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Exotic food in nice surroundings
Layang Layang is located on De Anza about a block off 85. It features a pretty extensive menu http://www.layanglayang.us/menu.html of Malaysian and Indonesian dishes as well as a few inventions of...
Layang Layang is located on De Anza about a block off 85. It features a pretty extensive menu http://www.layanglayang.us/menu.html of Malaysian and Indonesian dishes as well as a few inventions of their own.
The parking in front of the restaurant is available, but generally not sufficient. Luckily, the restaurant is on the corner of De Anza and a residential street where street parking is allowed. The restaurant allows for inside and outside seating, and inside seating does look a bit cramped. The waitress and hostess wear traditional clothing and generally maintain pleasant and friendly atmosphere.
The food selection is pretty good, and the presentation is even better. If you never drank coconut milk off freshly cracked coconut and never ate pineapple rice off the pineapple shell, this is the place to go. Pretty much every dish we ordered was an exercise in design and presentation. The pricing for most of the dinner meals is between $6 and $15. Layang Layang serves Malaysian iced teas and some other exotic drink, including coconut milk served off coconut.
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Elephant Bar has the food, the ambience, the service
Even people who are picky about the restaurants generally have some specific requirements that concern the quality of the food, its presentation, the interior and cleanliness of the restaurant, and...
Even people who are picky about the restaurants generally have some specific requirements that concern the quality of the food, its presentation, the interior and cleanliness of the restaurant, and the quality of service. At Elephant Bar & Restaurant it seems that they took care of everything.
The menu is available online at http://www.elephantbar.com/ourmenumain.htm and from the looks of it, Elephant Bar is primarily an Asian Fusion restaurant with the desire to please a little bit of both tastes, which justifies having cheeseburgers and fish with salsa.
We had to wait for about 10 minutes before getting into the place on Saturday evening, and the parking lot on Stevens Creek Boulevard was full. The drink menu is what one would expect from a restaurant that has a full bar in place, but they also serve a variety of specialty drinks mostly prefixed by the word "Jungle". The drinks are mostly in $4-7 range, with the meals ranging from $8 to $15.
The menu is quite vivid and full of pictures, and the presentation of the food at Elephant Bar Restaurant is great as well - they do really make sure the food looks good before it's served.
The service was bit hectic with the restaurant packed on Saturday, but nevertheless the waiters were courteous and expeditious. The place itself looks very clean, quite new, and has an African theme to it, which explains the sculptures of giraffes and large variety of plants inside.
The lunch menu varies from $6 to $9 and also features some of their excellent fish dishes.
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Perfect for any occasion
Be it weding reception or romantic dinner, Falafel Drive-in fits perfectly... Aaah, who am I kidding? The place is a little hole in a wall, and not a drive-in to begin with, as it's quite hard to...
Be it weding reception or romantic dinner, Falafel Drive-in fits perfectly... Aaah, who am I kidding? The place is a little hole in a wall, and not a drive-in to begin with, as it's quite hard to drive in with only 4 parking spots available and limited street parking. Nevertheless, the lines are always there during lunch time for the $6.50 large falafel and banana shake special. The falafels are tasty and plentisome, they're kinda messy to eat on the spot or in the car, but make a perfect lunch at home or at work.
There are a few picnic tables with tents over them to cover people in case of rain. The food preparation process is quite fast, and generally one doesn't have to wait a whole lot to get their food. Each to-go serving comes with extra red sauce. Definitely a must-try if you happen to drive near Stevens Creek Blvd.
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Great food in casual surroundings
Gilbert's offers a combination of ice cream / gelato / frozen yoghurt shop with Wharf-side entrance, and a restaurant/bar facing the Monterey Bay. Generally a place offering the clam chowder outside...
Gilbert's offers a combination of ice cream / gelato / frozen yoghurt shop with Wharf-side entrance, and a restaurant/bar facing the Monterey Bay. Generally a place offering the clam chowder outside might seem like desperate for customers, but in case of Gilbert's it's just a case of advertising really good fresh seafood.
The menu offers a good variety of fresh seafood items, with some items market as restaurant's specialty. The atmosphere is quite casual and friendly, the appetizers are good, and the entree items are generally not on the expensive side, between $15 and $35. They have a pretty good wine selection, featuring some local wines from Monterey area.
The fresh clam chowder is worth trying out, as this is the cafe specialty, as well as hot crab bake - a concoction of crab meat, shrimp and other seafood served hot on the sourdough. During the night time the view from the windows offers quite a nice picture of Monterey lights.
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Great place to try fresh seafood in Monterey
Located on Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, CA, Isabella's has to try hard to attract the customers among competing places with similar fresh-seafood menus, and it does a pretty good job. The menu is...
Located on Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, CA, Isabella's has to try hard to attract the customers among competing places with similar fresh-seafood menus, and it does a pretty good job. The menu is quite extensive, offering many fresh seafood choices, with crab and lobster at market prices.
The interior of the restaurant is quite upscale for a wharf location, and overall we got a great service. The butter garlic dungeness crab was a specialty that day, and it's definitely worth trying out, if you feel like having a big meal, since the crabs served are generally pretty large.
The restaurant doesn't offer a good selection of alcoholic or specialty drinks, but it's well compensated by their wine selection. Wines were generally overpriced, since they figured out that when you get great food combined with the view of Monterey Bay, you'd want to complement it with a nice bottle no matter what.
The dessert selection is pretty good, with about 7 desserts brought out on a specialty tray. The helper to the waiter (not the waiter himself) turned out to have very little knowledge of the dessert names and ingredients, but the waiter made excellent recommendations.
Isabella's has quite a few outside seats, that turned out to be too windy when we were there at lunch hour. However, the fast-changing weather is compensated by the view of sea lions and departing whale-watching boats.
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A Monterey Hotel that's close to everything that matters
When you visit Monterey, you probably have a certain list of places to visit and things to try. Monterey Bay Aquarium is probably on that list, as well as Monterey Fisherman's Wharf, followed by...
When you visit Monterey, you probably have a certain list of places to visit and things to try. Monterey Bay Aquarium is probably on that list, as well as Monterey Fisherman's Wharf, followed by downtown. Monterey Hotel is conveniently located within walking distance from all the places of interest in Monterey, and since it's right downtown, getting a cup of coffee in the morning or having a quick bite generally means crossing the street.
The hotel is historic, having been built in 1904. However, it has very nice interior, and none of the weird smells or unsanitary conditions you'd expect from old buildings. The staff is quite friendly and helpful the newcomers to Monterey to figure out their way around. The hotel lobby contains the list of all the takeout menus available in Monterey (not that you'd want a pizza delivery, having come to the seafood capital of NorCal).
The cons of being a historic hotel include the lack of elevators (not a problem for most of the people in the 3-story building) and horrendously squeaky floors. We were on the 2nd floor, and were going to bed early, due to overdose of walks on the fresh air, and I swear they held the walking competition the floor above. The room was also smaller than what you'd expect to get for similar money at a chain hotel.
There's continental breakfast served downstairs every morning 7-10 am, which includes bagels, yoghurt, cereal and a selection of fresh fruit. The hotel is within 20-30 minute walk from Monterey Bay Aquarium, and it's definitely a very nice walk on the trail by the ocean. It's realtively easy to get to from the highway.
There's no onsite parking, an the valet parking at the hotel is $16 a day. We were there for the Memorial Day weekend, and the downtown streets and parking lots are open to the public for free on weekends and holidays, so we managed to get a spot on the street right outside the hotel. If you positively cannot find any parking in the street, drive to the very end of Alvarado, and right behind the Washington Mutual building there's a public parking garage.
Hotel's advertised WiFi hotspot was not secured, but did not want to associate with my laptop even at 100% signal strength. I got Internet for maybe 10 minutes (which was manifested by all instant messengers popping windows like crazy and Yahoo! Messenger making those gun sounds notifying me of new mail) and could not get online after that, even though the wireless connection displayed 100% quality all along, which makes me think it wasn't my laptop that was the problem.
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Average food with below average service
Cafe Baklava offers a pretty good menu with various Mediterranean dishes and Turkish kebabs made out of chicken, lamb, beef and pork. They also have a pretty good variety of meats and fish prepared...
Cafe Baklava offers a pretty good menu with various Mediterranean dishes and Turkish kebabs made out of chicken, lamb, beef and pork. They also have a pretty good variety of meats and fish prepared in various Greek and Turkish sauces.
However, when you go beyond the house specialties, the food selection is pretty boring and you get the impression they're just repackaging the desserts they bought in bulk at Costco and selling to you at marked-up prices. Few of the desserts that I've tried on my visits there were a bit watery and did not make me a fun of the restaurant.
On arrival the customers are greeted with a serving of pita bread and hummus. The hummus is pretty good, although if you closed your eyes, the taste definitely reminds of guacamole sauce at a Mexican place. The quality of the entrees is ok, but nothing spectacular. Eggplant seems to be ever-present in all their menu offerings, with several entrees including eggplant as the main dish. The service is inevitably slow, and the waiters have taken a solemn oath to read the daily specials even if you already know what you want, and you explicitly tell the waiter you're ready to order.
The place does not have enough ambiance to justify for average food, and generally doesn't become one of those places that you dream of coming back to. If you want to avoid the slow and dull service at Cafe Baklava, but would still like to enjoy a good kebab, drive up Castro past El Camino to Rose's Market (across from Washington Mutual building), where they make all sorts of kebabs on open fire. They will make it faster than Cafe Baklava, too.
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