EXCLUSIVE: San Jose Going to The Mmoon

The San Jose Blog has an exclusive scoop on the next major restaurant to grace Downtown San Jose! Situated on the highly-trafficked corner of Santa Clara St. and Almaden--below the Irish Innovation Center and next to The Brit--The Mmoon is gearing up to blow your mind with delicious empanadas. For those of you who have never had empanadas before, they are essentially stuffed bread or pastry turnovers similar to Calzones or Samosas.

The Mmoon will have 9 different types of empanadas, such as Tri-tip, chicken sun-dried tomato, sausage, and even a banana apple dessert creation. The empanadas themselves will be made from scratch on-site using fresh local ingredients and baked to order. Despite the effort involved to make each empanada, The Mmoon will still be in the quick-service category thanks to a high-powered oven, and what makes it even more appealing is that it will be affordable--around $9 for a complete meal (unless you can put down a half dozen empanadas like me).

Argentinian-born proprietor and chef Michael Mendez could have located his unique restaurant anywhere he wanted, and he choose Downtown San Jose for his first and flagship location. That already makes this a special restaurant for me without tasting a single empanada.  However, what really pulls on my heartstrings is his plans to make a restaurant befitting of Silicon Valley's Capital. The ambiance will be eclectic with video projections making you feel like you're on the moon, "recycled" art on the walls, great music, an amazing outdoor patio with seating for 90 and built-in heat lamps, free WiFi, an interactive art program featuring local artists, utilization of social media, and a lot of interesting ideas using Twitter that I probably can't mention yet. Sure, it would have been substantially less expensive to create a generic environment like a Quizno's or Togo's (ironic example), but Michael is doing what entrepreneurs do best and that's shoot for the moon.

Tomorrow I'll give you the official press release along with photos! I'll also disburse additional information as The Mmoon gets closer to launch time (June/July).