Vietnam Town in San Jose

[tongodeon]

I get my hair cut at Nancy's Barber Shop in San Rafael. Nancy is a late middle aged Vietnamese woman and runs her barbershop as a one-woman operation. Over the last several months I've gotten her to open up a little about her childhood in Vietnam, experience during the war, and fleeing to America with her children after the war. (Things have

Comments

[haineux]

So there are two real Vietnamese hotbeds in the San Jose area. One is on Santa Clara Street near 10th Street in Downtown SJ. There are a bunch of sandwich shops and a couple of restaurants.

The nicest is Vung Tau, a semi-fancy traditional food Vietnamese resto which also has locations around the SF Bay, probably one near you. The same group also runs Tamarine, in Palo Alto, a fancy Viet Fusion place that has superb cocktails.

Also worth mentioning is the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Vegetarian House. It's quite entertaining. The enclosed patio area has panes of colored glass and paintings by Supreme Master Ching Hai. She's from Vietnam, but the resto serves all different kinds of food made with "fake meat." The food is OK, and they only proselytize you if you ask. Several of the nearby sandwich shops are also fake-meat based. (These guys are unrelated to the Pure Land Buddhists who run a bunch of fake meat chinese restaurants.)

The other major Vietnamese hotbed is south of Downtown SJ, between Tully and Quimby and Capitol and Senter roads. There's like 188 sandwich/food in styro trays/durian candy mercantiles, and about as many noodle places. The "good" sandwich place we like is Huong Lan. I am not sure which other places are the best. They're all pretty OK. Good food, cheap as dirt.

There is also an attempt to make a third spot into a Vietnamese hotbed by way of creating a gigantic mall of sorts, not near either of the other two. Real Estate Barons are involved.

There's also scattered Viet all over the darn place in SJ.

[kraquehaus]

I think veitnamese joints need to be seperated into three main categories:

-pho
-sandwiches
-other

Other would be the kind of standard dinner/lunch dishes.

I am weary of getting pho at a place that doesn't have it listed at the top of the menu. I like being able to order "number one" and know I'll get well done, rare, tendon, tripe, and beefball pho. ;-)

I also want to find the Vietnamese coffee shop(s?) that I've heard of where all of the waitresses are only wearing hot lingerie.

[tongodeon]

I also want to find the Vietnamese coffee shop(s?) that I've heard of where all of the waitresses are only wearing hot lingerie.

Talk to haineux about some mysterious Vietnamese bar where women in falling-off-tops serve you bottled beer in a glass full of ice that you drink with a straw. Or something.