Anqi Shaken Stirred - Santa Clara

Very surprised they let us make a reservation at 6:15p but the restaurant closes at 6:30p. Turned out the serving staff is great and we get the whole restaurant to ourselves but we didn't feel comfortable to stay for too long since we were keeping the staff from closing up the shop.

A lovely restaurant on the ground level of Bloomingdale's, delicious food, a true hidden gem!

We arrived in time for our 7 pm reservation, and the staff waved to us in the general direction of open seats. The restaurant was small but was not busy, considering it was Saturday and the mall was packed with people. We ordered calamari, satay, fried rice, and sea bass from the gluten-free menu. We also enjoyed two cocktails. While everything was fresh and nicely prepared, it was a bit bland and modestly sized for the price. Having some gluten-free sauce options would have made it taste better. Also, every dish had a lot of cheap filler ingredients, like lettuce greens or fried onions, to make each dish look bigger than it was. Lastly, the service was uneven. For example, a server brought us the calamari, and we asked to verify that it was gluten-free. Once the server returned from talking with the chefs, she removed the sauce bowl from the dish and walked away. What was left were a few calamari rings and a bunch of fried onions. While it was mostly good, it wasn't quite good enough to want to return.

The food was quite yummy! Wait staff was nice and appropriately responsive. The one thing I noticed was that they served us a bottle of wine without having one of us taste the wine. Luckily the wine was good, no issue. The server was pretty young, so perhaps they just forgot. But I definitely noticed that was forgotten.

Orange peel chicken and garlic noodles were on point ?. Filet mignon chow fun was also delish. Wish it had more steak.