OK. So jumping over the hill and dining in San Diego isn't exactly Desert Dining -- yet. (Give it a little more time. You're dryer and hotter every year, San Diego.) But it is summer and unbearably hot in the desert, so driving to cooler regions for a night or weekend of fun is part of life in IV.
Humberto posted last week on the fun he, Miza, Soul, and I had our last time out to San Diego. It was a long night of eating, so here are a few of the fun little tid bits my brother didn’t tell you about (and really, the High Five Phenomenon was a story unto itself).
To be honest, we had no intention of going to San Diego’s crowded Gaslamp District that night. I’ve noticed that our best nights of eating are never planned out very well. One of us demands something on an impulse, everyone else agrees and off we go. For this particular night Humbert had been saying since the day before we went up that he felt like having good American food. “A burger or ribs,” he said, “but, like, a really good burger.” I knew just the places.
The first plan was to go to Hodads in Ocean Beach. This place serves up the best burgers I have ever had, but I warn you just as I warned them, number one and number twenty on my best burger list are just a hair apart. I mean, add fresh veggies to good, well seasoned beef that hasn’t been overcooked, and you’ve got a 9.9 burger on your hands. It’s not rocket science. Still, on top of being juicy and tasty, the burgers at Hodads are mountainous, and that makes for a fun meal. But we ended up having burgers for lunch, so Hodads was out.
Plan B was ribs, and the best ribs I’ve had in San Diego are cooked to perfection at Phil’s BBQ, located next to the San Diego Sports Arena. I’ll admit that I’m not a ribs guy, but there is good reason for that. I’ve had ribs several times and in a few different cities, LA, Chicago and NYC (granted, not the rib capitals of the world), and I’ve never been wowed. Phil’s is like, WOW. The baby back ribs there are by far the meatiest and tenderest that I’ve ever had the joy of biting into. But as we pulled up to Phil’s we noticed that the always long wait was especially long that night. There were easily over a hundred people lined up out the door and around the building. Phil’s could have been handing out free beer in solid gold mugs, and we still wouldn’t have jumped to the back of the line (Phil’s doesn’t take reservations).
Plans C through X all started when Miza declared impulsively, “Hey! There’s a place downtown that serves tapas. I want tapas!” Humbert had been there before and knew it was a good choice, so Café Sevilla was the place for us, but as Humbert wrote last week, we needed to eat while we waited on our table. So we had our starters at the nearby Royal India restaurant, where we had Nan (a soft flat bread that the menu actually calls “a must try” … they aint lyin’), Raita (a perky yogurt based condiment that has cucumber, cilantro and mint among other flavors) and a dish called “Mixed Tandoori Grill” which was an assortment of Kabobs and veggies cooked in a blazing hot Tandoor oven. The food was great and the Royal India Pale Ale they served was hearty and tasty, but I think we’ll have to come back for lunch someday and take advantage of the lunch buffet. That’s my favorite way to sample new restaurants.
From there we went back to Sevilla and had a blast. The servers are laid back and helpful, the food is very well crafted and the place is just full of fun energy -- I’m sure Club Sevilla, located beneath the restaurant, has something to do with that. The drinks are good too. The pitcher of sangria we had was full flavored and not watered down at all (I never seem to get a good sangria anywhere). And as for the La Alhambra Beer they serve, all I can say is: magnificent palace, OK beer. As for food, [deep breath] we had: bacon wrapped dates stuffed with Cabrales Bleu Cheese (my fave when having tapas), fresh baked bread with aioli and a tomato sauce, paella -- which we ordered spicy (it was made with saffron rice, clams, sausage and chicken -- Soul’s favorite dish of the night), ceviche, a roasted pork tenderloin bathed in a honey sauce (the sauce was a bit too sweet, but it was good) and the tuna tartare tower (a little tower that had various layers of ahi tartar, cucumber and mango with pimento aioli … I can’t believe none of the local sushi places serve mango with their dishes -- it works really well and it would give any dish a Mexican flair).
And we still weren’t done eating. We walked around, high-fiving strangers and being silly for a while, then we decided we wanted nothing better than to have some comfort food. In this case, Asian noodles in broth, again thanks to Miza, who was on fire with the impulsive demands this night. Unfortunately, San Diego is really short on good Asian restaurants that are open late, and it was after 11 pm at this point. So we rushed over to Convoy Street in Kearny Mesa thinking its high concentration of Korean restaurants was our best bet. We were after Nozomi Noodle & Teriyaki, a place we had eaten at before for its Endless Sushi Menu (they have all kinds of rules like a two hour max, can you believe that?!) and had noticed then how spectacular their noodles looked, but it was closed. But in that same little shopping center was another Korean restaurant, one with a name spelled only in Korean, that was still open! We fidgeted with the menu for a while and the lady running the restaurant said we should get the beef hot pot. I love this lady. The hot pot was served on a burner she placed at the edge of our table, so this was fun to eat. But the soup was genuinely great. Thin sliced, tender cuts of beef, green onions, white onions, carrots, squash, rice cakes, tofu, mushrooms and glass noodles -- all in a slightly sweet beef broth served with several little side dishes and rice. This didn’t just hit the spot, it destroyed the spot. It killed the spot’s extended family. It erased the spot from the annals of history. The spot no longer exists and is remembered by no one.
Sorry there aren't more pics in this post. Sevilla and Royal India were too dark for pics!... You can see the blur of Miza's chop sticks attacking this dish at the very top of this photo.
(By the way, I think next time me and the boys will have to have the dishes recommended by Soul, Miza and Humbert’s gym buddy Song, a Korean ex-pat who for some reason completely loves these guys. We sent him pics of our dish at midnight and he cheerfully responded we should have ordered Korea’s trademark dishes, Galbi (grilled short ribs) and Bulgogi (thin sliced marinated beef that’s just a touch sweet and also grilled -- Soul and Miza had a Korean neighbor when we were kids and we know this dish well). Song says these dishes are to Korea what carne asada is to Northern Mexico and sushi is to Japan.)
The day after our Second Greatest Night of Eating we were all belly aching. Theories on what caused this abound. “It was the Indian food. Thanks a lot, Rigo.” “It was the tuna tartare tower. Way to go, Rigo.” “It was definitely the Korean place. Nice job, Rigo.” I was in charge of ordering everyone’s food for the evening, and as usual, I was made the whipping boy for anything that didn’t go perfectly. I insist everything we ate was wonderful. We just ate too much!
-- Rodrigo
