Pyramid Alehouse

On the way home, we stopped in Berkeley for dinner, at Pyramid Alehouse. We had met up with Kathy's friends, and I was really impressed with how quickly the restaurant was able to accommodate and serve eleven people on a Saturday night (especially when it's only a few miles from UC-Berkeley). It was a neat place, and like most breweries, there was a tour that you can take in the daytime (complete with free samples, apparently). I tried a "beertail" called "one bad apple" which was a pear cider with a splash of black cherry soda. It was okay... I don't think I would get it again. Jonathan tried the Oregon Honey Beer, which tasted like every other beer, except it had a sweet aftertaste. The rest of the table had a variety of things, including the three major brews that the place makes.

What was even more amusing was the number of "duplicate" orders at the table. Two people got cilantro chicken. Two people got honey salmon. Two people shared a pizza and both had salads. Two people got meatloaf. Jonathan and I were going to both get burgers, but he found a Reuben and changed his order. Crazy. Jonathan thought the Reuben was a bit salty. My burger was pretty good, although it was a medium instead of the medium-well I requested. And the mashed potatoes were about the most plain I had ever had. We also had a "pizza twist" appetizer, which was fabulous. Hefeweizen crust stuffed with garlic, parmesan, and mozzarella, with a little ranch flavoring. Served with ranch and marinara sauces. Oddly, nobody else wanted to try them, so we even got to take some home!

Reports of the other meals... the cilantro chicken was very moist and delicious. The pizza was really bad, they couldn't give it away. The meatloafs were very good. The salads were huge.

Sierra-at-Tahoe

We were up at Sierra-at-Tahoe for the day, and after our fourth run, we broke for lunch. There were like seven places to eat at this resort, but we chose the Sierra Pub, since there were two chairs open together, LoL. I had a chicken-bbq-pesto panini, and Jonathan had a smoked beef sandwich. Both were great, as were the homemade chips that came with them.

Red Rock Coffee

We're not really coffee people, and when given the opportunity, I usually take a hot chocolate or a spiced cider on a cold morning instead. I did spend a year working next to a pizza cafe and got many a free cookie and coffee-drink from there. That's when I learned about the differences between lattes and americanos and macchiotos, etc. Although I do love an after-dinner espresso before a night of fun on cruises.

So to try out a coffee shop is not really common. It happened when I was helping out a stranger, really. I volunteered to help someone with a graduate school project, and we did it on the second floor of a local coffee shop, Red Rock Coffee. I was thinking of getting a mocha espresso, but ended up with a blended mocha (think cold and creamy). It was delicious, although I'm not really into spending $4.25 for a little caffeine-y goodness.

The place itself is on a corner in downtown Mountain View, and is rather pretty on the outside. Not because of paint or anything like that, but just because it is built in large stones instead of the same look every other storefront has in downtown. The menu is quite small, serving coffee/tea drinks and bottled waters.

Do-it-Yourself Frozen Yogurt

We headed to Carvel after dinner one night, but they were closed. So we drove a few blocks and found a plaza with a Baskin Robbins and a DIY Yogurt. It was a very cool place, and a concept that I was unfamiliar with. Basically, you take a cup and add your own frozen yogurt and toppings. They had about 10 flavors of yogurt, including chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, cappuccino, taro, tart, mango, and a few others. There were over fifty topping options, including a bunch of cereals and candies, four syrups, and probably ten fruits. When you're finished they charge you 33 cents per ounce, and put it on a scale. There's a "weight of the day" and if it matches, yours is free. The weight yesterday was 0.88 oz, and I came closest with 0.83.

I tried vanilla, cappuccino, strawberry, and tart. I added brownie bits, oreos, and strawberries. The strawberries were delicious, and the oreos were a good crushed size. The brownie bits left something to be desired (they weren't "fudgy" or fresh). Tart froyo tastes like yogurt, and I had to mix it with the strawberry for it to be palatable. The strawberry was delicious and strong. Tee cappuccino was too strong, I had to swirl it with the vanilla, which was that "country vanilla" style. As a whole, the place was good and I'd go back. BUT, since this is a typical set-up out here, I'd love to try another fro-yo place, as this one has pretty poor reviews on yelp in comparison.

Japanese Tapas

Tapas, for those who may not know, are like appetizers. Very common in Spain and similar cultures. There's a great tapas place in Orlando (Cafe Tu Tu Tango), and although we've only been once, we know a lot about tapas in culture thanks to one of our Spanish teachers in high school. She incorporated a lot about living in Spain and Costa Rica into the course, and we even know the hand gesture for "check, please," LoL. So when Kathy suggested we go for Japanese tapas, Jonathan and I were on board!

We drove into Cupertino (about ten minutes away from the apartment) and in the back of a plaza was GocHi, a Japanese Fusion tapas place. GocHi is short for "gochisou," meaning "treat or delicious hearty meal." It was packed for 8:30pm on a Wednesday night, and we waited a few minutes for a table. At first I was very excited, as many of the tables are a more traditional (sit on the floor" style, where shoes are removed and placed in a cubby before entering the seating area. However, we were given a "standard" table, one side was a bench against the wall and the other was chairs.

We ordered five dishes and split them all.

• First out was one of the daily specials (I don't remember the name), which was deep-friend salmon with potato cream and tartar sauce, described as a croquette, but served like a roll as sushi. I didn't care for it, tasted too much like tempura (which I loathe). The potato cream was tasty, but as a whole I wouldn't order it again. Both Jonathan and Kathy enjoyed it.
  
• Then came the Sake Cream Cheese Miso Fushion Pizza. It had salmon and roe, scallions and cheese. It also had mushrooms which were not listed in the menu. I only had one piece, I just couldn't stomach it. The crust was light and crispy and the cheese was delicious and not oily, but it was large roe (probably about a centimeter in diameter), and it grossed me out. I tried eating around it, but I also didn't really care for salmon on pizza. I'd go as far as to say that I wish the salmon was smoked instead of baked, it might have helped. The other two liked it, but JB also pushed off the roe.
  
• The shiromaguro tataki came after that, which was seared albacore in garlic oil with little chips of garlic. The garlic chips were not very flavorful, but the albacore was pretty good. (Tataki means seared on the outside and raw in the middle). We probably ate this dish the quickest.
  
• Then was the duck steaks in a sweet, thick brown sauce. They were my favorite dish of the evening, and I thought the sauce was great. The meat was a little fatty for duck, but half of the slices were gristle-free. Jonathan didn't like the duck but thought the sauce was good.
  
• Last was a vermicelli noodle dish with cod (although none of us could taste it) and seaweed. With some cayenne pepper sprinkled on it, it was good. Otherwise it was a bit flavorless. It wasn't anything special, but it was recommended by the server, and nothing worth complaining about.
  

Overall, it was an interesting place, and the menu is very extensive. However, I don't think I'm very likely to return. Tapas are not a cheap meal anywhere, so they need to be delicious in my opinion.

Dim Sum: Not For Dum Dums

Jonathan and I have been looking forward to trying a full dim sum meal for some time now, as we love the small selection that can be found in certain restaurants in Florida. We've been twice since living in California. Andy and Jim, and Jim's girlfriend Vivian invited us to a dim sum lunch in downtown Mountain View the first time, and we went with just Andy the second time. Both times we went to Fu Lam Mum, which is on the north side of downtown. The place is two stories, but uses a gigantic atrium with only a handful of tables upstairs, when it might have been smarter to have a smaller atrium and more upstairs seating.

Servers bring around carts with covered baskets and plates of food. This ranges from chicken feet to egg custard tarts to pork dumplings. There are also pork-filled pastries, rice paper-covered shrimp, pork-rice-mushrooms in leaves, and a variety of other things. You just let the servers know what to put on your table (which has a big lazy susan), and then you share the dishes. The servers mark on your receipt what you got, and then it is tallied up later to get your total bill. The difficulty: the servers don't speak English, and the dishes aren't labeled. So if you're not sure, you take a gamble. Luckily, Andy could communicate with the servers, so we were set.

We loved pretty much everything we tried, especially the shrimp dim sums (and I'm not sure of the pluralization, so feel free to correct me). I didn't care for the leaf-filled option or the sweet pastry with pork, but we're definitely dim sum fans in general and can't wait to try more. The Chinese broccoli is also worth noting... I thought it was bitter, JB thought it was sweet. It looks nothing like regular broccoli except that it is green. However, it has the stem of asparagus and leaves like spinach. I included a stock internet photo, the only difference from ours being that the oyster sauce was served on the side for ours, not drizzled across (which was a good thing, since it was way too salty for my tastes).

Luckily, this place has a night special, where after 9pm you can get three plates of dim sum for $10, so we want to try that next. :)

Something to beware: only three people out of five had tea with the meal (trip #1), but they charged us for five people. Since the table was set with cups at each place setting, I guess that's how they charge... but Andy and I didn't even turn our cups over so they would be usable. Perhaps it could have been argued, but we didn't bother, since we only caught it at the last minute. The second trip, none of us had tea so it was a simple solution.

Xanh: A Vietnamese Lounge/Restaurant

Kathy felt like Xanh, and we are big fans of Vietnamese, so we headed there the other night for dinner. As are most of the places I've written about, it's in downtown Mountain View, and it was a nice night (clear in the upper 40s) so we took a walk down there to try it out. It was a Thursday night at 7pm, and there was a thirty minute wait to seat the three of us.

The lounge area was pretty fantastic, but it was packed so we weren't able to sit and enjoy appetizers/drinks. We walked around downtown instead, but I did snag a few pictures of the room. There were comfy-looking couches and low lighting. The silver decorative hanging balls were fun to look at, and the entire side wall was smooth stones with water pouring down them. (the photos on the website are quite a bit better than the ones I took, so if you're interested, just click on the link at the beginning of this post.)

Instead of giving us a pager, they actually phoned Jonathan to let him know that our table was ready. We were seated in a side room that was bordered with exciting paintings and ball-bearing curtains. There were clear glass panels and a wall of shelving with fancy lighting on bottles.

The three of us shared dishes, which was easy to do since there were appetizer plates on the table when we sat down. We ordered the Traditional Roll to start with, which was a spring roll filled with poached pork and shrimp, rice noodles, green apple, cilantro, mint, cucumber, and shallots. There was no soy sauce provided, but Kathy and JB both enjoyed the peanut sauce with the roll. Then we had the Ahi Tuna Tartare, which was served as a cerviche/guacamole dip with wonton chips. It was made from ahi tuna, cucumber, avocado, mango, green apple, scallions, and some kind of herbs. It was mixed in front of us, and set in a vase of dry ice (see the photo!). I loved the concept, but the rush of flavors was a bit strange, and the cucumber was not chopped finely enough. We want to give it a try at home, but we'll probably alter the dish a little, especially since our Magic Bullet is sitting at the house in Melbourne. Then we got a dish of glass noodles with dungeness crab that included scallions and fried shallots as well. I didn't try any, as the crab was shredded and I couldn't eat around it. Both of the others enjoyed it, and Kathy mentioned it is one of her favorite dishes at the place. Finally, we had the Peppercorn Beef, which was filet minion over potatoes, asparagus, and bell peppers, all in a decently-flavorful peppercorn sauce. The beef itself was quite good, although the potatoes were horribly unflavored... they could have used a spice rub in addition to the sauce. It was the priciest dish, but then again it was filet minion.

We did not have dessert or anything, but I did want to mention the glasses. They are really neat, and the ones for soft drinks are even cooler than the water glasses. The blue cup is a candle.