Nearby Places to Eat

The hotel restaurant will be open during the convention. It's there, and you don't have to go outside. [Editor's note: I haven't sampled the food there, so I can't comment either way.]

Just down the driveway there's an Asian shopping center with lots of really good restaurants (including the Mayflower, rated by many folks as the best dim sum place in the bay area), bakeries, and a Ranch 99 grocery store that includes an eat-in area good for quick, inexpensive food. Two or three restaurants in the center are open till midnight on weekends. [Editor's note: I have sampled the food at some of these restaurants; I have yet to be disappointed. There are too many to name.]

There's further variety at McCarthy Ranch, the shopping center on the other side of the highway. Restaurants on that side include everything from In-N-Out Burger (open after midnight!) and McDonald's to Chucky's Diner, Macaroni Grill, Black Angus, and Applebee's [Editor's note: The service at that Applebee's was the slowest I've ever experienced in a restaurant anywhere] to Banana Leaf, a Malaysian restaurant [that gets high marks from the editor's friends].

On Sunday we'll be having our annual dinner run, this time at Lu Lai Garden across the lane from the hotel. The cuisine is Buddhist Chinese. They don't use MSG, and while everything is vegetarian, the cuisine is designed to satisfy die-hard carnivores. We'll have a few copies of the menu at the registration desk.