Since its opening in 2003, the Town Center in El Dorado Hills has steadily grown its dining scene. Nearly two dozen restaurants are now listed on the center's website (www.eldoradohillstowncenter. com).
Although the nearby Nugget market gets a mention under the site's "shopping" category, let's remember that it has a massive prepared-foods area and the Next Level Cafe, where diners can sit at tables to eat their to-go meals.
My lunch pals and I dropped by Wayside Noodles the other day, one of four stores in a local chain. It's situated in the Town Center's Theater Plaza Food Court, in the shadow of the Regal Stadium movie theater. That's theoretically great placement, given the blockbuster lineup of upcoming summer movies and their anticipated attendance.
Wayside Noodles is super- casual and not nearly as down-home as the many Vietnamese restaurants along, say, Stockton Boulevard. It's a step up from fast food, with hits and misses.
Though the menu ($4 to $8.50) shows mostly Vietnamese dishes, a few entries cross the border into China (Mongolian beef, kung pao chicken).
We started with OK pork-stuffed wontons and batter-heavy, stale-tasting shrimp rolls from the deep fryer, served with a sweetish chili sauce we improved with squirts of Sriracha Thai hot sauce.
Next, crisp-outside, creamy-inside cubes of tofu were addictive. The morsels were lightly seasoned with black and red pepper, salt, jalapeño and green onion, and took our best-appetizer award.
As for entrees, we gave the top billing to the Chef's Roll. Thin rice paper was layered with shrimp, vermicelli, carrot and lettuce, folded and topped with peanut sauce, mint, cilantro, green onion and crushed peanuts, then cut into segments.
"It's fresh, with a lot of textures," said lunch pal Brina Brown, 24, en route from a job in Berkeley to a full-ride scholarship at the University of Virginia. As for the catfish, she said, "This is very catfishy, but I like the flavor a lot." The rest of us liked the mild, firm fillets, too.
Also faring well was a plate of shrimp and veggies in curry sauce, with thick rice noodles. Not as good were slices of sweetish-tasting grilled pork (marinated in lemon grass sauce) with overcooked vermicelli.
Pho is the national noodle dish of Vietnam, in which rice or egg noodles meet bok choy, meat or fish (and sometimes wontons) in a hearty broth. Wayside Noodles makes 10 kinds of pho, along with eight other soups.
Sorry to say, our pho with "rare steak and well-done flank" lacked any of the flavor or character we've come to expect at Vietnamese restaurants. Enough said.
Dominick's adds lunch menu
Dominick Bellizzi and his wife, Raquel, opened Dominick's Italian Market & Deli in Granite Bay in 2004. A few years later they opened the attached Dominick's Italian Trattoria, then Dominick's New York Pizza & Deli in Folsom. We've liked the food a lot since day one.
The news: Lunch (with table service) is now being served at the former dinner-only trattoria, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. The menu offers 10 appetizers, salads, pasta, panini, four burgers, pizza, calzone and hard-to-find stromboli (like a calzone, only better). It's at 8621 Auburn-Folsom Road, Granite Bay; (916) 786-3355.
WAYSIDE NOODLES
WHERE: 2085 Vine St., El Dorado Hills Town Center. Sister restaurants are at 828 J St., Sacramento (916-441-4110); 3551 Truxel Road, Sacramento (916-285-9611); and 1060 Pleasant Grove Blvd., Roseville (916-791-5111).
HOURS: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily
FOOD: 2 stars
AMBIENCE: 2 stars
HOW MUCH: $
INFORMATION: (916) 939-1935, www.waysidenoodles.com
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