Monday, December 24th, 2007
It was my last evening in San Francisco and I met up with Thu for dinner. She took me to Straits Cafe over in Palo Alto, which is a Asian fusion restaurant. Thu told me that there are actually several Straits restaurants in the Bay area but the one we went to in Palo Alto was the original one. 
We started off with an appetizer sampler. It had a good sampling of the more popular appetizers on the menu. Sorry for the dark and blurry pictures. I really need to learn how to take better pictures in dim lighting with my camera.
I can’t really remember what this was but I think it was a fish carpaccio on a potato wafer. What I do remember is that it was very tasty with the carpaccio contrasting with the crunchy potato.
The fresh oyster was dressed with a light Thai chilli sauce which added some spiciness. This was very good and I only wished that there was more than one per person.
The vegetable samosa was also great. The vegetable curry inside was very tasty and the crunchy outside was not greasy at all. I usually find samosas too heavy but this one was just right.
The chicken satay was very juicy and went well with the peanut satay sauce. As far as taste goes, there was nothing special about this but I still enjoyed it.
For our main course, we shared a couple of dishes. First was a pan-fried tilapia with an Indian yellow curry. This was my favourite dish of the evening. The tilapia was crispy on the outside but very moist and juicy inside. The curry was quite spicy and much of the taste was absorbed by the fish and veggies. This dish came with quite a bit of sauce and would have gone great with rice.
We also ordered some Hokkien Bee Hoon, which was vermicelli noodles with shrimp, fish cake, and chillis. This dish was pretty bland and did not have much taste. In a way though, this worked out ok for us because we spooned the gravy from the fish dish over the noodles.
Overall, I was pretty impressed with Straits Cafe. With the exception of the noodles, most of the items we tried were very tasty (especially the fish!). I am usually a bit skeptical when it comes to Asian fusion places but Straits Cafe did a good job with it. I wouldn’t mind coming back to try the other dishes the next time I am in town.
Well, this concludes my California trip. It was fun to try out some new and different restaurants from what I am used to in Vancouver. This will probably be my last post before the new year, so happy holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone!
Details:
3295 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA
Tel: 650-494-7168
Summary:
Food: 
Service:
Price: $$
Posted in Other Cities, San Francisco, Singaporean, Thai, Asian, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Monday, December 17th, 2007
We were back in San Francisco so NTR and UK took me to Hokkaido Seafood Buffet. Although most of the food here is seafood (obviously!), they also had some other non-seafood items as well. Most of the food offered here is Asian style.
After we settled in at our table, we started digging in at the various stations. I was pretty amazed by the selection of food and the sheer abundance of it all. I gravitated toward the mound of fresh Alaskan king crab, mussels, clams, and shrimp. It was all so tasty and you also had a selection of cocktail sauce, lemons, and ponzu sauce to add to your seafood.
I tried some clam soup, which was served in a small bowl. I didn’t like the taste of the broth very much, so I decided to try the clam meat instead. This didn’t taste much better though…and I later learned that it was the soup that everyone liked — not the clam meat itself. Oops.
The coconut shrimp was quite good although I had to scrape off some of the mayo. I also couldn’t really taste the coconut.
The shrimp were a fair size and were nice and crunchy.
I am a huge fan of fresh oysters and of course I had to load my plate with some of these. The ponzu sauce went really well with the oysters.
More oysters…yum!
There was also a selection of various sushi and sashimi. One that I liked was a tempura sushi, which was lightly fried with tempura batter. Although the sashimi was definitely not as good as what we ate at Taiko, it was quite good for a buffet. The tuna was also a pinker colour than what I was used to in Vancouver.
They also had Chinese-style crabs which was steamed and then stir-fried in a clear broth. The pieces of crab were quite big and tasty.
The baked scallop with cheese was a bit rich for my taste but it was interesting to see that it was baked right in the shell.
The shark fin soup was made with imitation shark fin, but you couldn’t even tell the difference. The soup had a lighter taste compared to what I was used to in most restaurants. NTR enjoyed this quite a bit.
When you are seated at your table, each person is given a ticket for one half a lobster baked in a cheese sauce. To claim it, you just head over to the lobster station and the server there will put one on your plate. The lobster itself was quite good although I wasn’t too crazy about the cheese sauce.
You could also construct some Peking duck using the mini buns provided and the generous pieces of duck. I didn’t have any of this but both NTR and UK enjoyed it. I was starting to get quite full by this point.
There were also hand cones that were made fresh so the seaweed was still crunchy.
The black bean clams had a nice flavour and quite tasty. There were also frog legs, which I didn’t try. NTR noted that it was a bit too lean for her taste.
The black bean oysters were very tasty. I could tell they were quite fresh and were just cooked and had a nice consistency. There was also some dim sum (bottom of the picture below) but the selection was small and most of the items were oversteamed.
Now onto the fruits and veggies. I needed to eat some veggies after all this seafood so I scooped some edamame onto my plate. I also had some watermelon, but the strawberries were definitely the better tasting of the two. They were sweet and ripe…I even went back for seconds!
Now it was dessert time. Most of the desserts were pretty standard but there was a good selection of both Western and Asian desserts.
I found that the Asian desserts looked better than they tasted. I think they had been sitting on the plates for a while so they may have tasted better when they were fresh.
I had quite a good time here. I would say that the seafood items are definitely the specialty. If I were to come back, I would load up on the seafood, especially the cold items, and pass on the desserts. We went on a weekend for lunch so it worked out to about $22/person. Weekday lunches are a great deal at about $12/person.
Details:
2200 Bridgepointe Pkwy, San Mateo, CA
Tel: 650-212-2688
Summary:
Food:
Service:
Price: $$
Posted in Other Cities, San Francisco, Japanese, Asian, Chinese, Reviews | 2 Comments »
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