My mom had set up reservations here for us to meet for my grandma’s birthday. Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling well the day of, but I told my mom I was still heading to San Jose for other reasons so we went through with the dinner plans anyway. I mean, it was also my birthday the next day so why not!
Now before we get into the food, I parked next to what I thought was a simple STi until I noticed a few different subtle features. Then I realized it was a type RA, only 500 were made and they went for $50k new! My first time seeing one up close, pretty cool car even if it is slower than my wagon haha.
Alright, now let’s focus. The Grandview Restaurant is nestled in the hillside in San Jose off Mt Hamilton road. If you know that road then you know how much fun I had driving up/down it 😉
It was pretty hard to decide what to order since I don’t usually eat out, and I definitely don’t go to fancy places like this often. The price of one dish is normally my entire bill when I go out with a friend. We ended up ordering a bunch of appetizers to get started and while waiting I got a couple photos to show the view from our seating area on the outside patio.
Lovely view but the lighting made it extremely difficult to take photos of the food. I know, I always have some type of excuse for my lacking images but just deal with it. On to the appetizers!
First up were the Poke Mini Tacos $18 featuring marinated salmon belly, sesame oil and soy avocado crema. Let me start off by saying each dish was pretty interesting, maybe my palette isn’t developed enough for this kind of dining. I’ve had many poke/sashimi dishes but this was the most different for sure. To be fair this appetizer was probably the furthest type of food you could order from what seemed to be the normal here.
Next was the Grilled Octopus $24 featuring roasted marble potatoes, cannellini beans and agrodolce. Nothing super exciting about this dish, but as you may notice, this restaurant loves to add this seafoam garnish as I called it. It gave us a few chuckles when I kept describing it as such. Nearly every dish came with a serving of the seafoam.
The third appetizer selection was the GrandView Farms Deviled Eggs $19 featuring mt. hamilton grass fed beef tartar with fried spanish capers, shallots and mustard truffle aioli. Oh yeah, don’t forget the seafoam 😂 This was the most unique presentation of deviled eggs I have ever seen. I still can’t decide if it was overdone or well executed. It was a mouthful, maybe I shouldn’t have one-bited it. My mouth was too full to distinguish each unique flavor. I’m also not a huge deviled egg fan but these were okay.
Here’s a full shot of the appetizers on my side of the table, there may have been more but these are the ones I tried. The Mufalata di Calamari $19 you see there doesn’t need its own explanation, it was simply calamari, can’t really screw that up though I prefer mine crunchier.
Here is what I ordered, the American Kobe N.Y. Strip 16oz $88 from Snake River Farms, Idaho featuring midollo, porcini and grandview herb rub reduction. I’m not sure what grade this steak was but based off the prices per cut that Snake River Farms offers I would say it was black grade since that would leave the biggest margin of profit to the restaurant versus the gold grade. I asked for it to be cooked rare and it might have been slightly over cooked but no big deal. I might be tough to please but this steak wasn’t amazing for the price compared to what I can make at home.
Here is what my sister ordered, the Angelotti della Montagna $42 featuring slow barolo braised short rib and parmeggiano crema. I tried a bite but I don’t have anything to report, sorry.
Oh yeah, here was a side of Smashed Yukon Potatoes (v) $22 that were pan fried with garlic, grandview farms herbs and shaved black truffles. Potatoes gon’ potato!
Here’s the sunset view from our table, gorgeous!
Overall it was a pretty pleasant experience but I can’t say I have the intention of returning. Was a fun drive though.
m i l k t e a m a n 
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