Birthday Dinner for Kelly at The Village Pub

It was my wife's birthday on Thursday and on her request we went out to dinner at The Village Pub in Woodside, CA.   This has been one of our favorite restaurants for several years now and I am sure it is considered one of the best restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

THE VILLAGE PUB

On my birthday, I picked Giovanni's pizza.  I had not eaten pizza for months since I had been eating a healthier diet.   It was good, but if you compare our choices of birthday dinners,  there's no doubt who is the classier person in this relationship.

Dinner was amazing.   We both had the pumpkin soup and baked scallops for dinner.  Our daughter had a roasted pork chop with cooked apples and of course plenty of homemade dinner rolls.  Everything was memorable and it was really the first time we have taken our daughter to a nice restaurant and she really enjoyed it and ate something other than bread and pasta.

Kung Pao Chicken at Hunan Home's

It was Ocean's night at my daughter's elementary school and it would be too late to eat dinner by the time we would get home, so my wife and daughter ate before the event.   I drove separately and met them at school and then stopped at my favorite Chinese restaurant, Hunan Home's in Mountain View, California on the way home.

I don't really understand why there is an "apostrophe s" after Home in the name of the restaurant.   I think the name is supposed to mean this restaurant is the home of hunan style of cooking, in which case, it should be Hunan's Home or even Home of Hunan. 

I have been a customer of this place since 1998 when I worked for a startup company in Mountain View.   And then, a few years ago, I worked for another Mt. View company which is located only a few blocks from Hunan Home's. 

Most people I know do not like this restaurant and my wife has never really liked Chinese food.    So, this tends to be a place I go when I am alone.    My favorite dish at this restaurant is Kung Pao Chicken and that's exactly what I had for dinner tonight.   It was delicious and I left feeling stuffed.

   

Take out from Willow Street Pizza

On Saturday, we decided to get take out from Willow Street Pizza.    We spent the afternoon looking at materials for a kitchen remodel we have been wanting to do since we moved into our house in San Jose over 10 years ago.   It got too late to go shopping and make dinner, and we were all getting a little cranky because we were hungry.

We ordered a Pesto e Pancetta pizza which is prawns, Italian bacon, pesto, and mozarella.   Its not a pizza I would ever order on my own.   This is the kind of thing my wife would order and since she was crankier than me I told her to order whatever she wanted.   I cringed a little bit when she ordered this pizza, but it was actually really, really good and I am really glad she ordered it.   We shared a pizza and greek salad.

My 9 year old daughter had Annie's Macaroni and Cheese and some left over roasted chicken.

Dinner at the Hay Market in Willow Glen

We planned to have friends over for dinner Saturday night.   A friend of mine, Wolfgang, who I have not seen since 1995 when I attended his wedding in Germany, called me a couple of weeks ago and said that he and his wife would be in San Francisco this weekend.    I invited them to stay with us one night and we planned to have dinner as well.   I am pretty sure that we agreed that this would happen on the night of March 2, but maybe I had the date wrong.

My daughter was having dinner with a friend and her family tonight, so when we didn't hear from Wolfgang by 5:30pm, my wife and I decided to go out to dinner at a nearby restaurant called the Hay Market.

The Hay Market is located in an area of San Jose called Willow Glen.   Willow Glen used to be a separate town many years ago, but in 1936, by a narrow margin, the residents voted to become part of the city of San Jose in order to tap into San Jose's city wide sewage system.   Over the years, Willow Glen's downtown area has maintained much of its character and has still has the feel of a downtown area of a small town.

The Hay Market claims to have a menu which changes daily.   Its a unique menu for sure both in the way it looks and in the content.   The menu is printed on paper which is inserted into a rectangular copper plate.   The copper plate has the restaurant's logo stamped on the back.   The aesthetic of the restaurant matches the menu.   Its a mix of old meets new and the dishes on the menu seem to be a new aesthetic applied to traditional dishes.   And of course, there is a bale of hay in the restaurant.

I hope the menu really does change often.  I think that will make for a more interesting dining experience and might keep me coming back.   I am sure it makes the work much more interesting and engaging for the chef.

I had the upside-down chicken pot pie which is served with the chicken in the center of plate flanked by the vegetables on one side and the pie crust on the other side all sitting in gravy.   I definitely enjoyed the food.  

Here's a shot of the menu:

The pedal tractor, tricycle, and pedal car in the window are the exact models that kids had in my neighborhood in 1970 and there's lots of other memorabilia from early 1970s middle class americana.  

All the tables are high and bar stools make up the seating.   We sat at one of 2 four person tables in the back.   The other handful of tables seat 8 or 10 and are arranged almost cafeteria style.    As more couples were seated, I noticed that different dining groups were seated at opposite ends of the same large table.   If you came here for dinner during a busier time, no doubt you would end up sitting near someone you don't know... which can be fun.

We never did hear from Wolfang... maybe he is planning to show up on Sunday.