The Village

378 Santana Row #1035

San Jose, CA

95128

(408) 248-9091

Hello folks,

Last night I visited one of the more trendy places in San Jose, which is Santana Row. If you do know this place, it is located near Westfield Valley Fair Mall. It is essentially an outdoor mall, where people go to eat, shop and general go to be seen. Upon walking up and down the strip, you can see trendy restaurants, flashy cars, and boat loads of people. My wife and I wanted to try out Citrus restaurant, but unfortunately it was close. We then walked over to Yankee Pier, a seafood place, but they said there is about 10 minute wait for a table, even though we saw empty tables everywhere. So we walked across the hall to The Village restaurant.

I must admit this was not the first time eating at The Village. The first time was a year ago and I distinctly remember ordering a rack of ribs, and the ribs were cold. I had the waiter sent it back to the kitchen. So after a year, I figured I can give the village another shot.

We were greeted warmly by a young gentlemen and sat down right away. It was pretty hot out and so we selected the cool of the interior dinning room. The restaurant is what I consider typical rectangular restaurant where the seating is arrange in a straight fashion away from the entrance on one side of the building. The decor has wine on the walls and a typical American or California furnishings, more causal than formal.

Another young gentleman was our waiter and took our orders promptly. We ordered the Seared scallops as an appetizer, the fresh fish of the day for my wife, Syah braised boneless short rib for myself. We asked for bread while we waited, and did we ever waited. Apparently everybody else also ordered at the same time, because it seemed like the kitchen staff got slammed.

You can tell a lot of about a restaurant by the little details. The bread they brought to us was warm and the butter was excellent. The butter was air whipped so it was light and fluffy. This was a nice touched, it made for an easy and excellent spreading. Though it lack strong buttery flavor, I tend to like this much more. We liked it so much that we asked for seconds on our bread and butter, but to our disappointment, the second butter was not air whipped, but a straight forward pat of butter.

We waited so long the the chef, gave us our appetizer on the house. When it finally arrived, it was prepared perfectly. Nice seared on both sides and sitting on a bed of polenta, with a micro greens on top. It was seasoned nicely, with a brown butter sauce, and some crisp prosciutto pieces on the side. So the food was worth the wait apparently.

We waited some more for our entrees to arrive. My wife's fish was mainly a seared what appears to be some sort of white fish, though the name escape me at the moment. It has a micro salad on the side. It was cooked nicely with a crisp outside and soft interior. Although I did not see anything special about it, my wife did enjoy it.

My braised beef short rib was nicely done. The sauce had a good reduction and was quite flavorful and rich. It was your typical reduce dark wine sauce, but the execution was good. They put some fresh tarragon, and a side of swish chard mix with I think was polenta. The side was quite buttery and heavy, really did not match well with the heavy short rib. They should have exchanged the side with my wife's micro salad for more of a balance and contrast. Otherwise I could not find any other fault with the dish. The beef was soft and tender and barely needed a knife for cutting. The sauce match well and gave the beef a great deep rich burgundy color. It was salty with a hint of herbs like most braised beef has.

The meal was quite heavy and left little room for desert. I must say I was quite satisfied by the end of the meal.

Overall other than the long wait time, (for which we were compensated for), I would say we had a good time with some great food.

If you happened to swing by Santana Row in San Jose, give the Village a try. I gave it a second chance and I'm glad I did.

I will start my general review grading here: We'll use stars. By default it will be out of 5 stars.

Food: 4 stars. I cannot complain about the food. Well prepared

Service: 3 stars. I cannot blame my waiter but the wait time cannot be ignored.

Price: Tend to be more on the pricey side, not for budget minded people.

Overall: 3 and 1/2 stars.

Welcome

Welcome

Hello, welcome to my new blog the Hypertaster.

This is my blog in the world of food. Family friends often come to me for advice about food, where to eat, or my opinions on restaurants. Why is that? Well, I have a personal motto of Live to eat, not eat to live. I love everything about food, from the first whiff of aroma when the waiter finally brings out your order, the first tantalizing first bites, all the way to savoring the last bite of morsels. Food makes you want to live, it can express as much emotions as a good song, tell a story, be an edible art.

Food does not have to be pretentious or grand, it just has to be good. I can tell you have have paid obscene amounts of money on one meal, and I didn't even bat an eye. People often say, I wasted my money on food, yet I can remember to the utmost detail of the finest meals I have. That does not mean that I would prefer to eat at high class expensive restaurants over cheap and homely ones. No, like I said food just has to be good, in fact, I can contend that a great bowl of pho or ramen is etched in my memory as much as a meals I paid 500 dollars for (that was 500 per person).

I will often go out of my way to try authentic cuisine. Sometimes, I may not like it or sometimes I end up loving it that I refuse to eat anything that is not authentic to that particular cuisine. I can at least say, that I am not afraid to try it. I may not like it, but I will try any food.

If you want to know a bit about myself, I'm Chinese, married a Vietnamese and father of two.

Have a passion for food all my life, worked in my family restaurant every since I was 10. Though we do not own a restaurant anymore, I still have an eye on what makes good food.

I'm fortunate enough to live in the San Francisco bay area, where I consider one of the epicenter of great ethnic and regional food.

Here's a quick hint to start with. If a restaurant that is crowded has a sign that says "cash only." the food tend to be good. Why? Because they know their food is better than others that they can command to accept only cash only. And people are willing to go through with the hassle of bring cash. Think about it, if you were a restaurant owner, you don't want to pay a credit card company any transaction fees. You want to pocket all that income in your wallet. So you only accept cash, but your product better be good or people would rather go to a place that conveniently accept credit cards.

I will begin posting my impressions of restaurants, meals, food tv shows, and recipes (if I have them).