Tucked away on the second floor of a warehouse in San Jose, the Black Urban Barn gym offers strength training for local high school basketball and softball teams, boxing coaching and high-energy workouts for adults who yearn to burn off calories. Opened in August 2023, it’s the latest manifestation of a fitness training program co-owner...
The Biz Beat: Santana Row’s Fitoor offers flavorful tour of Indian cuisine
Chef Vaibhav Sawant has infused the menu at Santana Row’s Fitoor Indian Grill and Lounge with a splendid selection of inventive takes, all immaculately plated and irresistible. But the Double Butter Daal Makhani, perhaps the simplest entree in appearance, belies the time and effort that goes into making it. Served with flakey malabar paratha flatbread,...
2024 in review: The top 10 Biz Beat stories
It’s been an interesting culinary year for The Biz Beat, with fast-food burgers competing with Indian and Mexican food for the top spot on the Best of 2024 list. The top two restaurants, Saapaadu and Campus Burger, opened just this year, but Burger Bar, coming in fourth, has been around since 1953. All the restaurants...
The Biz Beat: San Jose distillery makes award-winning whiskey
The tasting room at 10th Street Distillery in San Jose features windows looking into the distillery, showing off a stainless steel boiler and two copper pot stills with otherworldly-shaped domes that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Joan Miró’s surrealist paintings. It’s all connected by more stainless steel and designed by founders Virag...
The Biz Beat: Standout pizza at San Jose’s The Last Round Tavern
Sandwich shop by day and pizza parlor by night, The Last Round Tavern in San Jose manages its split personality exceptionally well. Owner Caleb Orozco uses his homemade sourdough bread and thin-crust pizza dough as a base for identical ingredients, such as in-house braised brisket and pulled pork, to create two distinct and delicious menus...
The Biz Beat: Still O.G. — A San Jose DJ-driven bar with an Alter Ego
Still O.G.’s bar, with its on-tap cocktails, wood paneled walls, cubby holes packed with records, DJ booth and state of the art sound system, has a warm, inviting hipster feel. But if you’re in the know, you can slip past the back-of-the-room gatekeeper and enter Alter Ego, a spot that seems miles away from downtown...
The Biz Beat: San Jose’s Flaming Ox mixes flavors of Taiwan
San Jose’s Flaming Ox restaurant specializes in a Taiwanese menu with food truck-like simplicity, offering a small selection of expertly prepared but versatile dishes. It’s no coincidence, after founder Eric Chung worked the Asian cafeteria station at Apple’s Cupertino campus. From there he launched the first of two high-volume catering trucks that grew to serve...
The Biz Beat: Paleta Planeta brings sweet treats to downtown San Jose
Paleta Planeta would not exist without the parents of Mauricio, Luis and Gabriel Salazar, who allowed their three sons to turn the family’s San Jose home into their first Mexican popsicle factory. “It is very Silicon Valley to start a company out of a garage,” Luis told San José Spotlight. “We just constantly made batches...
The Biz Beat: San Jose restaurant Trifecta serves more than sushi
While working at Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s restaurant Nobu in San Jose, Bradley Gallego learned some of the hard-edged discipline of making sushi. “He would come by and check out your knives,” Gallego told San José Spotlight. “He’d go up to a random station and chop some stuff to see if they were good. And...
The Biz Beat: San Jose restaurant serves Mexican food with halal twist
Chef Hisham Abdelfattah knows the test of a great restaurant is not how it prepares and plates its highest-end menu items, but the care it takes in its everyday foods and side dishes. And at El Halal Amigos, it all comes down to his magnificent rice and beans. “People ask me what is my best...