CLOSED | Izzo tl;dr

If you’ve ever driven past the restaurant on the Hostetter Road in San Jose, kiddy corner from the Ranch 99 plaza, you may have noticed that this restaurant has changed ownership quite a few times over the years. I remember when it was a Singaporean restaurant, then Liang’s Kitchen and now, a Taiwanese restaurant called Izzo.

Since we’ve recently had an obsession with Taiwanese shaved snow, when we heard that this restaurant serves a version of it, we had to try it. The perfect opportunity came when we had dinner with a friend and we couldn’t wait to try out what this restaurant had to offer.

The inside of the restaurant is fairly spacious and the tables are pretty decently spread out. The ceiling is a little odd with some silver sparkly things hanging from the ceiling and a big green inset piece, not sure what its from or why its there but its odd. However, once you get past the odd ceiling, when you sit down, the staff will kindly hand you a menu and get you tea or water to start.

The menu itself is a good size; not too many choices, but not too few either, and it also looks like there are some fusion dishes such as the pork belly quesadilla we ordered. Having looked through the Yelp reviews prior to arriving at the restaurant, I ordered some of the most talked about favorites. For us, dinner included:

• Pork Belly Quesadillas: The quesadilla itself was packed with meat. A little oily for me thus making it a little heavy but they were ok

• Beef Noodle Soup: The noodles were homemade according to what I read on Yelp and had a good chewy consistency. The beef itself was nice and soft, but I wish the soup had more of a spice. The annoying thing when eating this dish was the square bowl they gave us to eat it in. I mean c’mon, eating soup from a shallow square dish is hard! Suggestion- switch out your shallow bowls!

• Chicken Wings: These were by far my favorite dish. Crunchy, spicy, sweet- everything you want from wings and more! It’s so good that you HAVE to order this when you’re here!

• Oyster Omelette: In a way it reminded me of the oyster omelette we have in Malaysia but the sauce on top made it a little soggy. It was essentially an oyster egg omelette with some napa cabbage inside

• Taro Snowflake: Taro snow served with grass jelly, some other yellow jelly, mochi and condensed milk. Good but not nearly as good as SnoZen in Mountain View.

Overall a good and tasty restaurant. Glad to fairly close to home and looking forward to returning to try other dishes such as the seafood noodle soup!

F8T Tip If you are looking for street food oyster omelettes from South East Asia… their version is more than likely not what you’re looking for.

CLOSED | IZZO

• 1701 Lundy Ave Ste 100, San Jose, California, USA
• 408 / 392 8293
• Street View

Where’s your favorite Taiwanese food?