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...
The Biz Beat: San Jose restaurant sells burgers for $1.99
There’s a new burger joint in downtown San Jose, with prices cheap enough to keep even the most hungry university student fed. Campus Burgers is one block from San Jose State University and will undoubtedly be a magnet for students look for a fast, affordable lunch or dinner. And the demand is there: the restaurant...
The Biz Beat: Desi in Campbell offers multicultural fusion of street delights
While Desi Contemporary Indian Casual in Campbell is grounded in classic ingredients, the owners have designed the dishes based on their study of food history and experiences sampling different cuisines while traveling. “It struck us how many dishes across the world are grounded in their similarities,” Mohit Nagrath, who co-owns the restaurant with his wife...
The Biz Beat: Tiki Pete is a tropical getaway in San Jose
Pete Be looks exactly like you’d hope Tiki Pete would look: distinctively Hawaiian, a shaved head, covered in ornate tattoos and wearing a shirt with bright, abstract designs. The downtown San Jose bar owner’s cheerful and self-confident demeanor might come from starting his first business, selling artwork, at an early age. “I was a 14-year-old...
The Biz Beat: Campbell Cambodian restaurant is a hidden gem
When Vila Pho emigrated from the Banteay Meanchey province in Cambodia to the U.S. in 2003, she knew no one and took a job as a computer technician. It wasn’t her ideal job, but it paid the bills. She took English classes while she dreamed of opening a Cambodian restaurant with dishes steeped in lemongrass...
The Biz Beat: San Jose restaurant wants to highlight ‘California lifestyle’
There is a studied minimalism at The Club on Post that gives way to whimsy at times. Old movies and cartoons are projected on the wall. Picnic tables and umbrellas are set up down the middle of the closed-off street in front of the restaurant. A full bar runs half the length of the place,...
The Biz Beat: San Jose’s Burger Bar is a 1950s classic
Burger Bar in San Jose might have been what musician Chuck Berry was thinking about when he rhapsodized in “Back in the U.S.A.”about a place where “hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day.” The restaurant, founded in 1953 by Albert Berger, predates the classic song by six years and was the first of...
The Biz Beat: San Jose drive-thru serves authentic Mexican food
Who among us has not had a late evening or early morning craving for great Mexican food? Happily, San Jose’s Jalisco Taqueria is there to serve, with a drive-thru open until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays with a wide selection of authentic dishes cooked fresh daily. “I don’t know a lot of places where...
The Biz Beat: Jun Bistro in Milpitas offers natural fusion of Chinese cuisine
The recently opened Jun Bistro in Milpitas has its improbable origins in co-owner Amy Duan’s “Chihuo” — slang for “foodie” in Mandarin — a Chinese-language food blog that currently boasts more than 1.8 million followers and a full-time staff. “I didn’t realize it at the time,” she told San José Spotlight, “but I was using...
The Biz Beat: San Jose restaurant serves dishes from southern India
If all you know about Indian food is butter chicken or chicken tikka masala, the training wheels of the cuisine, a trip to Saapaaduu is in order. Specializing in the dishes of southern India, the San Jose restaurant offers diners a unique rotating menu prepared with no food dyes, MSG or seed oils — homestyle...