Restaurant Review: Su's
Mongolian
By Taryn Gifford
For this month’s restaurant
review, the Journalism II class decided to visit, upon Steven
Giordano’s request, a restaurant called Su’s Mongolian
in Santa Clara on El Camino Real. Upon driving up to the restaurant,
there were definitely a few doubts in our minds, as the exterior
of the restaurant is non-descriptive to say the least.
Alisa Walsh and I, fashionably late as always, entered the restaurant
only to find our fellow editors with full bowls of food already.
The style at Su’s is basically self-serve; you walk in,
take a seat, and then go pick out the ingredients you want to
put in your Mongolian style stir-fry. I was impressed with the
ingredients with which to construct my dinner, there were many
more than the typical Great Khan’s style Mongolian, the
Mongolian places at Valley Fair and Oakridge malls. Among the
ingredient choices were frozen flakes of pork, chicken, beef,
and lamb, as well as shrimp. Moving along to the vegetables, there
were bell peppers, broccoli, bean sprouts, celery, and carrots.
After grabbing a few of each, Alisa and I (as well as Robby Valderrama,
Giordano and Alex Farrokhian who were then on round two) threw
in a heap of noodles and headed to the sauce section. Robby, evidently
the Mongolian pro, then led the group through the sauce choices:
a few spoons of soy sauce, vinegar, chili sauce, garlic, barbecue
oil, and oyster sauce, and we were on our way to have our creations
cooked. His main comment for the evening was, “The cuisine
was delectable and the atmosphere suitable for my Asian taste.”
In the corner of Su’s, there is a circular griddle-type
contraption, where a few happy waiters took our food and cooked
it almost instantly with chopsticks. After having our meal cooked,
we all went to sit down at our table, where Steven shared how
he first learned about Su’s, “See my friend Ben Jones,
his family does this thing where on November 11 (11/11), they
go to Su’s because its address is 1111 El Camino. And so,
it has become one of my favorite restaurants of all time.”
Overall, Su’s is a no-hassle way to go out to eat. You don’t
have to order or wait for your food to come to you, and you can
eat as much as you want but only have to pay a flat rate of about
ten dollars. The food was good, although hard to mess up, and
the atmosphere was, well, homey. Alex Farrokhian summed it up
when she said, “The food was great, but I felt that the
atmosphere could have used some improvement.” Basically,
I would recommend Su’s for a fast, casual meal, but not
for a special date, like, say Valentine’s Day.
