FoodNerd!

for the records: Cupertino Chinese Mall

I am clearing out my email, and i ran across something i wrote up for a colleague going out to do some work at Apple. When I was out there, I was there alone for long periods of time, and I consoled myself with the free happy hour cocktails at The Cupertino Inn, but mostly with constant meals at the chinese mall nearby. I'm posting the notes here so I can find them again, and so you may find them useful.

The chinese mall is at the intersection of Homestead and Wolfe in Cupertino (or possibly just over the town line into another town, but close enough). If you are staying at the Cupertino Inn, it will take 20 min to walk there, or a really quick cab ride.

Places to try:

A&J - good chinese café; I recommend the sauteed rice cakes with vegetables (rice cake are not like Quaker rice cakes, but are chewy white disks -- essentially rice pasta -- and come with green leafy veg and bamboo shoots and pork shreds, among other flavors) and I ADORE the spicy garlic cucumber pickle. Most everything is good here.

Porridge Place - the best food overall in my opinion. Fast food takeaway place but there are tables. You choose a tub of rice or congee, and pick a few plates of stuff to eat with it: stirfried pork, bok choy & garlic, 1000-year eggs, spicy shrimp, etc etc etc. For this it is best to have two or more people so you can get a nice variety of dishes and not waste enough food for 5 people.

HC Dumpling House - fancier interior, Shanghai style cooking. Try the soup dumplings (small steamed bun, xiao lung bao), and I think they have a Tung Po pork which is braised pork belly in brown sauce. Not the best Shanghainese food I've had, but perfectly acceptable.

Joy Luck Place - fancier place, with some classic high-end dishes like the weird but good shrimp with walnuts and mayonnaise.

Vietnamese noodle place I forget name of: run of the mill, but with a stellar green papaya salad.

That should keep you in eats. If dining companions are being lame about eating chinese, the brewpub right next door to the Apple campus is actually pretty good too.

There is also a comic/stuffed toy shop in the mall. I came home with a plush Totoro that is now on the shelf over my desk. :-)

Posted by foodnerd at June 9, 2008 04:29 PM