Restaurants in East Palo Alto

For over a quarter of a century, chefs at Sun-Ly Chinese Foods have charmed a stream of loyal customers with colorful meals of East Asian cuisine and warm, friendly service. Like a beloved childhood cartoon dubbed into an obscure dialect of Estonian, the voluminous menu is simultaneously familiar and exotic, plying patrons with classic dishes, such as general chicken and broccoli beef, as well as rare treats, such as honey-walnut shrimp, salt-and-pepper calamari, and peking ribs.:

Meat eaters and vegetarians alike can find something on China Wok’s lengthy menu of Chinese favorites. The comprehensive lineup features more than 100 specialties, including the Dragon and Phoenix plate—an extra-spicy mix of sautéed shrimp and chicken. The Happy Family platter arrives dotted with barbecue pork, shrimp, and scallops. Vegetarian entrees include a fragrant bouquet of nutritious fresh broccoli, snow peas, and bamboo shoots cooked in a clay pot, which can restore the body, even after a four-day binge on nothing but donuts.

As a child, Hanna Pham watched her mother cook traditional dishes in their family's kitchen in Vietnam, measuring the aromatic spices and cooking marinated shaking beef in her wok. Though she was named one of 11 Top Female Chefs in the Bay Area by the Wave magazine in 2007, Pham first worked as a graphic designer and later as an international professional singer before opening Clay Pot, a traditional Vietnamese restaurant. After noticing the youthfulness of the area, Pham decided to transform the Clay Pot into the contemporary 19Market, adding a modern Californian twist to her Vietnamese dishes to complement the new décor of earthy tones and dark wood accents.

In the kitchen, Chef Pham draws on her roots as she prepares her signature shaking beef, which she learned from her mother, tossing cubes of filet mignon in a wok with onions, garlic, and black pepper. In the dining room, patrons sip house cocktails such as the lychee martini or glasses of wine from the extensive list while listening to the melodic scales of live jazz music.

Sonoma Chicken Coop began dishing out flavorful fowl in its first restaurant in 2002, and it takes its name from the lauded California wine region and its own signature rotisserie dishes. Chefs cook new batches of rotisserie chicken every hour, hand-toss each salad, oven-fire each pizza, cook up each delicious pasta and seafood dish, concoct sandwiches with housemade focaccia bread, and conclude meals with housemade desserts. A dining room and outdoor patio accommodate visitors, and Sonoma Chicken Coop catering supplies its fire-grilled and specialty cuisine to groups of 10–200 feasters—the same range of people that might show up for a university symposium on talc.