tamarine is probably the best asian restaurant on stanfurd's university avenue. i say that sincerely but feel obligated to add that unversity avenue does not have many good asian restaurants. one evening, my coworkers tried to find chinese food in stanfurd country and quickly realized their shortage of authentic asian culture. wow. for a school with so much asian students... anyway, the first time i visited tamarine was when my friend, who does their taxes invited me to tag along to their anniversary party. when i arrived, i felt i was at a country club except i felt that i was a v.i.p. because my racial composition seemed to be rather chic in that environment. i was the hottest fashion accessory to that room. heh... ok, i'm being a little facetious, but i'm just making a statement about alternaculture's view of asian traditions: after all the sand paintings, mandarin collars, and kill bill style school girl uniforms are gone, what do that crowd _really_ think?
anyway, i've gone way off topic. that night at the party i enjoyed some good asian-fusion cuisine as well as some vietnamese traditional dishes like spring rolls. i was thoroughly impressed with this operation! the place also had great decor. i loved it.
later, my wife and i returned for our anniversary because we liked it so much. yes, in this day and age asian-fusion, especially the melding of southeast asian cuisine w/ euroamerican cuisine is rather commonplace, but tamarine _does_ stand out.
i'd like to comment, not only is the food delicious, but the presentation of the dishes is often beautiful and/or cute. when our steamed jasmine rice arrive in a little banana or bamboo leaf container, slightly reminiscent of chinese tsong-tse or taiwanese batzang; wow, my wife insisted on taking a picture of that cute little thing.
what ever happened to the guy who opened shanghai 1930, betelnut, and xanadu (back when it was around)??? wow, if you were to compare stanfurd's tamarine to berkeley's xanadu, xanadu definitely would've won that big game. however, that's not to say anything bad about tamarine, just that it's up there amongst some very qualified peers.
.... [added later] oh, i totally forgot to mention what i set out to say: although tamarine is the best viet-fusion joint in stanfurd territory, if you venture south near the heart of silicon valley, near the ultra-hip santana row area, you'll find a delightful, friendlier joint called citronelle, which i would prefer over tamarine on the average day. however, sometimes it's nice to hang out in enemy territory and wear a red shirt or something.
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