Restaurants in Palo Alto

La Victoria Taqueria's signature orange sauce spins vibrantly hued, piquant accents across time-tested Mexican fare including burritos, tacos, and enchiladas. Amid spice-laden clouds of steam, chefs forge the sauce from a secret family recipe and sell it by the bottle due to its popularity and ability to escape paper bags. The eatery's two-tone booths brim with the sounds of gleefully chattering silverware, and catering services launch supplies to distant parties and meetings.

With three food trucks and a brick-and-mortar locale, CurryUpNow dishes up the street fare of India with creatively presented, colorful dishes. The restaurant menu comprises traditional street fare and creative takes on classics. Chefs turn the fillings of the deconstructed samosa—a popular original dish—inside out before topping it with garbanzo-bean curry and chutney-tamarind sauce to be scooped up by four mini samosas. They craft fusion dishes, folding chicken tikka masala made with 100 percent organic white chicken into burritos, and piling two- and three-item thali platters with curried eats. The menu's offerings include vegan options, and most can be made with a choice of chicken, ground halal beef or vegetarian options: paneer—a traditional farmers' cheese—and aloo, or potatoes. The entire repertoire is medium spiced, and brave-tongued people can request it spicy, or kick it up all the way to Desi hot, which infuses dishes with ghost peppers, habanero, and volcano tears.

Saigon Bistro piles plates with lemongrass chicken, using cuts juicier than a tabloid article about Hollywood’s best smoothie shops. Appetizers also please palates inside this casual Vietnamese eatery, with selections such as spring rolls and calamari. Dinner dishes include pho and ba nam noodles with tomato meat sauce, which can sate ampler appetites.

The heart of the Kinara Lounge kitchen is its fiery clay tandoori oven, which crackles with baking naan breads and sizzling tandoori meats from noontime until dusk. Chefs bustle about the oven, seasoning pans of chicken, lamb, and seafood specialties with flavorful spices while peeking into pots filled with bubbling biryani rice. Servers transport plates to the dining room, where hanging red lights casts a glimmer on bottles of premium liquors and a flat-screen television. Come lunch time, the servers stack a sweeping buffet with simmering platters of fresh Indian specialties, enabling diners to sample a diverse selection of curries, tandoori dishes, and sauces.