Palo Alto is by far the most diverse and great cuisine scene I have ever lived in, except Seoul. I am glad to be here and enjoying my time here trying diverse restaurants.

Number interpretation.

10: Must go
9: Strongly recommended
8: OK place
7 or below : try at your own risk

PizzA Chicago - Pizza - 8 out of 10
Price is okay. They throw many coupons and it is silly to pay in full regular price. The specialties are very diverse. I found the combinations of the specialty pizzas toppings are very interesting and the toppings are fresh. The problem I had was with its dough. It is very unique, very fluffy, not bad. But, not too good either. The other problem is that this is not a real deep dish pizza. I miss real Chicago pizza.

Uncle Frank's - BBQ - 9.5 out of 10
Un-PaloAlto like place. Well it is in Mountain View. It has the rural bar scene. Small bar, a pool table and a kitchen with small dining area. The furnitures are not clean and old. But, the BBQ's very interesting. They are smokey, sweet and spicy. Another peculiar thing is their menus. They have day to day menu, particularly regarding side dishes. I liked their black-eyed peas. A good place to try.

Taipan in PaloAlto - Chinese - 9.5 out of 10
I spent 8 years in US with rustic and poor Chinese restaurants and finally I learned a fine Chinese restaurant. (Thanks to QingFeng) This place serves small variety of Dimsums during lunch and it was absolutely fantastic. Most are very nice, delicious and flavorful. The presentaiton is good too. A bit expensive, though, I paid $30 for lunch but not a penny was wasted in my mind.

Best Bite - Persian - 8.5 out of 10
I can't tell the difference between Turkish, Afganistan or Arabian in terms of cuisine. (well in some sense, outlook too) This place is Persian, that is related to Iraq. They have very sour and saulty drink doogh. Try at your own risk. Lunch was served with very thin Pita. It was unique but not too great. The rice was very sub-par. But, the spinach-plum-beef stew I had was really eccentric, definitely worth a try. There are not much parking space. Bob let me know this place.

Dittmer's - Deli - 10 out of 10
Great sausages. Try Head Cheese. Koreans make something like this but not quite the same. The Head Cheese is jellish, garlic and very rich in flavor. I really liked it. Another gem is their Brauschweiger, a must try. Bratwurst is good too. Very smooth and fatty. Kielbasa was a bit disappointing, Knapsack Wurst was either. The sandwiches are generally good. But don't forget to try their dills. Very good. Avoid lunch time.

Luu Noodle - South-East Asian - 7 out of 10
I was very happy when I saw this place, since this place reminds me of 12 years ago when I first visited Bay area (Milpitas). At that time I liked the greasy spicy Beef stew with fat rice noodles. What a disappointment. The noodles are not fresh and the greasy-ness.. I cannot bear. It is very cheap though, still.

Lucky - Chinese - 7.5 out of 10
Located in the San Antonio Mall area. This place is actually quite good in terms of value/price. The price is good and the amount of the food and taste was okay. If you pass this area by and hungry for some cheap Chinese food, this place is the place to go.

La Baguette - Bakery - 9.5 out of 10
Located in Stanford Shopping Mall. There always is a long line for this shop. They serve nice pastry and cakes. Also, they sell brunch materials e.g., light sandwiches. I tried their baguette, sandwiches, fruit bars, bread pudding and a cake. All the things that I tried were very nice except a couple of disappointments e.g., walnut cookie (somehow the raspberry was not fresh). Particularly the baguette is extremely good. I used it with Cambozola and it was absolutely great. Considering the quality.. it is not too expensive.

Pizza My Heart - Pizza - 9.5 of 10
Pizza My Heart (PMH) is located on University Ave. The Stanford university's main avenue. Parking is a bit tight, so avoid Friday or Saturday night. This place reminds me of Pizza By Slice (PBS) in Tempe, AZ. Quite local and thin NY style pizza. PMH has better topping ideas. I am very pleasantly surprised by their combination of toppings. For example, their Big Sur pizza has whole roasted garlic and it worked very well. PBS did not have unique toppings except for angel hair topping which I could see in other places too. I think PBS's dough is better than PMH's.

Fresh Taste Mandarin Kitchen - Ramen, Chinese - 4 of 10
You'll be surprised that the place looked like Japanese Ramen place from outside is actually, a Chinese place. Then, you'll be disappointed by their Ramens. Totally not worth the money at all. So bad and I won't go back again. The first big failure in Palo Alto for me. Their Miso-Ramen is by far the worst I have ever tried.

Jang-Tuh-Soon-Dae - Korean Sausage special shop - 10 of 10
Soon-Dae is Korean Sausage. Pork intestine filled with its blood, Starch-noodle (Dang-Myeon) and spices. Soon-Dae was one of my favorite food in my childhood. Cheap but calorie rich food like this was very useful when Korea is not as wealthy as now. In Korea, more and more people are enjoying more complex style Soon-Dae which has more ingrediants inside it. But, I think this crude and basic Soon-Dae is better. I recommend three menus here. 1. Soon-Dae with Pork Heart, Pork Liver and Pork Ear. This sounds gross but actually the best. 2. Sauted Soon-Dae and Pork Intestines 3. Soon-Dae Soup

Gae-Seong-ToFu-Ok - Korean - 6 of 10
Gae-Seong is a well-known large North Korea city. It was a capital for Korean dynasty (Before Chosun Dynasty whose capital was Hanyang, now Seoul)). Enough for history lesson, in short the food here was not too good for me.

Ga-Bo-Ja - Korean BBQ - 7 of 10
A typical Korean BBQ restaurant. They bring fresh meat and fish, you cook. All you have to do is using your chop-sticks to flip the meats. These restaurants are good for Korean-national-alcochol, Soju. The food was so so. The price was reasonable. The meaning of Ga-Bo-Ja is let's go (drunk?).

Satura - Japanese Bakery - 10 of 10
Japanese had developed interesting bakery techniques over the years. One of the distinguishing feature of Japanese bakery is the variation of Brioche. Japanese made Casterra, which is very sweet and much fluffier than Brioche. Another feature of Japanese bakery is Cream Puff. They perfected the art of Cream Puff by creating really crusty and tasty shells and sweet but not too rich creams. Satura's Cream Puff is the best that I ever had. Their cookies were good too. Satura has a variety of cakes and I recomment Mango-Coconut cake. This is the nice combination of Japanese style bread, South Eastern fruit flavor and Occidental creamery.

Icing on the Cake - Dissert, Bakery - 8 of 10
I couldn't believe the price of the cup cakes here. 3.5 dollars each. This is the price of 4 cup cakes in normal bakery. I did not like the cakes here too much. One noticeable thing here is the butter cream. When I tried some butter cream in other places, I usually feel a bit disgusting. Here, I did not have such feeling and maybe that proves the quality of cakes here. Definitely, this place's strength is in Icing. But the cake itself was very good too. The best thing was their chocolate cakes. This place deserves at least one visit. Beyond that, depends on your taste. Icing on the Cake is located in the very nice neighborhood of Los Gatos.

Yank Sing - Dimsum - 8 of 10
I usually calculate the price in my head when I go to Dimsum places. Since it is very easy to spend too much money in any Dimsum places without thinking about the prices. Yank Sing did not have any explicit price on the dishes and all I could do was just guessing the price tags. I guessed I spent 60 dollars (generously calculating). But it turned out to be 100 dollars. I was not even half full. Extremely expensive place. The quality of the Dimsum is good. Particularly those fried ones were good. Parking is very challenging here. Little room is available for each car.

Applewood Inn - Pizza - 9 of 10
I liked this place. The dough is special. It is not the quality of Pizza by slices or La grande orange or Pizza Bianco. But it has particular taste and very filling flavor. The toppings were very good too. I liked their BBQ chicken topping. I don't usually like BBQ flavor but, this place's BBQ flavor was good to me.

Palo Alto Sol - Mexican - 8.5 of 10
Mole Poblano. Palo Alto Sol has usual stuffs, e.g., refried beans, rice, and the chips. They provide 3 dipping sources for chips. All of them were better than the usual places. Mole Poblano was the best here. This chocolate flavored Mole provides unique taste and though sounds weird it worked perfectly. Johan suggested this place for your monthly lunch meeting.

Indochine - East Asian - 8 of 10
This place sells variety of east Asian dishes. Thai Curry, Pho, and Chinese style dish can all be enjoyed here. The environment is quite unique. From the outside, the place looks very shabby, but actually, interior is quite good. Location is in the middlefield area of Palo Alto, where not many restaurant's are placed. I tried Thai curry and their specialty, Indochine Chef's noodle. The latter one looks and taste like chow-fun. It was very nice. The curry was good too. The vegetables were quite fresh.

Shanghai Taste Delight - Chinese - 9.5 of 10
It is located along El Camino Real in Mountain view area. The place is quite small and it is easy to pass by the place without noticing the restaurant. Inside the restaurant, they have about 10 or less tables. The owner does not speak English well enough and there are some dishes not explained in English. I went there twice and I did not see the same dish ordered. Every people orders different dishes. Most of the people in the restaurant were Chinese speaking. This is a very good sign. Their specialty is pork based soups. I liked their pork soup with noodles (much better than normal Cha-Shu Ramen). I liked their dumplings. They cook them right. When you bite them, the juice flows into your mouth, very nice. Need to be careful not to hurt your tongue with the hot dumplig juice. Brown sauce here is also very good.

Peet's Coffee - Coffee - 8 of 10
I admit that I don't distinguish a good coffee from a bad coffee well enough. For example, when I read "nutty, plummy flavor" described in the Starbucks coffee, I just can't figure that out when I drink the coffee. Anyways... Peet's is a well known coffee in Bay area. I tried and couldn't tell whether the coffee is much better than Starbucks. The service was quite ad-hoc too.

Elbe Restaurant - German, European - 8 of 10
I have never been to a German restaurant in US. Thanks to Lukas, we had our monthly lunch meeting at this place. Very pretty Deutsch accent server greeted us. She pronounce what's on the menu so fast in German and it took me some time to catch up what she was describing about the food. I tried Spaetzle. This is German pasta, thick and short. I liked the texture of this pasta. Saurkraut was too sour to me.

Battle of Cupcakes
It is interesting that this area has a few very expensive high quality cupcake special shops. I found 3 shops here and I summarized here.

Kara's - 9 of 10
Kara's is on Town and Country mall, Embarcardero and El Camino Real. 3.50 for a cupcake. Icing was very nice and cupcake itself has enough moisture. Of the three cupcake places listed here, I like this place the most. Less sweet and more flavor.
Sprinkles - 8 of 10
It is on Stanford shopping mall. A very long line dragged me into this place. Considering the prices, it is tough to enjoy these cupcakes.
Icing on the cake 8 of 10
It was too sweet for me.

Esther's German Bakery - German Bakery - 9 of 10
A bit expensive bakery. They have interesing selections for small bites, including macaroon. There are a few well known german bakery specialty in this shop. Apple Strudel, Apple Pie and German Chocolate Cake. The breads that I tried were all delicious. They have quite good looking cakes and I wil try them sometime. One complaint I had was that they don't cut the bread for you.

Palo Alto Baking Company - French Bakery - 8 of 10
I started exploring California Ave. Someone told me that this is a decent place. I tried their baguette. It was good but not as good as the ones available in La Baguette. I tried their cakes, Mochalicious and some chocolate cakes. It was just Ok for me. Definitely better than the ones in Safeway but not whole lot better. The croissant was nice. Someone also told me that this place has nice sandwich and soups. I will try them later.

La Bodeguita - Cuban - 10 of 10
The second Cuban restaurant I experienced. This place is great. Bread with hot-oil sauce is provided for all customers. It is interesting. I wouldn't say this is really good but.. interesting. The main dishes are great. Masitas is one of the best dishes. It is Pork on top of rice. I had fish taco. It had pesto on it and comes with black-bean-rice. This rice is really great. This place is very popular and try to have reservation even for lunch time.

The Counter - Burger - 8.5 of 10
High end burger place. They have variety of selections and also you can make your own burger. Generally the food here is very greasy. So, It would go well with Beer and they have beer. Particularly the appetizers are very oiley. They have a couple of cute fried ones in their menu. Fried sweet potato and Fried Pickels. Both are very good, must tries. Burgers are good too, but.. not whole lot better than In N out.

San Tung - Chinese - 8 of 10
San Tung is in inner Sunset area of San Francisco. This place is famous through internet. A lot of good reviews by many people makes this place a must visit spot for people who look for local delicacies. It was a big time dissappointment. Probably it was expectation game. It has such good reviews and I had enormous amount of expectation before I visit this place. When I got there, there already was a long line of people waiting and I put my name on the white board. However, the process was very fast and we did not wait too long before we are seated. Waiting is a very good sign. I studied the menus beforehand and ordered what I prepared, starting with the famed "dry fried chicken". It was Ok.. but not too good. I ordered a couple of well known dumplings, 5 flavored beef noodle soup, Zza-Zang-Myeon, ZZam-BBong and pork lomein. All of these dish were just OK. Nothing really kicks my taste emotions and makes me exclaim. No, not at all. If you happen to swing by this place then, you can safely try inexpensive ok dishes here but not a place to visit from far away. Parking is hassle here too. I parked in Golden Gate Park and it was an excellent choice. It provided us a nice walk from and to the restaurant. The restaurant has Korean-name on the menu. I suspect this place is a Korean-tourist-spot for those who visits Golden Gate Park. The interior is really not cool.

Cafe Pro Bono - Italian - 9 of 10
This place has very good reviews from many internet reviews. It is located in California Ave. district. The interior is OK. It was Monday lunch and still the place was packed. I studied the menu beforehand and ordered the famed "Susan's Downfall". It was just what I had expected. The bread was Ok and the oil dipping is ok, not too much better than other usual places. We ordered Sea Bass, Sandwich, Risotto, Linguine, Lamb and Kebab. All were delicious. One main theme of all these dish was very normal. The dishes are not too special nor do they have distinctive flavors compared to other places but they all taste alright. In my mind, no single dish distinguished itself but they all cooked at the right flavor level.

Palace BBQ - Korean - 9 of 10
Palace BBQ was an unexpected success to me. Palace's business model is well known in South Korea. At one point of time, there were many BBQ Buffet. People liked it and the business looked promissing. But for some reason BBQ Buffet in Korea is not such a big business any more and actually it is very hard to find such place now a days. I do not have any good memory on BBQ Buffet, since typically they use really bad meats and that is how they maintain the profit. Palace's meat is not too great but the sauce was quite interesting. It is very sweet but was ok overall. I liked other non-meat menu. Considering it is supposed to be a cheap buffet, still the price is a bit higher end. So, it is not normal your run in the mill Chinese style buffet. But I think, when you feel real hunger and feel you can eat pounds of meat, then this is the place to go.

Round Table Pizza - Pizza - 6.5 of 10
Surprisingly, at least to me, there is no Papa Johns around here (recently though I found one new Mountain View). I like Papa Johns more than Pizza Hut or Domino's. I think round table pizza has stronghold on this area. Every corner of this region has Round table pizza. So, at some point of time, I should try this and I did it. What a disappointment. I did not like the dough, I did not like the topping. Too greasy. Even greasier than Pizza Hut. I miss Papa Johns.

Hong Kong at San Antonio Inn - Chinese - 9 of 10
Hong Kong is a pleasant surprise. The server or waiter couldn't speak English well enough. The food is very unique. They have some Americanized menu and dish but they also have very Chinese food. One of them was Soy sauce chicken. If you buy a whole portion, then they give you the HEAD of a chicken as a bonus. As a fan of Andrew Zimmern's Bizarr Food program, I should have tried to eat the head of the chicken. But, I couldn't. It looked so gross and I couldn't overcome that feeling. Peking duck is provided at very reasonable price but a bit too fatty compared to usual Pecking Duck. I liked their Chinese Broccoli, Lo Mein, Pork dishes. Don't order Pineapple Pork, that was a total failure, in my opinion. You can see many Chinese native eating there, and this is a very good sign. On top of the food the price is really good too.

Tanduri - Indian - 8 of 10
This place is very plain. I would say, however, they use rather fresh vegetables and that is a quite a plus as an Indian restaurant. I did not like their Samosa. I liked their fried Nan, which is unexpected good dish from their menu. The restaurant has very fast food style design and concept but the price is not that dirt cheap, well it is located on the California Ave.

99 Chicken - Korean Style Fried Chicken - 8.5 of 10
In Korea, flavored Fried chicken is huge business. You can such places in every market places. You can imagine Buffalo wild wing but instead of just wing whole chicken is processed in that fashion. That is fried chicken is put into the sauce bucket and flavored. The unique thing in Korean Fried chicken is the spice Koreans use. Koreans have developed very interesting flavor based on pepper, soy sauce and onions. No other countries have such an interesting flavor. This place, 99 chicken, has that kind of flavor. So, this place is quite good, but I am quite used to this flavor and that is why I gave 8.5 instead of 9. A disappointment in the Radish contributed a bit to the score. Anyways, this place is very popular and they don't fry chicken unless there is an order. So, if you plan to have a take out, call ahead. You can easily wait 40 minutes.

Zitune - Morrocan - 7.5 of 10
My first Morrocan experience is a bit disappointing. The food was actually quite OK, except for the saltiness. I complained a bit. But their reaction was quite disappointing. I promised not to come this place again.

Back A Yard - Carribean - 9 of 10

Vito's - Pizza - 8 of 10

Suhong at Palo Alto - Chinese - 8 of 10

Fandango Pizza - Pizza - 8 of 10

Tofu House (So-Gong-Dong) - Korean - 9 of 10
So-Gong-Dong is a famous business and shopping district in the center of Seoul. I don't know there is any famous Tofu house in that district. In So-Gong-Dong and also in Myong-Dong (neighbor district) there are many good restaurants, and it is very hard to be famous with Tofu. Why? because Tofu Soup is like sandwich in South Korea. That is, Tofu Soup is one of the staple of workers' lunch. In South Korea, you can witness women delivering Tofu Soup on top of their heads. Anyways, I liked this place. The Tofu Soup here is not like the ones that I enjoyed in South Korea, actually quite different. I think this is an Americanized version and I think it is okay. I also liked their spicy Pork BBQ. I heard that people liked green onion seefood cake.

Chef Chu's - Chinese - 8 of 10

Ramen House Ryowa - Japanese Ramen - 7.5 of 10
What a disappointment!

Myung Dong Soon Doo Boo - Korean - 9 of 10

Yetnal ZZa-Zang - Korean - 9 of 10

Peking Duck - Chinese - 9.5 of 10
This place was a very pleasant surprise. I did not have too much expectation but, this place turned out to be very good. I liked their crispy noodle, one of the best I've tried. Of course, the Peking Duck was superb. I just wished they could have removed all the fat and flesh, leaving only the crispy skin.

Fish Market - Seafood - 9 of 10

More to Come

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