Noodle shop focuses on Chinese, JapaneseAleta Watson
Published: Friday, November 4, 2005
Many restaurants suffer from overly ambitious menus, promising diners a vast selection of dishes from many cultural traditions. Not Hana. The cheerful little shop focuses on handmade dumplings and noodles.
Located in a West San Jose shopping center devoted to Japanese stores and restaurants, the restaurant serves Chinese food with a Japanese sensibility. It makes a point of advertising that its dumplings and noodles are made from flour milled in Japan, which is whiter and softer than flour milled in the United States. Dumplings are called gyoza, the Japanese term for pot stickers.
Owners Takao and Myka Kitamura are also partners in Sushi Tomi in Mountain View. He's from Japan; she's Chinese. ``We want to take the good points of Japanese and the good points of Chinese food,'' he says.
The shop is inviting, brightly lit and simply decorated with a long blond wood banquette and wood tables and chairs. Service is as friendly as the setting. Carry out orders are quickly filled.
I'm a fan of Hana's negimochi, a delicate pan-fried cake that layers bits of scallion between layers of paper thin dough. It's nicely browned and crackling crisp with a pleasant green onion flavor.
Gyoza are good, too. Wrappers are thick but tender, encasing juicy, fresh-tasting fillings. Yaki gyoza ($4.95 for 6) are pan-fried to a golden brown on the bottoms. Negi gyoza ($6.50 for 12) are smaller and boiled. Fillings include minced vegetables and four variations on pork, including the tasty pork and shrimp.
Noodles are properly chewy. Chile lovers shouldn't miss the Tan Tan noodle dish ($6.95), which pairs vermicelli-thin noodles with an intense sauce of chopped pork and crushed peanuts that clears sinuses and leaves lips tingling.