.Food & Drink

Introduction | Food & Drink | Music & Nightlife | Goods & Services | Art & Culture

OVERALL

Best New Restaurant

Best Restaurant (Culinary Excellence)

Best Chef

Best Dining Value

Best Small Restaurant

Best Family Restaurant

Best Romantic Restaurant

Best Restaurant Patio

Best Dessert Spot To Do It for the ‘Gram
Somi Somi
Cupertino & San Jose
A generation that grew up sharing photos of food has prompted more and more chefs to focus on feasting the eyes as much as pleasing the palate. There’s no shortage of Instagrammable fare in the South Bay, but few place as much premium on the optics as Asian dessert spots—many of which create designated nooks for customers to pose with their eye-popping treats for IG-worthy shares. Korean creamery Somi Somi serves up soft-serve ice cream nestled in adorably photogenic taiyaki, a goldfish-shaped waffle made fresh to order, and adorned with your choice of technicolor toppings, from Fruity Pebbles to ube-purple macarons, to make your sweet treat picture perfect.

Best Late-Night Eats

Best French Restaurant

Best German Restaurant

Best Latin Restaurant

Best Cuban/Caribbean Restaurant

Best Cajun Restaurant

Best Italian Restaurant

Best Mediterranean/Greek Restaurant

Best Middle Eastern Restaurant

Best Steakhouse

Best Barbecue

Best Vegetarian Restaurant

Best Hawaiian

Best Ramen

Best Pho

Best Poke Restaurant

Best Pearl Teas

Best Vietnamese Restaurant

Best Korean Restaurant

Best Raw Bivalve Happy Hour
Forthright Oyster Bar
1700 W Campbell Ave, Campbell
There’s nothing quite like a fresh oyster. Crisp, creamy, with perhaps a little lemon tang and a drop of vinegary hot sauce. The only way to improve upon this delicacy is if you have a dozen, but that can get pricey. At Forthright Oyster Bar—cousin to The Table in Willow Glen—hungry patrons can choose from a large selection of oysters from all over the country. Some will run you around $3.50 a pop, but if you time it right and catch Forthright’s excellent happy hour, you can score the bivalve of the day for just $1.50 each. At that price, you might as well get two dozen. Oh, and bring a date. Oysters are an aphrodisiac, you know…

Best Thai Restaurant

Best Seafood Restaurant

Best Sushi

Best Burger

Best Hot Dog

Best Pizza — Independent

Best Pizza — Regional

Best Deli/Sandwich Shop

Best Microbrewery Food

Best Desserts

Best Doughnuts

Best Bagel Shop

Best Ice Cream/Gelato

Best Frozen Yogurt

Best Fast-Casual Fine Dining
Pasta Armellano
14560 Big Basin Way, Saratoga
Saratoga’s Plumed Horse is no stranger to local fine dining best-of lists. Peter Armellino’s white tablecloth has been praised in Sunset and held a coveted Michelin star since 2009. While accolades like these tend to come with higher-priced menus, date night doesn’t need to break the bank. His recently opened Pasta Armellino—located across Big Basin Way from his flagship establishment, in the heart of downtown Saratoga’s gourmet gulch—offers a stripped-down, fast casual menu that doesn’t skimp on quality. Customers queue up and order like they might at a deli, circling the meals they desire in pencil, on clipboards. Pay at the counter, grab your tray with drinks along with a number, and wait just a few minutes to be served. Innovative salads, elegantly simple soups, and incredible pasta dishes arrive quickly. Even sampling a dish from each section of the menu, with drinks, a party of two can leave walk away—completely satisfied and satiated—for less than $100.

Best Food Truck

Best Caterer

Best Tea Room

Best Ethnic Market International

PENINSULA

Best Business Lunch

Best American Restaurant

Best Chinese Restaurant

Best Place to Skip the Brunch Line
Italian Brothers Bakery
1401 W San Carlos St, San Jose
Not to knock Midtown’s hottest new brunch spot, but there’s nothing at the end of the line that’s worth a two-hour wait, not even The Breakfast Club’s delectable blueberry-lemon short stack. Instead of standing awkwardly in the restaurant’s entryway counting the minutes and glaring at diners taking their sweet time to pay up, head over the crosswalk to Italian Brothers Bakery. It’s no brunch spot, but it’s a great Plan B that’ll inevitably become your Plan A. Run by the eponymous Sicilian siblings Marco and Giacomo Montevago, the place is more than a bakery; it’s also a rosticceria and gelateria. The Montevago brothers learned the family recipes as children working in their great-grandfather’s bakery in Palermo and decided to continue the tradition a world away in San Jose. After stints at a few other local Italian restaurants, the pair took over the spot last year at San Carlos Street and Meridian Avenue, where they serve up Sicily’s signature sweets and smoked meats.

Best Japanese Restaurant

Best Mexican Restaurant

Best Indian Restaurant

Best Thai Restaurant

Best Taqueria

Best Breakfast

Best Independent Coffeehouse

Best Bakery

Best Burrito

WEST VALLEY

Best Business Lunch

Best American Restaurant

Best Chinese Restaurant

Best Japanese Restaurant

Best Mexican Restaurant

Best Thai Restaurant

Best Taqueria

Best Breakfast

Best Independent Coffeehouse

Best Bakery

Best Burrito

Best Anime-Themed Dumplings
Mingle’s Mango
5278 Monterey Hwy, San Jose
If you’ve never been to Mingle’s Mango, a word of advice: Ignore your first impression. Tucked between a Catholic church and a $7-a-chop barber shop in a drab Monterey Highway strip mall, it’s easy to miss. And if you do manage to find it, the facade—featuring a haphazardly hand-painted sign and red-curtained windows—looks so much like a rub-and-tug hub that you might want to take a hard pass anyway. We happen to think the fly-by-night exterior is part of the charm here. Venture past those dingy glass doors to discover a sanctuary to Chef Mingle Wang’s two great loves in life: Dragon Ball Z and xiaolongbao. The hole-in-the-wall purveyor of dim sum and hand-pulled noodles is dimly lit and lovingly decorated with anime murals on all but one side of the restaurant, where projected anime flickers on a pair of drawn white curtains. According to Wang, he launched the restaurant in 2017 in part to raise money to produce a Dragon Ball Z movie in homage to his passion for the cartoon that he says “never fades away with age.” Then there’s the menu, which besides Wang’s signature dumplings offers a tempting array of dishes well worth trying, from family-recipe staples—soups, noodles and steamed buns—to quirky one-offs like the swirled-potato-on-a-stick Pornado, pastry-wrapped sausage Spicy Dick and chocolate-filled dessert dumplings.

CENTRAL VALLEY

Best Business Lunch

Best American Restaurant

Best Chinese Restaurant

Best Japanese Restaurant

Best Mexican Restaurant

Best Indian Restaurant

Best Thai Restaurant

Best Taqueria

Best Breakfast

Best Independent Coffeehouse

Best Bakery

Best Burrito

Best Place to Order Noodles on a Tablet
Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar
717 Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto
Like most trendy eating establishments, Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar has plenty of nods to the mid-century modern aesthetic. But in a gesture to our future robot overlords, patrons at this buzzed-about Stanford Shopping Center restaurant order their dishes from one of the tablet computers at every table. One might worry that a restaurant that gives customers the option to order from a touch screen might be lacking a human touch. Not so at Taro San. The place is bustling with helpful servers, and it’s quite clear that the food is made with love—an emotion that the machines have yet to master (we think). For starters, the Brussels sprouts and crab sunomono salad are a solid choice. And while the seared salmon toro sashimi and chicken karaage appear on the “to share” menu, they are substantial enough to nearly qualify as entrees. But the reason people are lining up outside of Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar is for the noodles. And these certainly do not disappoint. On a recent trip, we ordered the tori paitan udon (chicken in a creamy broth), which gave a whole new meaning to chicken soup for the soul, warming us up and lifting our spirits on a cold February evening.

SAN JOSE/SOUTH VALLEY

Best Business Lunch

Best American Restaurant

Best Chinese Restaurant

Best Japanese Restaurant

Best Mexican Restaurant

Best Indian Restaurant

Best Thai Restaurant

Best Taqueria

Best Breakfast

Best Independent Coffeehouse

Best Bakery

Best Burrito

FREMONT & MILPITAS

Best Business Lunch

Best American Restaurant

Best Chinese Restaurant

Best Piece of Hunan History Hiding in San Jose
Hunan Taste
998 N 4th St, San Jose
Henry Chung, the man credited with bringing the spicy Hunan style of Chinese cooking to the United States, died in 2017. His spirit and recipes live on in the many eateries that still bear his name throughout San Francisco. His cooking caused quite a sensation when American diners, then more familiar with Cantonese styles of Chinese food, discovered Henry’s Hunan. Back in 1976, when Chung’s flagship kitchen was fairly new, the New Yorker food critic Tony Hiss dubbed it “the best Chinese restaurant in the world.” Many familiar with Hunanese cuisine are aware of this history. Many still may be unaware that Henry’s legacy lives on in the South Bay as well—in a small diner, located next to a laundromat on Fourth Street in the Hyde Park neighborhood of San Jose. Hunan Taste was founded by Joanne Song, a chef and niece of Chung. Delicious, savory and most importantly, spicy (there are more items on the menu that appear next to a tiny chili pepper than not), Hunan Taste is a great place to break a sweat and bust a cold. Must-trys are their hot and sour soup, dumplings and mu shi pork.

Best Japanese Restaurant

Best Mexican Restaurant

Best Indian Restaurant

Best Thai Restaurant

Best Taqueria

Best Breakfast

Best Independent Coffeehouse

Best Bakery

Best Burrito

Introduction | Food & Drink | Music & Nightlife | Goods & Services | Art & Culture