Review: Willow Glen's Hay Market emphasizes super-fresh ingredients -- and whimsy
18.05.12
Irreverent humor) was a game hen served Buffalo style with celery sticks and triangles of garlic bread ($14). Some pieces of the bird were a little dry, but the sauce had a slight sweetness that balanced the heat nicely.
Hay Market is on Lincoln Avenue, the main drag through San Jose's historic Willow Glen neighborhood, just steps from where Cirone grew up and where he has resettled. He wanted to create a restaurant unlike any other, and that it is -- an amalgam of old, new and whimsical elements that don't always work, but whose character seems to fit the neighborhood. There's no sign outside, just a window full of twinkling white lights and some rusty artifacts from Cirone's grandparents' long-gone San Jose farm, now covered by strip malls and parking lots.
As we ate, we inspected decor that looks like detritus from an attic: An old stereo console serves as a hostess stand; there are saddles and a Pillsbury Doughboy cookie jar; a wire, stainless steel shelf with baskets of artificial plants separates the dining room from the waiting area, whose centerpiece is an old upright piano strewed with votive candles. There's even a farm tractor in the room.
Source: San Jose Mercury News