. The carpets are mix and match indoor/outdoor remnants and the plastic flowers are guaranteed not to wilt in this century. There are mirrors on every wall, including one with a roundish spot in the reflective backing rubbed clean so you can read the power meter behind it. The upstairs has a rear dining area with a boom box that has LEDs that flash in time to the enjoyable Latino music, and the windows look out on the enchanting sight of rotting fruit on the corrugated metal roof next door. The floors are uneven, so don't wear your rollerblades unless you also bring knee pads. The food is startling, beyond belief, delicious, and a lot like sex on a plate. My favorite is the Shredded Beef in Salsa, which is so heavenly that I almost have to force myself to periodically sample their other wonderful dishes: Beef Stew, Roast Pork, Prawns, and others. All dishes come with rice with Black Bean soup, fried plantain, and yummy little salads comprised of chopped green peppers, onions, avocado, peas, and just about everything except lettuce. I can't seem to go more than a couple of weeks without a return visit to this truly amazing bit of Cuba in the middle of Japan Town.
Darn, they cleaned this place up! Dragon Lagoon used to be a truly downscale joint, but a change of ownership has cleaned up most of the mess. They missed enough to keep a spot in the diving guide, however, with broken ceiling tiles, exposed light bulbs over some tables, and Christmas decorations still up around the kitchen while it was a summery 95 degrees outside. The food is very tasty, but there is not much selection compared to other local dim sum Chinese restaurants around. Not to worry -- they do have chicken's feet, complete with toenails.
Do you want to know how manly men live? Come on down to the minimalist Elks Lodge to admire ancient (circa 1950) ruins and dig into a full plate of grub. The eating area is the main meeting hall, and as such your view is of very old paintings of dying elks, and the heads of past targets staring at you while you eat. The walls are embellished with Bingo scoreboards and paneling nailed right over the top of the wiring conduits. To enhance your appetite, there is also a cigarette machine in the dining area. All in all, I thought the decor was rather cute in a "hyuck hyuck" sort of way, but I was really sorry I was there when the food arrived. The hot turkey sandwich and green beens were cold, and the milk was warm. There was a loose french fry in the bowl of canned cranberry jelly, and the bread under the pressed turkey slices was so stale that I looked for mold spots. Even the water tasted horrible. Stay away from the Elk's Lodge... your future may depend on it.
I forced myself to give El Faro an extra half star because the decor is so disgustingly tacky, but the food is so plain that the restaurant could not be rated as highly as it deserves. El Faro opened in 1935 as the old local tortilla factory, but apparently they lost their cook to Reuben's down the street and they have not found someone to replace her in the last couple of decades. Okay, so let's ignore the food and get down to the fun stuff: the atmosphere. We dropped a couple of quarters into the brightly colored juke box and sat back to marvel at the wild array of Christmas lights in the shape of little hot peppers that run around the velvet painting of a bandito that hangs on top of the blinds on the front window. The larger dining area is actually a mobile home extension, and the rough wood and exterior paint on what used to be the outside wall is old and cracked. A sombrero and a vivid sarape hang partly over a Bud Dry poster of half-dressed women. An old, carved Contadina tomato sauce box directs the output of the air conditioning unit around the room, and stained duct tape holds an ancient high chair together. The bathrooms both have condom dispensers, but the dispenser in the women's room is pink and classy. With decor like this, who needs food? Come on down for a beer and a look into another world.
This gem is such a dive it is almost impossible to describe. It is clearly a converted burger joint, but they've added a weird covered patio area over the uneven asphalt on one side, covered the front wall with a pinkish faux-granite facing, and placed immense plastic garbage cans in the dining area -- if the random mixture of picnic tables, formica-topped particle board tables, bench seats, and folding chairs can be called a "dining area". The ravishing view of a huge billboard in the parking lot and the leather outlet across the street complete this perfect setting. The food is sensational, too, with tasty and spicy falafels, generous servings of hummos with pita bread, and fat onion rings. Not to be missed are their milk shakes, which are very possibly the best in town. The only mild criticism I could think of is that there is little parking in the area, so get there before noon.
Not even the scowl on the madre's face could spoil the lovely imagery here, complete with burl chairs and tables and two styles of Christmas tree lights adorning the window sills (in early October). Fake flowers on the tables, the "Sprite" brand wall clock, and the exposed Coke tanks lying on the floor near our table were safe from intruders because of the bars in all windows. If the wonderful and copious lunch was not enough to fill your tummy, then you could purchase strands of red licorice at the cash register. Mmmm mmmmmm.... Que bueno! But the bathroom is somewhat questionable, where the missing soap dispenser has been thoughtfully replaced by a can of Comet, and the lower screws of the paper towel dispenser are missing so everyone can hear the BANG BANG BANG against the wall as you turn the little crank.
This crusty old tavern brags about the fact that it is next door to the Brass Rail, the lowest class booby bar in the valley. The Mug is truly timeless: the music in the juke box is a random selection of crap spanning four decades, and the dollar bills tacked to the ceiling are caked in ancient grease and dust. The walls are a random mixture of tongue-and-groove, wood strips, and various kinds of paneling, not to mention the wall-sized poster of a river. The floor is just as bad. It is cracked cement, painted dull red except where cowboy boots have worn the paint away. We hardly noticed the odd sight of a couch on a carpeted platform because the lingerie show began, and the same pretty young lady that we saw at The Raven appeared at our table. The food is nothing to write home about (though I'll tell you about it). They make ordinary burgers, pretty good steak sandwiches, and have tasty appetizers like fried zucchini on demand. There's no question about when the food is ready because the raspy bartender shouts out your name at the top of his lungs. That is, you'll hear him if you're accepting auditory input at that moment.
This barbaric hideaway takes the imagination back to a time when the Huns ruled Europe. Late at night, the rough matron who runs the place will scrape up leftovers from the kitchen and serve a great meal that looks like hell, so the Gasthaus gets special honorable mention for that. Also, it is worth going out of the way to visit the Gasthaus' wide selection of imported beers. The main dining hall is dark, overmost foreboding, like a Viking's Great Hall where one could plan the violent overthrow of entire countries, or at least the kitchen ("I hereby claim this bratwurst in the name of King Olaf... yield or die!") The place is packed with suits at lunchtimes, so clearly the local sales people feel that they can pick customer's pockets better in the dim lighting, or after a couple of brews. Hey, I'm convinced. Let's go back for some more hot potato salad.
The smell of garlic bread assaults your senses as soon as you enter this glorious gastronomical heaven. Immediately, you'll notice that everything in this place is tilted, but it suddenly makes sense when the smiling owner with a kink in his neck comes out front to take your order. After ordering, I sat at an ugly puke-green bench at a rickety old table with an uneven tiled top. Looking up, I noticed that the limp Balloon of Damocles hung over my head by a scrap of ribbon (at least, I assumed it was not an old condom). Pictures of Roman ruins on one wall are separated by an Oriental picture, and the juke box is half Mexican tunes -- isn't this Valley wonderful in its ethnic diversity? Some of the paneling was hung with stripes horizontal, some vertical, and some hidden by a plastic knight on plastic horseback. When the lasagne came, I immediately dove into some of the finest Italian food in the area. The cheese was plentiful and stretched all the way from my plate, around both wrists, through my tie clasp, and into my eager mouth. The garlic bread was even more ethereal than it smelled, though I had to consider buying some extra to give to customers at my afternoon appointments so that their breath would be similar to mine. To make this image of a great dive complete, I got out of there for about $4. As a famous Austrian actor once said, "I'll Be Back."
Excellent Mexican fast food is delivered on paper plates, on a plastic tray with plastic forks. I had to knock on the owner's head to make sure he wasn't plastic also. Actually, he is a friendly old coot who made sure that our party felt at home in this odd-looking joint. The Salvation Army folding tables are complemented by wobbly folding chairs, and are pushed up against fake Z-brick paneling walls (keeping in mind that Z-brick is fake brick, what does that make fake Z-brick?) There is a patio cover inside the restaurant over the cooking area, and it has cardboard tubes that have been cut in half, arrayed on the cover, and painted red to (slightly) resemble tiled roofing material. There are extension cords running all over the place, and many have ten or more things plugged into them using expansion outlets. In one front window there is three neon beer signs, and there is even a powered painting above one table; when plugged in, the fountain lights up! Ohhh, que lindo! There are three different colored trash cans by the cashier's counter: blue for boys, pink for girls, and beige for those that aren't quite sure. The beige is the largest of the three, so I guess that Guadalajara gets a lot of confused customers, like the gentleman sitting outside that asked me for a cigarette and a quarter. The food is authentic Mexican, with such available delicacies as hog stomach and cactus, and it is cheap. You can afford to purchase one of the pinatas from the ceiling as a souvenir of your diving adventure.
The slow service at this little hole-in-the-wall unfortunately gives you too much time to look around and admire the folding chairs at the tables, and the photographs of total strangers that are tacked to an otherwise attractive rice-paper partition. The economical paneling is rudely contrasted by fake woodgrain formica borders, and a suspended TV skews a nice border cloth hanging from the ceiling. The food is nothing special except for the tasty peanut sauce on the salad; the teriyaki chicken is quite ordinary, and the fatty skin attached to it distracts from total enjoyment. The gyoza are okay, but nothing to write home about. Hakone offers an ordinary meal at an ordinary price, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but also nothing to drive any distance to find.
The first thing you notice when you enter the H-Double-H is the dozens of horseshoes nailed to the rafters. It makes you wonder about all those poor shoeless horses wandering the streets, doesn't it? Next, the 60s-style counter where you watch each burger being scorched in turn, and where you wait for your turn to squirt salad dressing from plastic ketchup botlles onto the greenery provided with your lunch. Finally, with plastic baskets full of food clutched in your sweaty palms, you race outside to discover that the picnic tables and benches are cemented down, so you must lean forwad to reach your food. Quaint. The food is pretty decent, though ordinary. Burgers are just that, and the Teriyaki Chicken is some sauce over a thin breast. If you're hungry and you work in the area, I suppose there aren't too many alternatives nearby.
The dim lighting in Henry's could not hide the speaker wire across the painting of an oak tree, nor the fact that the plants are all made of plastic. There are lights below all the paintings, but not one of them points directly at the painting it is intended to illuminate. The salad is limp and the pork chops are dry, but the barbequed ribs and chicken are absolutely marvelous, almost making you forget that the tilt in the floor is making you lean 5 degrees northeast. Spiders have woven great ropes of dusty webbing between the bulletproof planter boxes and the off-white picket fence that is inexplicably nailed to the inside of the walls, and the formica table tops are lovely shades of green or red. A clamp-on light points to a K-Mart box fan dangling from the ceiling in the party room, which is fortunate since the hot air from the parking lot comes right through the cracks in the walls. Service is rather slow, so show up early or take a long lunch.
Earthquakes have definitely taken their toll on this joint. The walls are cracked and poorly replastered. Maybe fear of earthquakes keeps the owners from investing in real tables instead of the cafeteria-style long tables that seat twenty people together. Good food keeps three-piece suited types from all around coming to this ugly joint, which I guess partially explains why there are huge, gross plastic Raiders and 49ers posters on the wall. These contrast oddly with the various hideous paintings tacked randomly around the room, and with the frightening sight of stuffed pheasant inside an aquarium in the middle of the room. The food makes a perfect distraction from these sights, however, especially the Chicken Enchilada with Salsa Verde. The Spanish rice is also very tasty, and has an ideal texture, and the salsa chip dips are both good. The Beef Enchilada, made with ground beef, is unfortunately not as good as the Chicken. Aside from that minor criticism, I'd recommend Honduras for a quick, tasty lunch.
The lilting strains of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" welcomed us to this unusual converted Denny's building. A basket near the front door was clearly labelled "Winner Will Not Be Notify" so we didn't bother to drop off our business cards. The dining room was decorated with brightly colored crepe paper ribbons, and Japanese wall hangings, while prints visible in the next room over were clearly American modern style. Lunch arrived, and the combination of an empty fish tank and finding bones in our Hot and Sour Soup made us suspicious. The Mongolian Beef was quite tasty, but the Shredded Pork was too greasy and the whole cloves in the Garlic Shrimp were a little overpowering. Finally, we had to hunt down the waiter to get our check. Sorry, but the Imperial Gourmet does not meet expectations.
The one word running rampant through your brain when you walk into JC's is "crude," but by the time you leave, your satiated tummy silences all higher brain functions with a passionate desire to take a contented nap. The decor is "nouveau picnique," a weird melange of homemade furniture such as thickly-shellacked tables made from medium grade 2 by 12s, and paneling tacked up everywhere (including over the door to the store room). The menu board is a cute old carny-style carved wooden sign with raised letters and curlicues except for the singular plain cardboard modification. Lunch is a little spendy at around six bucks a plate, but JC's serves up some terrific muchies! The combination plate gives you a great choice of two entrees: beef or pork ribs, barbequed chicken, or hot links. They're all very good, and the barbeque sauce is delicious; let it get all over your face, 'cause there are plenty of napkins in the little plastic baskets on the tables.
This is a cute little hole in the wall that is located in a back-door room that has housed a half-dozen other restaurants in the last decade or so: I wish them luck, but they're going to need to work on their food to build the kind of following it takes to survive. The lumpia was a little overcooked and did not have much filling, and the adobo pork was tasty but had too much fat. The appritada chicken was quite tasty, but my enjoyment was limited by the presence of little bone fragments in it. The ambience is what I would classify as "safe dive" with a funny little 4 by 6 carpeted platform that seems to serve no purpose, neon beer signs in the windows, folding tables, and red plastic on the counter. They even ran out of silverware though the place was nowhere near full, and so they served our food with plasticware. Cute, and it has promise: check back next year to see what they've done with it.
Upon entering Jersey's, you get the same feeling that you get when entering Carlsbad Caverns; the atmosphere surrounds you, and envelops you in its dark charm. The place is huge, and since they ran out of windows they mounted some of their neon beer signs in the middle of the third dining room. The dim neon barely lights up a real cornmeal-and-wood shuffleboard set along the wall, or the rough-hewn wooden walls and tables: some shellacked, some not. The setup clearly emphasizes sports, with TVs in every room and darts trophies covering the walls. Jersey's offers a wide variety of cheesesteaks: peppers, mushrooms, even Italian style. All are very good, though the meat is a little dry. They are a real good buy, too, as the sandwiches are large and filling. On the way out, the local watering hole feeling is consummated with a wall full of photos of the regulars proudly holding dead fish in front of their faces, holding rabbit ears over one another's heads, or mooning the camera. No class; great dive.
I almost shudder to call this cute little place a dive, since the owner's have done the best that they could with the building and location that they're in. The tables are clean, and even match each other, but they sit in this hole-in-the-wall behind the old main street of downtown Sunnyvale. To get to J.E.'s, you either trot across a pitted, packed parking lot in view of the old Westinghouse plant, or you slip down a dark alley near the Honduras Mexican dive. The dining area has huge exposed air conditioning ducts overhead, not quite hidden by the quaint latticework hung from the ceiling, with fake plants threaded through the slats. The amiable owners handed us home-made menus, clearly designed on a computer and printed out on a dot-matrix printer. The menu is ten pages long, so it takes some time to decide which delicacies to requisition. The main dishes were very tasty: mine was a combination of pork and chicken skewers that tasted absolutely wonderful. I was less thrilled with the prawn crackers with pepper oil, and the lumpia were too small and slightly overcooked. An enjoyable lunch, and with time I think they may evolve into a classic dive.
What a letdown this weird converted Sambo's turned out to be. The decor is classic dive: paint splashed on the walls and ceiling, Budweiser "Year of the Ram" calendar on the wall, two different kinds of paneling on the walls, and the cute incongruity that they don't have a seafood lunchtime special. Unfortunately, the food is bland. Yes, even dishes with smashing names like "Beef with Black Bean Green Pepper Hot Fun" turned out to be tasteless and boring; the "Hot and Sour Soup" required a heavy dose of pepper oil and vinegar to bring it up to the point where it could be distinguished from egg-flower soup. What a shame; I certainly expected more.
The speed of delivery at Kal's is absolutely amazing! A tasty, freshly-barbequed chicken sandwich was flung onto the counter in it own cute little plastic basket almost before I could finish paying for it. But that's where the service ends in this homey dive: the sandwich fixings counter in the middle of the dining area gives you a broad choice of ketchup, mustard, or pickles. This counter, like the bench seats and menu signs, are obviously made by Kal himself from the second finest grade of Orchard Supply plywood. He spent even less on the sleazy brown-speckled linoleum or the pine boards on adjustable metal brackets that serve as shelves for the exposed bags of hamburger buns. The decor is made complete by picnic tables and benches indoors, smoke stains on the walls and ceiling, an unused metal order rack next to a rusty old fume hood, and the comforting sight of a large fire extinguisher hung between the burgers and the buns. Hit the restroom as you leave... it's outside, around back.
Floor-to-ceiling dive! One's eyes cannot help but wander from the finest indoor-outdoor carpet, up past the random-style folding chairs, the cheap wall panels topped half way up the wall by uneven gray molding that highlights the splotchy yellow walls that are unfortunately left uncovered by the odd beer posters scotch-taped to these ugly walls. The eyes continue past a wrought iron railing inexplicably located ten feet up the kitchen partition, and on to see a huge air conditioning duct that juts out into the dining room. We took a long table near a front window with a bullet hole in it, and read the adverts strategically placed under the glass tabletops. Soon the adverts were hidden beneath vast amounts of food; the lunch included 10 different appetizers, soup, rice, and (oh yeah) a main dish, too. The food was very tasty, and lightly spiced chunks of chicken attempted unsuccessful escapes from my plate... I taught them a lesson in gastronomics. Finally, lunch was topped off with sticks of "Haitai Heart Juicy" chewing gum (it tasted like Juicy Fruit to me). A fine lunch at a good price.
There's only room for about 8 people to eat inside this tiny building, likely an old Fotomat outlet, but the charm of Lee's Kitchen is in grabbing a quick take-out lunch in a styrofoam clamshell on the way to a lunch in the park. You have an amazing variety of lunches to choose from, with both Cantonese and Szechuan styles of food, and the helpings are pretty generous. Lee's serves one of the best $4 lunches in the area.
The pool table is moved out of the main dining area at noon so that the salad bar can be set up on top of it. Good, cheap food is served by some cheaper-looking waitresses who apparently ignore the tacky black-and-white checkered linoleum and the decades-old sombreros on the walls. The brown-and-white checkered plastic place mats clash nicely with the blue-and-white flowered plastic tablecloths, and the ambiance is made complete by the newly-acquired painting of a nude on a velvet canvas. The "Hangovers administered to here" sign over the bar predates WW-II. The bathroom doors are color-coded (pink and blue) so you know which is for you, and the new menu declares "Food to go 20 cents extra except burritos"... except burritos??? Why no extra charge for burritos to go?
UPDATE: Wow, the prices at Lina's Place suddenly went up up up! What was once a great $4 lunch is now closer to $7, and one must assume that it is to pay for the boring yet matching tablecloths that now cover the same old army surplus tables. Lina now has a matching set of ugly placemats that describe in a 1000 words what should have been a picture. The new prices apparently have not raised enough revenue to get real table numbers -- they still have little plastic "Your number is ..." cards (stolen from some butcher?) above each table. They obviously couldn't steal the card labelled "1", but they put masking tape over the first digit of "11" at the first table, so nobody gets too confused and the food makes it to the right table.
It's fairly difficult to find this little gem in the ancient shopping strip along Murphy, but it's well worth the effort. With so many Chinese restaurants in the Valley, it is tough to find really great Szechuan food that stands out among the riff-raff; Little Szechuan is one of those rare finds. The spices in the Kung Pao Chicken are just on the border between spicy and HOT, with a wonderful thickness that clings to every piece of meat, green peppers, peanuts, and so forth. Other dishes are similarly well-designed, especially the Shredded Pork in Garlic Sauce. The quantity of food is just right, too, and one leaves there happy and thinking ahead to the next visit. The decor is an odd mixture of mirror tiles on the wall, mismatched light fixtures, and tape holding the aged carpet together. The most outrageous touch is a blanket nailed up in a doorway that leads to the restrooms. Finally, perhaps it's just me, but isn't it a little tacky to have your daily specials handwritten on paper placemats and taped to the walls?
Lord John's proximity to Santa Clara University explains why the carpet reeks of spilled beer, but the effect is like removing the seats from an old theater and seeing the carpet under those seats. The chairs are far worse than theater seats, too; very few match, and some are held together with string and baling wire. The ceiling is painted some awful shade of red, which just highlights the exposed wiring conduits and swirling colors from water damage. The whole building shakes when trucks whiz by on the highway 15 feet behind you... in other words, this would be a great dive if the food was any good. Unfortunately, the only competition for the minds and stomachs of the SCU students is the University cafeteria, so Lord John's has not worked much on the quality of the food. They actually tried to convince us that all tortellini al pesto is made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.
Not bad as a restaurant, which keeps it from being a true "dive". The food is okay, and the decor is clean and only a little tacky: the plastic Jesus on top of the Pepsi machine is a little odd, as is the map of Alaska on the tray leaning against the same machine. Unfortunately, all the tables, chairs, and silverware match. Even the velvet painting is not nauseating.
Simply extraordinary, but don't come here with any more than 3 friends unless you want to eat lunch in the park, and make sure that none of your friends are shorter than 6 feet tall 'cause the bar is so tall that you can hardly see on top of it. This tiny place combines a mini-market (I now know what "Quaker Oats" looks like in Mexican) with a food bar that serves delicious, authentic Mexican fare. Somehow, they still manage to cram 22 linear feet of refrigerator space into that tiny room. Don't worry about the dim lighting that results from having most lights burned out; you'd probably rather not know what goes into their sensually overspiced morsels. Ah, the alluring atmosphere! The boxes stacked to the ceiling! The 100 Jesus candles blessing your belt buckle! The indoor plastic flags! The plasticware in a foil-covered styrofoam cup! What a slice of life!
A fragment of Heaven in the middle of Hell. For the enlightenment of anyone unaware of the misplaced time warp called Alviso, this little shanty town is located beside Highway 237 in the middle of an old dump site. It looks like something out of an old Night Gallery episode, with rickety buildings that somehow have withstood floods and earthquakes for the last 27 million years. Yet in the middle of this post-Armageddon landscape we found a wonderful restaurant with absolutely perfect salsa, and wonderful home style enchiladas and chile rellenos. This prehistoric building has faded paint, huge pinatas that resemble floating mines, eight light fixtures but only one light bulb, and at least six different styles of chairs at the rickety tables. There are daily specials handwritten on paper placemats taped to the walls, and a hideous cherub-shaped bird bath on an indoor shelf. What, you were expecting professional interior decorating in Alviso? Silly person.
Our group was seated in the farthest back corner of this old IHOP building, and we were greeted by a crumpled paper placemat with a <disgusting noun deleted> on it -- really gross! Immediately, our eyes were assaulted by awful floor-to-ceiling murals of quaint Mexican scenes: a senorita lounging in a hammock, dangling two different sized feet over the edge, and men with oddly-shaped bodies making oddly-shaped pottery. The murals did not quite stop at the ceiling, either, but periodically splashed up onto the ceiling itself. Some walls also had cheap paneling, with cracked and partially-unpainted trim, and there was an odd shelf with nothing on it dangling from the ceiling. The service was quite fast, though only the waitress could understand English, and the food was very tasty, though definitely Americanized. Our beer was delivered promptly, along with chilled plastic mugs, and the salads were accompanied by a half-empty bottle of Wish Bone Italian dressing. Since many of the light bulbs in the restaurant are burned out, it was really hard to tell how clean things were, but all in all it seemed like a good, safe dive.
This guy Mike must be intentionally trying to get into our Diving book! This joint is obviously the local hangout for the high-class clientele that take advantage of the sign on the counter that reads "Cash payroll checks for lowest price" then blow it all on beer served by a "blonde" waitress with black roots peeking through. Mike's has so many dive-isms that it would be hard to list them all: a neon Miller Beer sign, padded bench seats, a large and mysterious hole in the circa-1965 paneling, wobbly pool tables, a Michelob Light tiffany lamp, extension cords tacked to the walls, lingerie shows on Fridays... the list could go on for pages. The pool room is the best part, with a couch eight feet above the floor level (on top of the restrooms, if that helps explain it). The food is decent greasy-spoon slop, complete with sticky silverware, but I did not feel uneasy about enjoying my beef sandwich.
Entering the original half of the Mini Gourmet is like walking into Trucker Heaven, complete with Naugahyde benches and a dozen stools crowded around the linoleum-covered counter. The back wall is cheaply paneled and covered with pictures of family, fish, and who knows what else. A quick pit stop reveals a coagulated cup of hand soap on the sink. This quaint atmosphere contrasts sharply with the garden-style dining area that Mini added in the late 70s, with modern tables and booths, and cute little Tiffany lamps with Girl Scout emblems on each pane. This dining area is really very nice, except for the one wall that it shares with the original building, where there is an ugly wooden cabinet along the wall supporting the coffee maker, and there is still an air conditioning unit circulating air between the dining room and the kitchen. The food is excellent, and you can get wonderful ice cream milk shakes with your generous lunches. Their meals include American staples like Grilled Cheese, Clubs, and so forth. Everything on the crowded menu is good, so take your time and enjoy yourself.
This dark, dingy place only qualifies as a dive for the rank beginner. It is safe, and the quality of the food never varies from typical middle American standards. The decor is not so much tacky as it is outdated, not quite fitting the image of the progressive Silicon Valley. There are mirror tiles on the walls with fake gold veins running through them, and an old steer head above the fireplace with its eyes half closed (I can picture it now... those cruel SOBs snuck up on that steer when it was asleep and !WHAM! bye bye Ferdinand...) Don't overlook the flowery stripey wallpaper, either. It offended me greatly. The food is edible but boring; the burgers are just burgers, the veggies are overcooked, and the fries are just sliced potatoes. Nothing at Mister Steer is truly terrible, but its hard to form an opinion about a place like this.
"Great Bellies are Made, not Born" brags a poster at this rugged tavern, where one sign of promethean eminence is to add your name to the "Century Club" roster for those great beer drinkers have sampled all of the 100 beers and ales from around the world that Mike stockpiles. There is a room for everyone: a tiny side room past the bar with dart boards and stacked up boxes of supplies, an arcade room with more boxes of supplies, and an enormous sunken dining hall (that more than slightly resembled my high school's cafeteria) with more supplies stacked against the wall. The lighting was too dim to clearly see the sticky tables made from 2-by-4's, but illuminated clearly the many sports pennants, computer printout banners, and empty beer bottles that nearly hide the walls. The pizza is very good and is priced reasonably, but this place is rather out of the way for a Silicon Valley lunch; I recommend that you visit Mountain Mike's pizza dive for a little Monday night football with the rowdies that indubitably hang out there.
The owners of this lovely gem obviously direct their efforts where it counts: offering plenty of outstanding food at rock-bottom prices. A five-course lunch will only set you back $4.25, and will include tasty saffron rice and phenomenally palatable curried lamb. During the brief wait for the food, take a moment to absorb the tacky conditions in this marvelous side room to the local general store: look below the silly cork and mirror squares glued to the walls and note that the table numbers stencilled there advance "5, 10, 7, 11", the next position being the door to the unisex bathroom where a bottle of musk cologne is thoughtfully provided. Half of the lights are burned out, but I could still clearly see that the peculiar stool/counter running along one wall is made of cheap plywood. With all these lovely factors, how can Nusrat Sweets only rate 4-1/2 stars? The tablecloth and napkins matched, and were clean.
There's not much room at this place, so bring your lawn furniture; you'll feel quite at home in this unadorned ex-fish market. The food is inexpensive, and quite tasty. The oil used to deep fry their food is light, and there is no pool left on your plate afterwards -- an unexpected plus, considering the seedy atmosphere. The portions of fish are large, completely hiding the handful of french fries underneath, and they are generous with the clams in their chowder. The ambience is peculiar: a huge glass-and-metal display case that clearly was a fish market refrigerator is now mostly empty, with a small section occupied by plastic containers of tartar sauce and malt vinegar. It has bits of green tape gracefully sculpted to resemble (in a madman's eye) a kelp bed. A dead blowfish stands guard over this display, as does a dried starfish resting on a candelabra on the back wall (there are no candles, of course, only this ugly, dead starfish). Enjoy a quick lunch here, then head back to work for atmosphere.
Omar's has a quaint fast-food atmosphere, and the cook is a genial fellow, but the food simply misses the mark to make Omar's a good dive. Oh, I enjoyed seeing a pink formica food counter running right across the middle of a front window, and the sight of an empty display case over my head brought a tear to my eye. The stools, bolted to the primeval cave floor, are in alternating shades of orange and mud-brown. I guess the biggest problem with the food is that the falafels were undercooked, and had a heavy licorice tinge to it. The light hummos sauce over the falafels was rather tasty, but could have used an accent of chili sauce, too. Ah, well, Omar's is okay for a quick lunch if you do not have time to run all the way out to Vivi's.
No restaurant in the valley can compete with the combination of fast service and home style cooking offered at La Paisana (Oh, yes, we were surprised to find out that it's not an Italian restaurant, too). The food is outstanding, with smooth, mild sauces and a side bowl of uninhibited salsa, heavy on the cilantro. As odd as it sounds, one of their best edibles is a barbequed beef burrito! The atmosphere in this joint is also top-notch; the menu is a couple dozen full sheets of paper, one per dish, tacked to the wall behind the register (The English teacher in the diving group noted the ran'dom apostrophe's in the paper's). In the dining area, even the $3 Sprouse Reitz chairs and non-matching picnic tables are bolted to the floor. One wall is adorned with paneling, molding, and wallpaper, with a huge redwood trellis nailed over the lot. Other walls have lovely paintings of Aztec warriors sacrificing virgins on hot rocks, and the light bulbs hang at least six inches below the light fixtures. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!
The good news is that the same wonderful cooks that have been here for years are still preparing the finest home-style Mexican food in the known world (and Canada). The bad news is that we are quickly losing one of the tackiest decors in the Silicon Valley as the previous owner sadly passed on and her son is brashly upgrading the interior, and changing the name of the restaurant. Originally The Capri Inn, then Ruben's, and now Medina's; hurry before the name changes again! The exterior is still the crude house-converted-to-restaurant that drew me in over 15 years ago, but inside you will now find soft pastel colors, matching tables, and (gasp!) the name of the restaurant embroidered into the backs of the chairs. Fortunately, they've had a tough time hiding all the old stuff: the hole looking back into the kitchen, the old mismatching paneling, and the rude placement of a tiny entrance into a bathroom right from the dining room. Unquestionably, the best part of the interior is the lovely decorations on the hot plates placed in front of you. Creamy refried beans, tangy enchilada sauce, ass-kicking salsa, home-made tortillas... oh, get me back through the door and let's do it again!
First glance convinces you that Peking is a cafeteria, not a restaurant. The tables are all lined up in long rows, and you must seat yourself. The tablecloths are not just horrid: they are painful to look at. They are plastic, colored with a powder blue background and little ducks with bonnets in the foreground. The walls are cement blocks with shelf paper glued on top, and the paper sags in a number of spots. Lunch is an all-you-can-eat buffet. The choices are somewhat limited to an ordinary selection of sweet and sour pork and broccoli beef entrees, and a handful of filling staples like spring rolls, noodles, and rice, but everything is tasty and of course you can take it in any ratio you want. In the corner is a frozen yogurt dispenser which pumps out truly stellar dessert. Peking is conveniently located and a good value for your money at less than five bucks for lunch.
The crude painting of a Spanish dancer that looks 5 months pregnant somehow captures the spirit of this gem in the rough. Everything here is odd or distorted, like an ethnic funhouse. Take, for example, the doors in the dining area that are trapped behind tables. One is 24 inches wide and 5 feet tall, the other is 18 inches wide and 7 feet tall. Or how about a bare light bulb dangling over the lone table in the front window dining alcove. Finally, I have never thought that indoor shingled awnings were a sign of class (distinction, yes, but not class). The odd collection of ceramic elephants on top of the freezer mirror how you'd feel if you actually finished a full lunch plate, though the food is so tasty that I must admit that I was tempted to keep stuffing my face until I exploded (scenes from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" went through my mind momentarily and convinced me that I should stop, even if the tasty chips are "wafer thin"). My burrito had lots of chunks of pork and hot peppers snuggled cozily is a pool of tasty sauce. The enchilada was filled with stretchy cheese, and the refried beans were light and creamy. I'll admit to being a little nostalgic about this food -- the home-style care that they give their food reminds me of the dinners with the family down the block when I was a kid.
Your feet stick to the brick-patterned linoleum as you enter this anachronism in San Jose's new downtown, and the air conditioning unit must date back to the 50s along with the dust that is caked thickly on it. The walls are crowded with ugly burl clocks (for sale, as if I'd have one in my house) and mirrors inexplicably bordered in gaudy golden picture frames. We were seated in the back dining room, separated from the main area by a plywood partition and prison bars, then instructed to share menus 'cause there weren't enough for everyone. We were then served overcooked pap: the peas had lost all their color, and the ravioli fell apart on your fork. The spaghetti sauce tasted like licorice, the iced tea tasted like Lipton instant, and the coffee tasted like dishwater, but all in all I never felt threatened. The best thing that I can say about Pete's is that there is no parking available there.
A large wooden sign on the front of the building reads "PIZ DEPOT," and an array of neon beer signs in the windows draws you into this spacious pizza joint. There are plastic plants and bizarre, ugly stained glass for adornment. The only fan in the restaurant is in the dining area that is closed off during lunch, so I guess you are being encouraged to have a pitcher of beer to cool off while you wait for the food. The pizza is pretty good; the sauce is lively but inoffensive, and the crust is good. All in all, I'd go back to the Piz Depot for lunch or dinner.
The seedy neighborhood around this feeding trough should have been enough to scare us away, but brave souls that we are we ventured forth into the unknown in search of diamonds in the muck. Pizza Wheel was a disappointment, mostly due to an odd and overpowering spice that they put in their sauce (sage? celery seed? squid tentacle? who knows...) Of all the dishes we sampled, only the lasagne had enough cheese and ground beef to hide that odd aftertaste. The calzone and pizza were not able to cover up the spice, and so I cannot recommend them. If the owners change their recipe, however, we have here the makings of a superlative dive! The aura is like an unfinished basement, complete with folding tables, wires running in random directions and often not going to any particular destination, and peculiar touches like a phone jack four feet off the floor in the middle of the dining area. The place is so classy that you need to have the cashier "buzz" you into the locked restroom. The ultimate touch is the owner's pizza delivery vehicle: an ancient, rusty, dilapidated Caddy that sounded like it would fall apart before completing the latest delivery order. I have hopes that Pizza Wheel will someday join the ranks of good dives.
The sound of pool balls can clearly be heard over the roar of Highway 101 traffic only a few yards behind you as you step into a strange mixture of cultures that are just starting to meld. A large menu, painted on the wall, is apparently left over from previous owners, and the current owners felt no twinge of guilt in hanging part of an odd network of wooden trellises over the top part of this menu. These trellises came from the Home Club in 4 by 8 foot panels, so the interior decorators used plastic tie wraps to hold them all together. The net effect is that of a relief map of the moon hanging over your head. Weird, but quaint in its own demented way. There is no waiting at the food counter, so I loaded my tray with Spicy Chicken, Sweet and Sour Pork, and Pan Fried Noodles, then headed past the pool table and up to one of the round wooden picnic tables. I pulled up a bench and dug into a tasty and filling meal. The chicken was heavily spiced and unexpectedly palatable, and the pork was served with the sauce added at the last moment, so it was not soggy. Since I had expected PJ's to be a sandwich shop, I was not prepared for the sight of salt, pepper, soy, and jalapeno oil dispensers at the table. PJ's is a good find, and its location makes for easy access.
There is an immediate feeling of warmth as you enter Quincy's, and the smell of Cajun hot sauce fills your imagination and starts your salivary glands working like some Pavlovian experiment. A kindly face peeks out over a tiny walk-up counter and asks what your pleasure will be that day. For me, it was their locally famous pork ribs in hot barbecue sauce, and when I asked for a Dr. Pepper to go with it, the lady ran back to the refrigerator to see if that was one of the drinks available that day. It was, so I took it back to a table in the back of the dining area with an old, crude Naugahyde bench seat. I looked around, admiring the cracked brick walls barely illuminated by dusty fluorescent lights overhead. Horrendously ugly wildlife patterns on the interior wall paneling somehow seemed to fit with the warped paintings of river scenes. My ribs arrived in a Styrofoam clamshell, complete with two slices of white bread in a sandwich baggie. I dug in with delight, savoring every bite of the ex-pig until the bones were bare and in a pile in the clean side of the clamshell. My companion divers claimed to enjoy their hot links and beef ribs as much as I enjoyed the pork ribs, though they shared my opinion that $8 was a little spendy for such a lunch. Bussing our own table was easy, since there is a huge metal garbage can in the middle of the dining area. Quincy's is worth a visit, if only because it's so difficult to find Cajun style food in this area.
The Raven's claim to fame is the lingerie shows held most lunches, if you can see the models in the light of the 20 neon beer signs hung on the walls. The dark decor is complemented by dead balloons hanging from the ceiling, and exposed air conditioning conduits. The atmosphere is friendly, and one lady sitting at the bar watched the soap opera on the tube and occasionally shouted out her on-going synopsis at the waitress. The food was good but ordinary. A tuna melt sandwich is hard to screw up, and the taco salad was filling but... that's all. Obviously, it is not the food that keeps The Raven occupied.
This restaurant is a definite must, but make sure you go on a Friday when their delicious buffet is out. The rest of the week, expect them to take an hour to deliver pizza pans covered with injera (crepe-like bread) and wonderful tidbits like curried lamb, red pepper lentils, and spiced ribs. These pizza pans serve half of the people in your lunch party, with no regard to their seating arrangement, so we had to play musical chairs in order to reach our food. You eat with your fingers, but there are not nearly enough napkins at the table to keep your body clean, and so you travel down the hallway of this converted house looking for a shower to wash in. The restaurant is nicely decorated with tilted pictures of people with yak turds woven into their dreadlocks, and the wobbly tables have "Welcome to Our Place" paper placemats safely tucked underneath the glass tabletops.
What do you get if you cross an old drive-up with a mobile home expansion unit? The unexpected answer is Ricardo's Mexican fast food joint, which sports such finery as rough, unfinished window frames erected with flat-head nails. I couldn't help but wonder what interior decorating genius looked at some children's chairs and thought to nail them upside-down to the walls here, then to rest woven baskets filled with cheap silk plants on these chairs. A year-round display of Christmas lights is further cheapened by having more than half of them burned out. What a sight! Unfortunately, Ricardo's misses the chance to be a great dive by having boring food. Not good, not bad, just... boring. The cooks at Ricardo's need to be brave and make a statement one way or another: are they the cilantro type? How about cumin and jalapenos? We'll possibly never know, since they simply toss a little shredded beef, lettuce, tortillas, and watery refried beans on a plastic plate and call it a burrito lunch. Pity -- such wasted potential.
The Rip Off is a great hangout for men in business suits and other low-lifes who come here to play pool for lunch. The cabinetry and all the counter tops are done in cheap varnished plywood. Pull up a wobbly stool to the hand-painted backgammon and chess boards on the counter top. The lighting is so bad that you can hardly tell the onions from the pickles at the hamburger fixings table near the bathrooms, but you have the option of eating outside at ancient picnic tables (if you don't mind shouting over the sound of constant traffic next to you). In other words, a great
