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What nice Palo Alto restaurants are in strip malls? Most stuff is near University or California Ave. The only thing in Palo Alto I really think of as anything _
by jamesaguilar 13y ago
What nice Palo Alto restaurants are in strip malls? Most stuff is near University or California Ave. The only thing in Palo Alto I really think of as anything _like_ a strip mall is the Stanford shopping center, but that's more of a mall-mall, and the "nice" restaurants there are the big chain restaurants. Maybe the Fry's too, I guess, but there are no restaurants in that one.
- kbrosnan 13y agoElCamino and Alma/Central sort of meet the description. Though less so in PA then surrounding towns.
- brandnewlow 13y agoPizzeria Napolitano on El Camino. It's true, the best restaurants (combination of great food and not super pricy) in the Valley are in Strip Malls.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoPizzeria Napolitano is not even in Palo Alto. And your redefinition of "best" to "cheap" doesn't really work for me either.
- rayiner 13y agoNot necessarily right in downtown Palo Alto (it has a cute little downtown area), but in the surrounding areas definitely. When I was a summer intern in my employer's Menlo Park office, I had a lunch budget which means I had to figure out how to take advantage of several free lunches a week. I probably hit up a dozen (nice) places, and all were either in strip malls or in isolated buildings surrounded by a big parking lots. E.g. this is a Michelin-star place in Cupertino: http://goo.gl/maps/VsVNL http://goo.gl/maps/VsVNL. Right next to the highway, surrounded by a parking lot. Might as well be a Taco Bell. This is another Michelin-star place in San Mateo: http://goo.gl/maps/KjdnP http://goo.gl/maps/KjdnP. Of course I'm being somewhat facetious. There's not a lot of places to put a restaurant in the suburbs other than in a strip mall next to a Walgreens or in a building surrounded by a big parking lot. But that's my point--you're paying Manhattan prices to live in a suburb. Not a compact, walkable one like Greenwich, either, but a sprawl-y generic one that looks more or less like the faceless generic suburbs in any other part of the country.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoOK, I concede. The prices are very high for an unwalkable suburb, although I think most people think Palo Alto is at least prettier than your average. Our downtowns are better too. Still not as nice as living in a city, but not quite as bad as living in a Houston exurb either.
- rayiner 13y agoTo be fair, downtown Palo Alto, if you can afford it, is pretty nice, if somewhat sterile. Reminds me a lot of Greenwich, actually. I can't say the same for the rest of the valley, though...
- tptacek 13y agoHis wording was hyperbolic but his point wasn't far off the mark if you compare the restaurant scene in SF (or NYC or Chicago) to that of South Bay.