Sunday, September 09, 2007

Trip to Pleasanton...

I just landed this afternoon from my trip to the bay area. It was a fun trip and I got to try a few new places at the newly opened asian plaza in Dublin call Ulferts Center. The first day, we ate at a place called Koi Garden with my coworkers which serve HK style food and is an offshoot of Koi Palace and that family of restaurants. But what was cool was the visit to Vin Pearl, a more upscaled Vietnamese restaurant, later that night.

Every detail in this restaurant was done to my taste and style. The menu design was really nice, from the brief, but well written intro to Vietnamese cuisine and actual printing processed used to print the menu to the nicely decorated interior and uniform of the wait staff. It was a delight.

I ordered way too much, a soft shell crab appetizer, a prawn dish and a shaking beef dish. All dishes were very good and you must really eat the salad in tandem with the meat of the dish in order to enjoy the balance of taste. The presentation was really nice as well. After the entrees, I made room for a lightly friend split banana, topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and a cinnamony pineapple glazed sauce and toasted macadamia nuts. Mmmmm...soo good. Anyways, I digged in to quickly to take a picture of the desert but enjoy some pics of the place and entrees below.

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Nice logo design


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A sample of the interior design...nicer than other Vietnamese restaurant I have been to


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Shaking Beef dish


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Delicious prawn dish


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The waitress, picture taken by mom. I was hoping to catch more of the waitress' uniform. Oh well...



The final day, I missed lunch because I was working too hard...so I treated myself to the newly opened Osaka Ramen in the same center. I heard the chef went over to Japan to learn how to properly make the three base broth (soy, pork and miso) for Japanese ramen. I tried the two of the three base, the soy and pork, as seen in the following picture. Suffice to say, I could barely move after eating all this. And for the second day in a row, the waitress comment that I can really eat a lot and they they are impress.
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A Soy based Ma Pao Tufu ramen. I had better but the noodles were a good consistency.


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The Tonkatsu (pork) based soup

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