The Red Crane Restaurant // munchies review // California

by Kris   ⋅   May 29, 2008   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

The Red Crane is a welcome surprise nestled amongst the usual Cupertino “brain booster” establishments and across from a Home Depot. Its humble facade opens up to tasteful asian-inspired modern minimalism with dim lighting and papercraft frame-sets on every wall, most likely from the local Japanese craft clubs. With its amiable and attentive waitstaff, reasonable prices, flavorful fusion food, The Red Crane is easily a gateway drug to exotic gourmet, yet creative enough to satiate obstinate South Bay foodies with portions generous enough to share but tasty enough to want to hog it all for yourself.

I’m just going to try a list format to allow each dish the special attention they were given in the kitchen (and because I’m too lazy to promote segues today):

Karaage Calamari — (pictured left, top) large rectangular platter filled with spongy circles with clumpy crisp shells showered with seasoning, and a dipping bowl of creamy tangy white sauce. This was a tad on the greasy side, but the squid was sweet and tender.

Snow Crab and Banana Blossom Salad — (second pic from top) huge vertical slope of juicy, tender crab meat shards and shreds laced amongst fine pieced blossoms, cabbage, green bell pepper, tossed with a light coconut-touched lime dressing. Moist and meaty.

Snow Crab Cakes — succulent and tasty, but small and unmemorable. Cleverly accompanied by a heap of namasu (vinegary shredded cucumber salad) and a drizzling of aioli which they tout as “spicy”.

Sashimi Sampler — (third pic from top) ingenious, generous single slices of tuna, shiro maguro, hamachi, hotate, hirame, salmon, toro(!) paired with Chinese soup spoons filled with complementing sauces. I’ve had so-called otoro in the Bay Area that were blander and not as fatty as The Red Crane’s toro. It was seriously like steak fat; melty and slippery.

D-Pesto Roll — (third pic from top) a rice-less roll with tuna, hamachi, salmon clasped within a cucumber belt swimming in “Japanese Pesto” which I thought would be finely shredded shiso leaves, but sadly was not. The pesto itself was tasteless, overpowered by the vinaigrette it was floating in, almost resembling a “tidy swamp”, but it’s a very refreshing roll, good for the novelty.

Hamachi Sashimi — five generous smooth and buttery slabs presented like gravity-defying modern art.

Char Siu Marinated Alaskan Black Cod — Wow. After our Black Cod mishap at Hoshi, I was hesitant, but the idea of the pink marinade usually reserved for pork painted on a fish really intrigued me. There were two* thick oily, flaky fillets sitting upon bok choy bundles that sipped a light, tart cilantro/shoyu vinaigrette. It was just salty enough to enhance the sweet sauce, and the fish was crispily charred to prevent it from becoming mush. *On a subsequent visit, there was only one fillet with a lighter marinade.

Spicy Grilled Black Tiger Prawns — (fourth pic from top) said “spicy”, but really no heat. Five canned-pineapple-topped skewers criss-crossed against a colossal Mayan-style-stacked mesa of fried tofu cubes of the same height as the skewers (tall). Took most of this home and foolishly nuked it in the microwave. The prawns literally screamed as they shriveled up and became chewy little rocks.

The waitress was bursting with anticipation to describe the desserts, so we bit. The Shave Ice (bottom pic) was close to Waiola’s melty snow perfection, sitting high atop vanilla ice cream, a smattering of azuki beans, and kissed with rich condensed milk and your choice of 15 syrup toppings including pomegranate, passion fruit, mango, which is what we combo-ed.

The firm, creamy Panna Cotta “pudding” was served in three separate tall shot glasses. There was Mandarin Orange (which I felt was a miss, akin to drinking OJ after toothpaste), Azuki Bean (not enough beans to establish a flavor connectivity/distinction), and Matcha which was like flan swimming in an evergreen sickly sweet syrup.

The clientele is a mixture of families with small children, groups, couples. Oddly, the latter complained and nervously joshed about the prices, when I thought the fare for the fare was fair. Of course, they weren’t dining on Google’s dime as we were, using part of a gift debit card they gave me.

The Red Crane is so good overall, you’ll be planning your return visit halfway through the meal, and it will never seem soon enough.

The Red Crane
7335 Bollinger Rd Ste C Cupertino, CA - (408)725-1990
HOURS: Mon-Fri 11:30p-2:30p, 5:30p-9p; Sat-Sun 5-9p

About the Author:

Kris Kobayashi-Nelson is an avid food adventurist who has tried everything from jellyfish to sea cucumber to chicken gizzards. She loved liver and onions with ketchup and cayenne pepper ice cream as a kid. She despises chocolate. She is now a happily mercury-poisoned pescetarian sushi lover.