Jenny's Kitchen is a great spot for authentic Chinese food

A green onion pancake from Jenny's Kitchen in San Jose. PHOTO CREDIT: Tyler Higashihara

When you first walk into Jenny’s Kitchen in San Jose, you will find yourself looking at fridges full of frozen dumplings. Just to the right, trays of food are displayed for you to view.

This restaurant operates in a slightly different manner than normal restaurants. It is not a dining restaurant with waiters or menus. It’s more accurate to call it a take-out restaurant, however there are tables available outside if you want to eat the food immediately. The food being served varies from day to day and is dependant on whatever ingredients are available to the chefs. The owner, Jenny goes out to a farmer’s market to buy the ingredients every week. The restaurant also gets ingredients from the Wholesale company. As a result, customers must leave their dining choices up to fate. Although the food that is cooked is random, it also means that customers will be able to discover something new everyday.

The restaurant is a traditional Chinese styled restaurant. Unlike the normal American Chinese restaurant, which usually serve unauthentic food, the food served at the Jenny’s Kitchen is very different. According to Jenny Chen, the owner of Jenny’s Kitchen, the American-Chinese styled food has more looks with food coloring to make it aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but her food will taste better.

The dishes are displayed at the counter, and cold foods are available in the refrigerators. Among these frozen foods are dumplings, which are sold to bring back home and boil yourself. The frozen dumplings are put into bags of 50, each bag may contain different stuffings.

Other than the dishes displayed at the counter, there are also green onion pancakes, chive pie, and beef pie. However, these pancakes and pies are much different than what the average American would imagine. First of all, the pancakes are much larger, and are made only with plain dough, green onions and sea salt. After being fried on both sides, the result is a very soft thin pan-fried pancake. The pancake can be torn apart to eat in small pieces to eat during a meal. The pancakes are also used in beef rolls and veggie rolls; they are rolled up and stuffed with the fillings. The beef pies and chive pies also do not look like how the average American might assume a pie would look like. The beef pie is beef and red onion wrapped by dough and pan fried on both side with vegetable oil. The chive pie is made the same way as the beef except it’s stuffed with chive, vermicelli, and scrambled egg mixed together. This version of “pie” is much smaller than the American pie. It can be held with your hands and be eaten like a hamburger.

Jenny Chen, states that everything in the restaurant is “homemade,” meaning less oil, salt, sugar, and starch are used compared to the average American restaurant. As a result, Jenny’s Kitchen is a much healthier option than other restaurants.

For anyone who enjoys eating Chinese food, this restaurant would be a good choice. For anyone who desires healthy food, this restaurant is also a good choice. But if anyone enjoys Chinese food that is healthy, this is absolutely a restaurant for you.

Jenny’s Kitchen is open all day from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm, Monday is the only day that will be closed. It is located at Moorpark Avenue, San Jose, CA.