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Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

What nice Palo Alto restaurants are in strip malls? Most stuff is near University or California Ave. The only thing in Palo Alto I really think of as anything _like_ a strip mall is the Stanford shopping center, but that's more of a mall-mall, and the "nice" restaurants there are the big chain restaurants. Maybe the Fry's too, I guess, but there are no restaurants in that one.

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Not necessarily right in downtown Palo Alto (it has a cute little downtown area), but in the surrounding areas definitely. When I was a summer intern in my employer's Menlo Park office, I had a lunch budget which means I had to figure out how to take advantage of several free lunches a week. I probably hit up a dozen (nice) places, and all were either in strip malls or in isolated buildings surrounded by a big parking lots.

E.g. this is a Michelin-star place in Cupertino: http://goo.gl/maps/VsVNL. Right next to the highway, surrounded by a parking lot. Might as well be a Taco Bell.

This is another Michelin-star place in San Mateo: http://goo.gl/maps/KjdnP.

Of course I'm being somewhat facetious. There's not a lot of places to put a restaurant in the suburbs other than in a strip mall next to a Walgreens or in a building surrounded by a big parking lot. But that's my point--you're paying Manhattan prices to live in a suburb. Not a compact, walkable one like Greenwich, either, but a sprawl-y generic one that looks more or less like the faceless generic suburbs in any other part of the country.

OK, I concede. The prices are very high for an unwalkable suburb, although I think most people think Palo Alto is at least prettier than your average. Our downtowns are better too. Still not as nice as living in a city, but not quite as bad as living in a Houston exurb either.

To be fair, downtown Palo Alto, if you can afford it, is pretty nice, if somewhat sterile. Reminds me a lot of Greenwich, actually. I can't say the same for the rest of the valley, though...

His wording was hyperbolic but his point wasn't far off the mark if you compare the restaurant scene in SF (or NYC or Chicago) to that of South Bay.

By that standard, one of the best restaurants in NYC is above a Whole Foods and adjacent to a food court.

This is a little like talking about the restaurant scene in Yountville. I mean, yeah, but what else is there in Yountville?

ElCamino and Alma/Central sort of meet the description. Though less so in PA then surrounding towns.

Pizzeria Napolitano on El Camino.

It's true, the best restaurants (combination of great food and not super pricy) in the Valley are in Strip Malls.

Pizzeria Napolitano is not even in Palo Alto. And your redefinition of "best" to "cheap" doesn't really work for me either.

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