Eating Out
ShopTalk by Daryl Savage
SOUL FOOD AT THE TRACKS ... A big change is taking place at 109 California Ave. in Palo Alto, the site of numerous coffee shops throughout the years. The last shop, Plantation Cafe, abruptly closed in June 2008 and the corner of California Avenue and Park Boulevard has sat vacant ever since. Enter Anthony McFadden, a local businessman who had an auto detailing shop for 15 years. “It was time to retire from detailing and open a restaurant,” he said of his soonto-open Mac’s by the Tracks. But opening at this particular location was a stretch. “This place had no kitchen so I had to build one, and no natural gas so I had
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The lunch buffet ($10.95) is a good way to sample both Sri Lankan and Indian sides of the menu. Have a little green salad and all the naan you can eat, but on our visit many of the dishes, including naan, were impoverished by being just lukewarm. Best were creamy butter chicken, juicy tandoori chicken, and bengan bharta, in which eggplant is cooked down to a smoky jam with onions and garlic. I would go back and order each of those dishes. My advice is to get a table where you can see buffet dishes as they are replenished, and eat accordingly. As it happened, the gulab jaman dessert, deep-fried milk balls that often are sticky and heavy, had just come from the fryer to the buffet table and were delicious. Spicy Leaves’ soups ($3.50) include the traditional mulligatawany and an intriguing pumpkin-carrot. The chef’s chicken soup is well-stocked with tender pieces of breast meat, little curls of ramen-type noodles, corn, green beans and cilantro. It’s like a Thai coconut-milk soup. Sri Lankan chicken curry ($13.95) also has coconut inflections, with two drumsticks slathered in a thick, salty-spicy-sweet tomato-onion curry. Soupy yellow dal also has a nice kick. Pour some over rice. Sri Lankan fish curry, made with tilapia ($12.95), packs a mouthful of harmonious spices including tiny cardamom seeds, tomato and coconut milk. Sri Lankan fish mackerel and potato cutlets ($4.95) were heavy and oily. From the tandoor oven, chicken tikka kebabs ($13.95) were served on a sizzling platter with raw onions that keep cooking, and a lime for squeezing. Big, boneless hunks of breast meat were tender, the juices held in by slightly charred edges. There wasn’t a lot of meat in the lamb biryani ($13.95), but it too was boneless and tender, nestled
to add a gas line,” McFadden said. Mac’s by the Tracks is one of the latest restaurants to go into Palo Alto, but McFadden is certainly not new to soul food. “My grandma was a great cook. I grew up with the pressure cooker and the black cast-iron skillets. That’s the kind of equipment I’ll use here. It will be a newfangled kitchen with old-fashioned ways,” he said. And plenty of comfort food. “It’s an itch that needs to be scratched. People want greens with meat in it. They want mac and cheese with real elbow macaroni, not the scalloped kind. And they want real fried chicken,” he said. As far as a signature dish for the restaurant, he said:
in fluffy rice. Most of the appetizers and a half-dozen entrées are vegetarian (all $9.95), including a cheese dish and a marinated cauliflower entree from the tandoor oven. Nafiz palak paneer sets chunks of slightly sour farmer’s cheese into a bath of spicy spinach. After all these acidic, fruity, spicy flavors, a palate-cleansing dessert seems like a good idea. Disappointingly, the restaurant was out of its signature dessert, wattalappum ($4.50), the Sri Lankan crème caramel. To compensate, the cheerful host gave us a surprisingly light and aromatic rice pudding. Amid the restaurant row at the Village Court Shopping Center, Spicy Leaves is not a decor standout. The carpet, the banquet chairs, the handful of design touches feel tired. Maybe they are leftovers from the previous tenant, Bombay Cafe. Restrooms are upstairs. Note the “Watch your step” sign on the way down. The first people of Sri Lanka were the Sinhalese, from Northern India. From the 16th century until independence in 1948, the island was ruled by a succession of Europeans: Portuguese, Dutch and British. But if Sri Lanka rings a bell today, it is probably because of the horrible, ongoing ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists. Now we have a happier reason to think of Sri Lanka. Bring on the string hoppers! ■
“I’ll let the people decide. But personally I’m a catfish man. I love deep-fried catfish, made the old-fashioned way.”
the extensive menu that includes such items as schweinshaxn and rouladen, Nio says her best seller still is basic bratwurst.
ONE DOOR CLOSES, ANOTHER OPENS ... That’s the way German-food aficionados might view the turn of events in the restaurant business. It looks like Esther’s German Bakery and Cafe, at 987 San Antonio Road on the Los Altos/Palo Alto border, may be picking up the slack created when Elbe’s, Palo Alto’s only German restaurant, closed two months ago. For two years, Esther’s was open only for breakfast and lunch. It started serving dinners this week, with an expanded menu featuring traditional German supper fare. “People have been asking me for a long time to open for dinner and I finally decided to do it,” owner Esther Nio said. “I’ve done my best to try to keep reasonable prices. With this economy, who can afford a big dinner?” Despite
SLIDERS HIT DOWNTOWN ... A modern-day diner is about to open its front door in downtown Palo Alto. The Sliderbar Cafe at 324 University Ave. is restaurateur Ashwani Dhawan’s latest venture. Applying the concept of old-fashioned sliders to popular culture, Dhawan will be serving the all-day slider. “We’ll have sliders for breakfast, sliders for lunch and sliders for dinner,” he said. But these are a sharp contrast to the sliders of the 1950s. The term “sliders” is thought to have originated at White Castle, a chain of restaurants known for its small square burgers. The burgers were on the greasy side and as a result, they would easily slide down the throats of the customers. White Castle even trademarked the name of its burgers, but spelled it as
“Slyders.” Dhawan’s sliders could be viewed as several steps up from the original — nothing in the cafe will be fried. “We are going to bake our fries, chicken wings and onion rings,” Dhawan said. “We use Niman Ranch beef and everything is organic,” he said. In addition, breakfast sliders come in different styles. “We have the Mediterranean breakfast slider, the Italian breakfast slider and the California breakfast slider,” he said. Breakfast sliders start at $1.99. The narrow 1,600-squarefoot site, which is half the former Gleim the Jeweler spot, will seat 45. Dhawan said 1 percent of all sales from the restaurant will go to local charities. He also owns Mantra, a 4-year-old Indian restaurant at 632 Emerson St. in Palo Alto.
Heard a rumor about your favorite store or business moving out, or in, down the block or across town? Daryl Savage will check it out. She can be e-mailed at shoptalk@paweekly.com.
Question: Where can you get a 4 course dinner in Palo Alto for less than $15?
Answer: The only authentic French crêperie on the Peninsula
Bistro Maxine
"Le Menu" prix fixe Served after 6pm Includes
548 Ramona Street j Palo Alto 650-323-1815 www.bistromaxine.com -------Tuesday - Friday: 8am to 2.30pm 6pm to 10pm Saturday: 8am to 10pm Sunday: 9am to 4pm
Soupe du jour (vegetarian) House salad Savory crêpe of your choice Dessert Only $14.95
PUBLIC NOTICE FORMER NAVAL AIR STATION MOFFETT FIELD Restoration Advisory Board Meeting February 2010 The next regular meeting of the Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) for former Naval Air Station (NAS) Moffett Field will be held on: Thursday, March 11, 2010, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:10 p.m. at: Building 943 Eagle Room 1 NASA Parkway Mountain View, CA 94025 *Building 943 (Public Affairs Building) is located just before the main gate on NASA Parkway
Spicy Leaves 4546 El Camino Real, Suite A5 Los Altos 650-948-9463 www.spicyleaves.com
The RAB reviews and comments on plans and activities about the ongoing environmental studies and restoration activities under way at Moffett Field. Regular RAB meetings are open to the public and the Navy encourages your involvement.
Hours: Lunch: 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. daily. Dinner: 4-10 p.m. Mon.-Thurs., 4-11 p.m. Fri.Sat., 4-9 p.m. Sun.
For more information, contact Ms. Kathy Stewart, Navy Base Realignment and Closure Environmental Coordinator at: (415) 743-4715 or kathryn.stewart@navy.mil.
To review documents on Moffett Field environmental restoration projects, please visit the information repository located at the Mountain View Public Library, 585 Franklin St., Mountain View, CA 94041, (650) 903-6337.
Visit the Navyʼs website at: http://www.bracpmo.navy.mil/basepage.aspx?baseid=52&state=California&name=moffett Palo Alto Weekly • March 5, 2010 • Page 33