Eating Out
Christophe Haubursin
An aerial view of the production line at Cream in Palo Alto. (continued from page 37)
PENINSULA
Discover the best places to eat this week! AMERICAN
New Tung Kee Noodle House
Armadillo Willy’s
947-8888 520 Showers Drive, Mountain View www.shopmountainview.com/luunoodlemv
941-2922 1031 N. San Antonio Road, Los Altos www.armadillowillys.com
INDIAN
The Old Pro
Janta Indian Restaurant
326-1446 541 Ramona Street, Palo Alto www.oldpropa.com
462-5903 369 Lytton Ave. www.jantaindianrestaurant.com
ITALIAN
Thaiphoon
Cucina Venti
323-7700 543 Emerson Ave, Palo Alto www.ThaiphoonRestaurant.com
254-1120 1390 Pear Ave, Mountain View www.cucinaventi.com CHINESE
Chef Chu’s
close to the U.C. Berkeley campus. They had lines out the door, and still do, said Palo Alto manager Matt Petersen, who approached the Shamieh family for a job after standing in line for 20 minutes at the Berkeley location about a year and a half ago. “I was looking for a new project and I was like, ‘This is brilliant, this is awesome,’” Petersen said. With Petersen as Cream’s first franchisee, the family headed to Palo Alto, opening the shop’s doors on University Avenue in mid-June. The Palo Alto location — which used to house Michael’s Gelato & Cafe — is a bigger space than Berkeley’s and offers a larger menu, with 20 ice cream flavors compared to Berkeley’s 16. As the store’s acronym-name (Cookies Rule Everything Around Me, inspired by hip-hop group Wu Tang Clan’s song “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”) suggests, at Cream they take their sweets seriously. You can custom-create your own ice cream sandwich, combining any of the cookies
— either two of the same or mixand-match — with a scoop of ice cream, plus toppings. “I just like that it feels homemade,” said Chris Winn, a Redwood City resident who tried Cream for the first time with his son Christian on a recent afternoon. Christian, with a stray drop of ice cream on his chin and his chocolate-chip cookie/ chocolate ice cream sandwich already half eaten before he walked out the door, agreed. Jenny Fernando, who drove from work in Menlo Park on a recent afternoon to get a scoop of salted caramel ice cream sandwiched between two turtle cookies (chocolate with chocolate chips, pecans and caramel) said she likes “that you get to play with the flavors a little bit.” “And it’s inexpensive,” she added. “And it’s delicious.” Paying less than three dollars for a generous scoop of ice cream and two large cookies is almost unheard of, but part of Cream’s mission is to make its treats affordable for everyone. “We don’t want to sacrifice premium quality for affordability,” Gus Shamieh said. “My dad used to say, ‘When I took you to Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, I would need to take out a small bank loan to afford it.’ So that was really key for us: to make it affordable for families to come and not have to break the bank to treat (their) families.” Though ice cream sandwiches ($2.99 or $2.50 if you pay cash) are the main event, Cream also offers milkshakes ($5.49), floats ($5.49), malts ($5.99) and scoops of ice cream (one scoop for $1.49). Baked goods include cookies (one for 79 cents, two for $1.49), brownies and raspberry, blueberry and lemon bars. Most of the baked goods go for $2.99. There are also two soy ice creams (mint chip and cherry chip), four vegan cookies and various gluten-free cookie options. In addition, there’s a half-sandwich option (one cookie is cut in half and the halves stacked to make a half sandwich for $1.75), multi-flavored milkshakes ($5.75) and milkshakes with cookie mixed in ($6.25). On Taco Tuesdays — 8 to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays — visitors can snag a sweet taco, made from a flat waffle curved up on the sides to create
Read and post reviews, explore restaurant menus,
948-2696 1067 N. San Antonio Road www.chefchu.com
and more at ShopPaloAlto,
Ming’s
ShopMenloPark
856-7700 1700 Embarcadero East, Palo Alto www.mings.com
and ShopMountainView
get hours and directions
Christophe Haubursin
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