The Stanford Business Reporter

Issue date: 10/15/01 Section: Arts & Entertainment

The Palace BBQ: Starve yourself beforehand and stick with the meats

After a long summer of eating barbeque and Tex-Mex in Houston, Texas, I needed a change of pace. So, I asked my partner in food crime and criticism, Frances Hsieh, MBA2 if she would be willing to start off this year by reviewing soul food. I should have realized that something was amiss after she told me to meet her in Santa Clara. Are there even soul food restaurants on the Peninsula (to be answered in later editions of The Reporter)?

Arriving at the rendezvous point, I immediately realized what was wrong…Frances thought that I had said “Seoul” food--I was at a Korean BBQ. After my initial shock of missing out on collard greens, macaroni and cheese and pecan pie, I calmed down and reminded myself that I was a product of a Korean dot-com commune (imagine kim-chee in the fridge and pictures of Mt. Chiri). If I was not going to have the opportunity to eat my people’s food, I would at least have the opportunity to eat my other people’s food.

Palace BBQ Buffet

Bryant: The first place that we went to was the infamous Palace BBQ Buffet. Imagine in an alternate universe, a Korean school cafeteria with blue ceilings and copper heat shields in Texas’ favorite structure, the strip mall. Palace BBQ is famous in Silicon Valley for its $18.99 all-you-can-eat buffet (caveat--if you leave a substantial portion of food uneaten, you can get a waste fee). After wandering down the meat and fish aisle, I was impressed by the variety of meats at Palace, which runs the gamut from BBQ beef, spiced pork, and chicken teriyaki to fish, squid, octopus and even gizzards. I was in carnivore heaven. The only catch is that you have to cook it yourself which is fantastic for the control freaks in the audience, but not quite as fun after you have octopus tentacles stuck to the grill. After dropping a huge stack of meat down at the table, I immediately went back to pillage the vegetable/fruit section of the buffet. I tasted everything: kim-chee, bean jello and other assorted vegetables. Again, the selection and quality was very extensive.

I loved the seconds, thirds and fourths of the buffet experience, especially at Palace BBQ. However, the place had the ambiance of Arbuckle without Dean sightings. Additionally, the quality of the food is very dependent on your grilling skills (which in my case was not very good). Overall, Palace BBQ Buffet is a great place to go for an immense quantity of meat but it is certainly not a Siebel Dining Scholar.

Frances: Starve yourself beforehand and stick with the meats--that’s all you need to remember when going to Palace BBQ. However, since I felt an obligation to report on the quality of the other food, I also tried the seaweed soup, fried rice, sautéed tofu, chap chae (glass noodles with veggies), and other random Chinese/Korean/Japanese dishes. Unlike Bryant, I thought the results were mixed. I liked the soup enough to have seconds and the chap chae was decent, but everything else was a bit cold (as if it had been sitting around for too long).

Bryant has already sung praises for the variety and quality of the meats, so I won’t belabor it here. My favorite was the short ribs.

I almost forgot to mention the extensive selection of fruit, jello, and other desserts. I can never pace myself well enough to save room for this stuff, but it all looked pretty yummy.

Secret Garden

Bryant: After I pulled up to another strip mall, I did not have high expectations for the quality or ambiance, I just expected solid Korean BBQ. Amazingly, Secret Garden was so much more. As opposed to relying on my lack of grilling ability, I decided to slack and let the cooking staff take care of my grill uncertainty (good idea).

The leadoff entrée was tasty jumbo shrimp fried in an Aristotelian-moderation-in-all-things amount of tempura batter that cheered up my palate. Then, I continued to partake in the complimentary assortment of vegetable dishes standard in Korean BBQ restaurants. At Secret Garden, the vegetables were fresh and delicious (especially the spiced cucumbers) and the service was exceptional as servers replaced our vegetable dishes as if they were empathically hooked up to us.

My all-consuming love of Secret Garden’s offerings continued as I tasted several mouth-watering fish filets that tasted more like dessert than entrée. Finally, I tried the piece de resistance, Bul Koki (juicy tender Korean BBQ beef) which was as tender, supple, and sweet as any I have ever had. If you want a great dining experience, go to Secret Garden--either it is a gem, or my taste buds have been irreversibly destroyed by Louisiana hot sauce.

Frances: Secret Garden is my favorite Korean restaurant in the Bay Area. As Bryant said, the variety and quality of complimentary appetizers were above average and the speed with which the wait staff replenished our favorites was stunning. I had to stop them from getting us more refills for fear of filling up on pickled cucumbers, seasoned spinach, fish cakes, kim-chee, spicy radishes, etc. before the arrival of our entrées.

When it comes to Korean food, I prefer to go in large groups so that I can sample a bunch of dishes family-style. But, one nice thing about Secret Garden is the availability of certain dishes as “appetizers” instead of entrées. Usually, I am forced to choose between my two favorites, Soon Tofu Jigae and Bi Bim Bap, but here I could get both and not feel like a glutton (or spend a lot of money and waste food).

The Soon Tofu Jigae (spicy tofu soup with beef and clams) was nice and hot, temperature-wise and spice-wise. They were very generous with the amount of tofu and meat, to the point that there wasn’t much soup. “Too much of a good thing” seems to be the theme here.

The Bi Bim Bap was fabulous! My pet peeve is ordering it at restaurants and getting stale, crumbly ground beef in my stone pot. At Secret Garden, you get juicy, tasty, shredded Bul Koki (see Bryant’s description above) on top of a great assortment of the requisite veggies (carrots, spinach, cucumbers, sprouts, etc.), fried egg, and rice. Also, I appreciated their tolerance of the sacrilegious way I like to eat my Bi Bim Bap (not stirred up).

Not surprisingly, neither of us had room for dessert, so we can’t comment on that.


Palace BBQ Buffet
1092 E. El Camino Real, #1
Sunnyvale
(408) 554-1292
Food: HP (for carnivores)
Ambiance: P
Service: N/A

Secret Garden
3430 El Camino Real
Santa Clara
(408) 244-5020
Food: H
Ambiance: P
Service: HP

Caveat for the Purists: Neither place has the authentic charcoal grills, which require waiters who wear oven mitts to deliver glowing, hot coal briquettes to your table. If someone finds a place like that in the Bay Area, we want to hear from you!

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