New Santa Clara Gombei and Kyo-Po market
We were very excited to hear that the defunct Cosentino's market at Lawrence & Homestead has recently been taken over by a brand new Korean Kyo-Po market. *and*, a new branch of Gombei restaurant next door, as well.
Gombei
Prior to this third branch, Gombei had two other shops -- one in San Jose and one in Menlo Park.
The San Jose is one of my favorite places for authentic teishoku lunches. I invariably order something from their daily specials and have never had a bad meal in ten years of eating there. There's a good reason for the line at lunch and often dinner. I'd give it an 8.0, sometimes 8.5 out of 10.
The Menlo Park shop is not very good. The few times I've eaten there, I've been disappointed with the quality of their dishes. Not sure why it doesn't measure up, but I'd barely give it a 5 out of 10.
How is the new Santa Clara shop? Well, for one thing, the previous shop was a horrible, horrible sushi boat place that I had prayed would go-under the one and only time I ever ate there. So I think that is a half-point demerit just for bad ju-ju carry-over.
Take another demerit for deciding to KEEP the boat infrastructure and serving sushi. That violates one of our cardinal rules of Japanese restaurants: If it's a sushi place, that's really all they should serve. If it's not a sushi place, then sushi should be buried deep in the menu as an after thought. Under no circumstances should sushi and, say, tempura have equal billing on the menu. I have never, ever in my life seen a place that can do both well.
Take yet another demerit for hiring the asshole sushi "chef" from Kubota. (The one that one that served me bad uni and then insisted on telling me I know nothing about fresh fish and refused to remove from bill when I kindly sent it back... after we were already well in over $100 on an otherwise great meal. Yes, it was 8 years ago. God I hope you're reading this you stink-eyed dick).
Needless to say, we did not order the sushi, but instead opted for... what? No daily specials? Deduct another full-point. So I ordered the "mix seafood fry". R orders the salted mackerel.
And we wait...
The "just opened" bumbling of untrained servers is pointed. Then my dish comes. Reasonably good shrimp and squid, although the salmon was a bit off. Probably the previous days sushi throwback?
R's comes after another 5 or 10 minutes. Decent mackerel, if a bit salty. But by now the luster is lost. As much as I wanted to like this place, I'm not going back. 5.5 out of 10, maybe. If I live in the hood (@bauxring) and was desperate for take out, I might order their katsu-don or something. And they are pretty cheap ($8-10) and nice service (except for stink-eye sushi dick).
Kyo-Po After finishing lunch, we waltzed over to Kyo-Po next door to see how the Cosentino's had been transformed. If you knew the old place, it's pretty funny because seemingly nothing has moved/changed in terms of where items are. Produce is where it was before, the bakery shop is the same, etc. But of course it's all Korean.
A quick cruise through left me thinking that it's probably a pretty good alternative to the stalwart Hankook if it's closer to you. Plus, they have arguably the best Korean fro-yo I've had to date -- easily in line with Fraiche in Palo Alto. They are super nice, and not only gave us samples, but also gave D his own super-junior cup. We're definitely going to go back there when we are in that area.
