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Here's some of my personal favorite places from all across the spectrum of Asian cuisines.

• 

  Arirang House Restaurant

  Neighborhood: Kearny Mesa Cuisine: Korean

  Explore the wonderful world of banchan dishes at this Convoy Street Korean joint’s daily lunch buffet.
  
  There’s a number of restaurants I Read More…

  Explore the wonderful world of banchan dishes at this Convoy Street Korean joint’s daily lunch buffet.
  
  There’s a number of restaurants I Read More…

  Explore the wonderful world of banchan dishes at this Convoy Street Korean joint’s daily lunch buffet.
  
  There’s a number of restaurants I frequent that I think of as one-trick ponies. I can’t vouch for the quality of everything they serve, but the one thing they do well is good enough that I keep coming back for more.
  
  Arirang House is one of my favorite such one-trick ponies. There are other Korean restaurants in town that surpass it in many ways, but Arirang has won a place in my heart on the strength of their lunch buffet (daily from 11am to 3pm), and in particular their terrific banchan.
  
  Banchan are small side dishes that accompany every traditional Korean meal. The banchan most familiar to non-Koreans may be kimchee, that fiery concoction of fermented napa cabbage and chilies that’s like sauerkraut on steroids. Actually, kimchee can be and has been made of just about any vegetable that can be pickled and slathered with chilies, and there are innumerable other types of banchan as well, encompassing all sorts of vegetables, noodles, tofu, fruit, and more, often with inventive dressings based on sesame oil, more chilies, and other pungent seasonings.
  
  Normally, when you order a Korean meal in a restaurant, it comes accompanied by a small flotilla of dishes bearing small servings of four or five banchan. But at Arirang’s lunch buffet, you are regularly confronted with at least eight banchan choices, and you can help yourself to as much as you like. Which is excellent as far as I’m concerned, because banchan are such a refreshing change of pace from the ho-hum salads and vegetable dishes in Western cooking traditions that I just can’t get enough of them. Plus Arirang House does them so very, very well.
  
  Arirang’s banchan selection varies from day to day, but always includes napa cabbage kimchee plus a second variety, usually made from chunks of daikon radish. Other banchan that make frequent appearances include chapchae, the classic Korean dish of bouncy bean thread noodles stirfried with slivered vegetables; kong namul, a salad of bean sprouts in a chile/sesame oil dressing; sikumchi namul, lightly cooked greens seasoned with garlic, sesame oil, and soy sauce; and Korean style potato and/or apple salads, Waldorf-like affairs in mild mayonnaise-based dressings.
  
  One banchan that Arirang House carries that I’ve seldom seen in other Korean restaurants consists of small rectangular slabs of a mild milky gelatin, very soothing to eat after a batch of the more highly-spiced banchan. Called nokdamuk, this gelatin is made from mung bean starch and is extremely low in calories. Traditionally the diner seasons it with soy sauce and vinegar; Arirang House also has some more potent condiments available for you to splash on the stuff.
  
  Now, banchan is not the only thing in Arirang’s buffet. They also offer a variety of meat and fish selections, a daily soup, and the ever-present huge cooker full of rice--the Korean patrons wouldn’t feel they’d had a real meal if they didn’t have rice onto which to put all their other selections. Alas, the meat offerings tend to vary a bit in quality, sometimes a little too tough here, a little too dried out there. But I’m not there for the meat -- I’m there for the banchan. Although I’ll admit it’s a nice touch that the buffet also includes all you can drink tea and coffee.
  
  Atmosphere-wise, I’d call Arirang House the Korean equivalent of a homey luncheonette. The crowd is working stiffs both Korean and otherwise, gathered to enjoy their lunch breaks while watching non-stop Korean-language variety shows on TV. The cheerful staff often have family and friends drop by to chat and have a bite. If you visit as often as I do, they start treating you as a family friend too.
  
  Arirang House also has a full menu, and does Korean-style barbeque in the evenings. But if you show up at noon the way I do, the staff doesn’t even bother handing you a menu. And small wonder. They’re well aware they have a good thing going with their buffetful of banchan, so why would they ever want to mess with such a winning strategy? Close

• Cafe India

  Neighborhood: Point Loma Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Indian

  In the heart of the chain-restaurant jungle surrounding the Sports Arena, Café India offers an oasis of flavorful and healthy eating.
  
  If Read More…

  In the heart of the chain-restaurant jungle surrounding the Sports Arena, Café India offers an oasis of flavorful and healthy eating.
  
  If Read More…

  In the heart of the chain-restaurant jungle surrounding the Sports Arena, Café India offers an oasis of flavorful and healthy eating.
  
  If you’re a vegetarian and/or a health-conscious eater, the dining options in the vicinity of the Sports Arena can look particularly bleak. There must be one of every major chain restaurant known to humankind scattered throughout the surrounding shopping centers and strip malls, along with innumerable one-off taco joints, burger joints, teriaki joints . . . and other joints of an even more unsavory nature (so to speak). But never fear: hidden away in one of those shopping centers—camoflaged, in fact, behind a big honkin’ Red Lobster—Café India’s vegetarian buffet offers a little oasis of veggie serenity.
  
  Café India does have a full table-service menu, featuring very competent versions of all the Indian restaurant standards I’ve come to expect, both vegetarian and meat-based. They even go a little beyond that standard, offering to make most dishes on the menu fully vegetarian or vegan by use of meat analogues, tofu, soy milk and the like. The menu also includes such innovations as smoothies (just a step away from the yogurt drink known as lassi, which they also carry), and wraps during lunch hours. Organic vegetables are used whenever available, and all their mock meats are made from non-genetically modified soybeans.
  
  But almost every time I come here, I wind up getting the buffet, because it’s such a deal and such good eats. Available for both lunch and dinner, the buffet always features both white and brown rice, two different types of dal (lentil) soups, four vegetarian curries (usually two all-vegetable dishes, a potato-based dish, and one featuring legumes), plus raita, salads, and fresh fruit. Included with the buffet is a serving of the terrific tandoori-baked bread known as naan, made fresh to order; dinner also includes dessert.
  
  The vegetable curries vary from one day to the next. Sometimes these will be dishes I recognize and love, like a lovely palak paneer, spicy spinach studded with cubes of mild crumbly Indian cottage-style cheese. Or a korma style dish, a mild curry in a creamy sauce—on one visit I encountered an especially glorious version featuring perfectly-cooked cauliflower. Other days, it looks like the kitchen came up with a creative mix of whatever vegetables looked good that day—these are no less tasty for being improvizations. As I’ve mentioned in other Eats.it recs, I’m a real stickler for properly-prepared vegetables, and Café India satisfies me every time.
  
  Carnivores are not neglected even at the buffet: for a small surcharge, you can add a serving of meat to your buffet meal. And as I said, there’s a whole regular menu, including a selection of dishes offering a choice of chicken, lamb or shrimp. In particular, they do a very respectable tandoori chicken—not only tasty, but with a less intense red color than I’ve seen elsewhere, suggesting that the kitchen did not dump a whole vial of food coloring into the marinade. And all their meats are hormone-free—apparently they care as much about the health of their meat eaters as they do their non-meat-eaters.
  
  Admittedly, this oasis of healthy eating will never win any prizes for high style and glamour. The décor is a comfortable if slightly shopworn blend of the homey and the homely. Rustic dark wood beams and booths look more suited to a coffee shop than an Indian restaurant. Bunches of plants and a trio of Hindu god-figurines cluster around a pleasantly tinkling fountain, only partly distracting the viewer from the fountain’s faux-stone construction. And sometimes the soothing sitar and tabla music on the house PA gets overwhelmed by the talk-radio station blaring from the kitchen.
  
  But I find all these details more endearing than anything else—especially with the scent of good food in the air, and that buffet beckoning to me just beyond that fountain. Close
• 

  Thai Cafe

  Neighborhood: Clairemont Cuisine: Thai

  Hidden away in a Clairemont Mesa strip mall, this unassuming joint offers a pleasing Thai buffet at an even more pleasing price.
  
  Read More…

  Hidden away in a Clairemont Mesa strip mall, this unassuming joint offers a pleasing Thai buffet at an even more pleasing price.
  
  Read More…

  Hidden away in a Clairemont Mesa strip mall, this unassuming joint offers a pleasing Thai buffet at an even more pleasing price.
  
  Some of my favorite Tightwad Gourmand hidden gems are restaurants that offer decent though hardly world-class grub—but that grub is made all the more enjoyable because the price is such a steal. Thai Café is a perfect example of the genre.
  
  Thai Café offers table service from a regular menu, but the thing I visit them for is their lunch and dinner buffet. Those of you who are familiar with Thai food are probably shaking your heads, thinking “Thai food in a buffet? That could never work.” And yes, there’s a number of Thai dishes that really are at their best only when they go straight from the kitchen to your plate, rather than taking a time-out in a steam table. But with a little judicious use of your best buffet gaming strategies, you can get some very pleasant eating out of Thai Café’s buffet—and at $6.95 for the weekday lunch buffet, you cannot beat the value.
  
  What I don’t go to Thai Café for is stunning atmosphere. Hidden in the depths of a somewhat sleepy shopping center, the space is roomy in size but generic in looks. The Thai décor touches are few, and the red-blue-and-green buffet table looks like it came from a different restaurant than the neutral-colored dining area. But the place is tidy and well-kept, and the staff is always friendly and familial. I’ve never seen it very crowded, but there’s enough traffic at prime lunch and dinner hours to maintain reasonable turnover in the steam table, which is what you want for optimum buffet quality.
  
  The offerings range from classic Thai dishes such as green papaya salad and variously-sauced curries, to a few non-Thai interlopers such as Chinese-style Orange Chicken. I avoid that latter dish, but I really dig this place’s green papaya salad. It’s a relatively simple version without any seafood components, but the shredded green papaya has good texture, the overall flavor is well-balanced and the chile-heat level is impressive. And there’s just something satisfying about helping yourself to a mountain of this healthy green goodness, at a price that in other places would get you only a little molehill of the stuff.
  
  The salads also include a nicely-done chicken version of larb, the addictive spicy ground meat salad; plus a surprisingly enjoyable Yum Krab, a concoction containing chunks of cucumber and surimi. I know many Americans turn up their noses at this “fake crab” stuff, but I don’t—especially since learning that surimi is not a new food but a traditional fish sausage enjoyed in the Far East for literally centuries. The Yum Krab works because the surimi and cucumber’s contrast of tender vs. crunchy play well against each other, and their mild flavors carry the spicy/sweet/salty/sour dressing effectively.
  
  Among the other dishes, I especially like the Pad Woon Sen, thin translucent bean thread noodles stir-fried with spices and veggies; and the Spicy Basil Chicken, well-flavored from a generous amount of the namesake herb. The Red Chicken Curry varies from one visit to the next, but when it’s full of chunks of Asian eggplant I go for it, as those eggplant chunks will be tender and juicy from their bath in the tasty sauce. Another buffet dish that, when it’s good, is really good, is the Salt-and-Pepper Shrimp, served with heads and tails intact.
  
  And you must not pass up the sweet sticky rice. Inside each carefully-folded little leaf packet is a green-tinted lozenge of fragrant melt-in-your mouth rice, rich with coconut flavor and topped with a sliver of eggy custard. Like a solidified rice pudding, one or two of these babies is a great way to end your meal.
  
  Hidden away as it is, Thai Café would appear to be a well-kept secret, but the Asian and non-Asian folks who frequent it all seem to know a good deal when they see one. No doubt some of them might be peeved that I’m blowing their cover, but I know you all will be thanking me for it later.
  Close
• 

  East Buffet

  Neighborhood: Miramar Cuisine: Chinese , Cantonese

  Great food and an ideal location make this big bright Cantonese buffet a hit with both MCAS Miramar personnel and locals of all Read More…

  Great food and an ideal location make this big bright Cantonese buffet a hit with both MCAS Miramar personnel and locals of all Read More…

  Great food and an ideal location make this big bright Cantonese buffet a hit with both MCAS Miramar personnel and locals of all ethnic backgrounds.
  
  Dedicated tightwad gourmands such as yours truly tend to have a love/hate relationship with buffet restaurants. In theory, an all-you-can-eat buffet should be a budget-minded diner's dream.. But in reality, many offer only a dismal array of mediocre dishes, and even many with better-quality fare tend to abuse those offerings by long sojourns in the steam tables.
  
  East Buffet is one buffet restaurant that avoids these pitfalls. This big flashy Cantonese-style restaurant has a number of things going for it. For one, its huge size as well as its location across the street from MCAS Miramar guarantee a high volume of customers—such high volume is good news for buffet fans, as dishes get consumed before they deteriorate, and replenished frequently. For another, East Buffet is part of a whole enclave of ethnic restaurants (Chinese, Indian, and others) spreading out from the intersection of Miramar and Black Mountain Roads—all that competition encourages restauranteurs to strive for market share by offering the best value.
  
  East Buffet has won a major chunk of that market share, by means of quanities of great food at a reasonable price. On any given night you'll find a large, United Nations assortment of casually-dressed diners, including significant numbers of Asians. Singles, couples, families, folks from the neighborhood and folks from the military base all rub elbows amidst the several food islands, the sushi bar, and the Mongolian grill station. On weekends it's not unusual to see a large multi-generational group celebrating in one wing of the sprawling dining room, with balloons, presents, and flashing cameras everywhere. The restaurant décor echoes this mix of casual and festive with modern clean lines, bright colors, and such touches of Asian style as the koi-filled fountain in the foyer.
  
  The selection of dishes at East Buffet is a few cuts above the typical Americanized Chinese fare one usually sees at such establishments. Yes, they do serve a number of old standbys familiar to the chow mein-loving crowd, as well as such full-on American items as roast beef and apple turnovers. But alongside those dishes are many others of a more authentically Chinese stripe, including an optional Cantonese-style hotpot buffet (for a modest additional charge, which includes access to the regular buffet items).
  
  Hotpot is essentially China's answer to fondue. A waiter brings to your table a portable gas burner, on which is placed a large partitioned tureen containing two kinds of broth. You choose from a selection of raw meats, vegetables, and seafoods in the hotpot section of the buffet, cook these tidbits in the simmering broth, and then enjoy them with a selection of dipping sauces. Among the hotpot fodder on a recent visit were cleaned and halved blue crabs, meatballs and fishballs, whole cleaned baby squid, shucked oysters, shrimp with shells and heads intact, sliced sea cucumber, thin-sliced beef and lamb, parcooked cubes of pork blood, mizuna greens; and snow pea pods. No doubt about it, this is a whole other planet from egg foo young.
  
  The regular buffet also features a number of items that will expand your Chinese food horizons. Among my favorites: an assortment of well-made dim sum; yummy chunks of braised duck; battered fried frog's legs; and a wide variety of seafood including fried and steamed fish, crawfish, oysters, mussels, crab legs, and rings of large but amazingly tender squid.. Even the salad bar takes a leap out of the ordinary with a selection of seaweed and noodle salads.
  
  Places like East Buffet will obviously never rise to the level of culinary excellence offered by haute restaurants. But you can't beat the quality—not to mention the quantity—for the price. Come hungry, bring an adventurous palate and a few friends, and be prepared to join the food party already in progress. Close
• 

  Saigon Restaurant

  Neighborhood: College Area Cuisine: Vietnamese , Chinese

  Cheap, yummy, authentic Vietnamese cuisine in a clean, bright room that’s open way early and way late—what more could you ask for?
  
  Read More…

  Cheap, yummy, authentic Vietnamese cuisine in a clean, bright room that’s open way early and way late—what more could you ask for?
  
  Read More…

  Cheap, yummy, authentic Vietnamese cuisine in a clean, bright room that’s open way early and way late—what more could you ask for?
  
  Everyone, I feel, needs a personal "clean, well-lighted place"—a favorite restaurant where, at just about any hour the munchies hit, you can be assured of a great meal in pleasant surroundings at a reasonable price. Saigon Restaurant has become that place for me. No, I'm not talking about that other Saigon in Hillcrest. The one I'm talking about is an entirely separate, and much more authentic-feeling, operation over in "the hood"—City Heights, to be exact.
  
  "My" Saigon is one of a whole string of cafes, shops, groceries, and hole-in-the-wall takeout joints lining El Cajon Boulevard catering to the sizeable Vietnamese population of City Heights. Saigon has the advantage of more expansive digs than most of these other establishments, including its own stand-alone parking lot and an extensively-windowed box of a building that once housed a motorcycle dealership.
  
  The spick-and-span interior sports murals of lagoons and beaches that could depict either Vietnam or Southern California, plus the requisite tankful of ornamental koi fish and a whole fleet of tables. At busy times, every single one of those tables is packed. The largely—but far from exclusively—Vietnamese crowd includes students from the high school across the street drinking boba teas, multigenerational families feasting on whole steamed fish and other delicacies, and assorted working folk from all over enjoying a nice bracing bowl of soup, all served by a briskly efficient army of waiters.
  
  Saigon's menu is just as packed as its dining room at dinnertime, featuring over 350 numbered items: appetizers, entrees, combo plates, and beverages. The classic meal-in-a-bowl soup known as pho is well represented with over 20 different versions, including chicken, seafood, tofu, and all the different permutations of beef cuts. For those unfamiliar with this dish, classic pho is a big bowlful of mild beef broth, fragrant with star anise, to which thin rice noodles and various cuts of meat are added just before serving.
  
  The pho meat choices include thin slices of raw beef that cook to rare in the piping-hot broth, slices of precooked brisket and flank steak, and more exotic options such as beef tendon and tripe. All of this is spelled out in the menu, so you can choose your preferred level of funky vs. familiar. All bowls of pho come with a generous side dish of add-ins to customize your soup, including bean sprouts, sprigs of Vietnamese basil, slices of fresh jalapeno, and wedges of lime. You can further spice up your soup with the assortment of hot sauces and other condiments on every table.
  
  For diners ready to venture beyond pho, I recommend Saigon's bun nuoc or rice vermicelli soups. Bun specifically refers to the rice noodles in this soup, which are thicker than pho noodles, with a round cross-section. The bun nuoc broth is richer, spicier, and more complex than pho broth, due in part to the inclusion of fermented fish paste. The bun nuoc side dish of add-ins includes finely shredded cabbage, which cooks quickly and delightfully in the hot broth. Saigon's bun bo Hue, a version of bun nuoc that hails from the northern Vietnamese city of Hue, is especially intense, including among its meaty offerings a slice of pork hock, chunks of meltingly tender beef tendon, and a few cubes of cooked pork blood. Yes, the kitchen will leave the pork blood out if asked, but why not go for the gusto, at least once?
  
  The bun noodles also turn up as a bed for a variety of non-soup entrees, as do other types of noodles and rice (whole-grain or broken-grain). The menu also includes a variety of stir-fried dishes resembling those from Vietnam's neighbor, China, and a whole section of vegetarian dishes. There are some fancier, pricier items, such as whole fish (steamed, grilled, or fried) and lobster, fresh from a tank in the corner of the dining room. But the vast majority of the menu items are under $10—in fact, a substantial number are below $6, and most of the pho varieties are under $5.
  
  At Saigon Restaurant, you get all these great, cheap options, plus late-night and early-morning hours and some absolutely fabulous multicultural people-watching. It just doesn't get much better than this. Close
• 

  Sipz Fusion Cafe

  Neighborhood: Clairemont Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Pan Asian/Pacific Rim

  This cheerful café uses Asian vegetarian culinary techniques to make delicious pan-Asian dishes without a speck of animal products.
  
  I am no Read More…

  This cheerful café uses Asian vegetarian culinary techniques to make delicious pan-Asian dishes without a speck of animal products.
  
  I am no Read More…

  This cheerful café uses Asian vegetarian culinary techniques to make delicious pan-Asian dishes without a speck of animal products.
  
  I am no vegetarian, but I have been cutting down on meat for health and budgetary reasons, so I’ve come to love Sipz Fusion Café. As the "fusion" in the name implies, Sipz offers vegetarian dishes blending a variety of culinary influences—-mainly Southeast Asian with the occasional Italian foray, plus an assortment of pan-Asian sushi rolls. Almost all dishes are full-on vegan; the few that contain eggs or dairy are marked in the menu. Most entrees are served as modestly-priced "Bowlz," all-in-one combos in which the entree is presented in a large bowl with a scoop of white rice (or brown rice for a small additional charge).
  
  Sipz' cuisine draws upon the centuries-old vegetarian traditions of Asian Buddhist culture, in which soy products are coaxed by seasoning and skill into convincing replicas of meat, fish, and fowl. To be sure, some restaurants from this tradition I have sampled are better at this trick than others. Sipz has got to be one of the best I've come across so far—all their mock meats are tasty, and a few are so clever that if I weren’t eating them in a vegetarian restaurant I’d swear they were the real thing. Among their best fakes, and one of my favorite items, is the Thai Curry Chicken Bowl, featuring big meaty chunks of "chicken" along with eggplant, potato, straw mushrooms, onions, and bamboo shoots in a rich spicy coconut-milk based sauce.
  
  Another dish I love is their Green Papaya Beef Salad Bowl. A variant on the traditional Thai green papaya salad, the mound of shredded green papaya comes topped with crushed peanuts, torn mint leaves, and mild, slightly sweet/spicy strips of barbecued “beef.” The dressing, served on the side, pulls off the classic Southeast Asian balancing-act of sweet/sour/salty/spicy so well that I'm tempted to drink the leftovers. And it does this without a drop of Thai fish sauce, a key ingredient in the non-vegetarian original.
  
  The sushi menu presents a variety of maki and handrolls, beautifully executed by their young itamae. I have particularly enjoyed their Thai Hand Roll, in which strips of "chicken," lettuce, cabbage, and carrots are sparked with a subtly sweet/spicy Satay peanut sauce; and the simple and earthy Shiitake Mushroom Baby Roll. Sipz’ itamae also does an impressive take on the trendy Dynamite Roll: slices of crab-and-veggie maki are topped with more veggies and a spicy creamy sauce, then baked until that sauce turns to a gooey bubbly delight. You can even choose to have your sushi made with brown rice, which Sipz makes work surprisingly well.
  
  Sipz also offers scrumptious desserts ranging from chocolate cake to whole fresh coconuts stuffed with sweet rice and mung beans, plus a wide variety of beverages including boba teas, smoothies, and coffees. They also offer a short list of domestic wines, and beers from Asia, Europe, and the US.
  
  Vegetarian restaurants have a certain reputation as being either hair-shirt or hippie-esque, but the Sipz atmosphere is much more with-it than that. Their space is informal, bright, and modern, with a graphiti-like mural of whimical sea creatures occupying one entire wall. The crowd is a mix of the youthful, slightly studenty/alternative folks you think of when you think "vegetarian," along with older couples and the occasional family with young children.
  
  Leaving out the meat also results in modest prices—most of Sipz’ entrée bowls are below $7. So whether you're a full-fledged vegan, a non-vegetarian dealing with the "Omnivore's Dilemma," or just an adventurous eater on a budget, Sipz Cafe will delight your wallet as well as your taste buds. Close

• Madras Cafe

  Neighborhood: Miramar Cuisine: Indian , Vegetarian

  The southern Indian vegetarian specialties offered at this Miramar café are a refreshing change of pace from the usual Indian restaurant fare.
  
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  The southern Indian vegetarian specialties offered at this Miramar café are a refreshing change of pace from the usual Indian restaurant fare.
  
  Read More…

  The southern Indian vegetarian specialties offered at this Miramar café are a refreshing change of pace from the usual Indian restaurant fare.
  
  I’ve long enjoyed dining in Indian restaurants, but it has not escaped my notice that there is a certain sameness among most of these restaurants’ menus. Nor is a lot of this food all that authentic -- rather, a baseline of Northern Indian dishes has been adapted over the years to better suit the tastes of non-Indian customers. Nothing particularly wrong with that -- after all, I enjoy Americanized Chinese food too, when it’s prepared well. But sometimes I find myself wanting an Indian restaurant experience that breaks the mold and shows me something new and different as well as delicious.
  
  Enter Madras Café to introduce me to a whole new array of more authentic Indian cuisine. The city of Madras, now known as Chennai, is the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India, and Madras Café, nestled in the Little India shopping center just north of MCAS Miramar, specializes in the food of that region. It’s a cuisine that has a strong vegetarian bent; is generally lighter in texture but spicier in flavor than northern styles with their thick-gravied braised dishes; and, coming from the so-called rice basket of India, makes much greater use of rice in breads and other dishes. So you won’t see any tandoori chicken or lamb vindaloo or naan bread on Madras Café’s all-vegetarian menu. But I don’t think you’ll miss them at all.
  
  The menu features several variations on each of three traditional South Indian dishes. Idlis are a kind of flying-saucer-shaped steamed bread, about five inches across, made of a combination of ground rice and lentils. Fluffy, crumbly, with a slight sour tang reminiscent of really good sourdough bread, idlis are customarily eaten for breakfast or as a snack. Madras Café serves them with the typical sides of sambar, a tamarind-based broth with chunks of vegetables, and a loose savory porridge called upma that owes its fascinating light green color to finely-minced cilantro leaves.
  
  Another section of the menu is given over to dosas. These are gorgeous thin crepes made out of a similar slighty-fermented rice-based batter to that used for the idlis. The huge entrée dosas served by Madras Café are certainly dramatic-looking, golden-brown, a good ten inches or more in diameter, and gracefully arched over any of a variety of fillings and seasonings. Yet another variation of the tangy batter turns up as uthapans, big moist pancakes about ¼” thick, embedded with a choice of different vegetables and other savory additions.
  
  Beverages, including South Indian style coffee and the yogurt drinks known as lassi, and desserts round out the menu. For dessert I especially like the carrot halwah. The name sounds a bit like the Middle Eastern sesame-paste confection halvah, but the dish is distinctly different, more like a very thick rich pudding of grated carrots enriched with butter, sugar, raisins and pistachios. Goes great with that milky South Indian coffee!
  
  Madras Café also offers a lunch buffet, which especially on weekdays is an excellent bargain. Once you’ve helped yourself to the assortment of deliciously prepared vegetable and legume dishes, and a choice of different flavors of rice, a server arrives at your table with an idli and a small plain dosa, fresh from the kitchen. But everything on the menu is reasonably priced; it is ridiculously easy to walk out well fed for under ten bucks including tip.
  
  The look of Madras Café is also different from most Indian restaurants I’ve visited. Instead of touristy-looking knick-knacks, the stylishly casual earth-tone walls are hung with a discreet row of sepia prints. Service is admittedly a little on the flakey and leisurely side, but the numerous mostly-Indian customers don’t seem to mind one bit. Nor will you, as you sit back and discover all these wonderful dishes from a part of India whose cuisine deserves to be much better known here in the States. Close

• Anh Hong Pho Pasteur

  Neighborhood: Linda Vista Cuisine: Vietnamese

  This rambling storefront restaurant in Linda Vista’s Vietnamese neighborhood offers an equally extensive menu of delicious dishes.
  
  There is seemingly no end Read More…

  This rambling storefront restaurant in Linda Vista’s Vietnamese neighborhood offers an equally extensive menu of delicious dishes.
  
  There is seemingly no end Read More…

  This rambling storefront restaurant in Linda Vista’s Vietnamese neighborhood offers an equally extensive menu of delicious dishes.
  
  There is seemingly no end to the number of restaurants serving San Diego’s sizeable Vietnamese community, and this couldn’t make me happier -- not only is it an especially delicious national cuisine, but one that fits easily into my healthy-eating lifestyle. Anh Hong Pho Pasteur is one of the better ones I’ve encountered so far, and also one of the funkier ones.
  
  Ensconced in a rambling two-storefront space in the same corner strip mall as the equally excellent bahn mi shop K Sandwiches, Anh Hong’s interior is a mix of campy Far-East glitz and comfy greasy-spoon informality. A red-and-gold arch separates the pink-tableclothed dining rooms; posters advertising menu specials and boba drinks are tacked onto the walls; the big round table in the center of the restaurant is frequently occupied by large family groups on very familiar terms with the staff. In fact, like many Vietnamese restaurants in town, the place feels very much like a family affair.
  
  The “Pho Pasteur” part of Anh Hong’s name honors a beloved restaurant on Pasteur Street in Saigon that was famous for that classic Vietnamese noodle soup. Anh Hong does offer a full complement of pho in all its variants, and does them quite well. But that’s only the start -- for Anh Hong also honors that other tradition of Vietnamese restaurants: the menu that goes on forever. There are upwards of 200 numbered dishes, listed in a sometimes confusing mix of Vietnamese and English. But the staff is quite willing to help you decipher anything you need help with, and a little careful reading and mix-and-matching will usually see you through just fine.
  
  For example: I adore plates featuring banh hoi, which are a fascinating pasta product in which very fine rice vermicelli are woven together into wide flat net-like strips. They typically come with an assortment of meat and vegetable goodies, plus lettuce leaves and herbs; you make bite-sized wraps of lettuce and banh hoi filled with the meat/veggie/herb mix of your choice, dip each in the little bowl of nuoc mam provided on the side, eat, and repeat. Anh Hong offers several variants of banh hoi plates with different assortments of featured meats, plus one -- number 123c -- designated Banh Hoi 7 Mon. I knew that “7 Mon” meant “seven courses,” as in seven different items to go into a wrapping frenzy over -- but alas, the seven included items were listed in Vietnamese only.
  
  A quick consultation with the waiter assured me that this dish came with a little of every type of filling they offered with this dish, so I ordered and was well pleased. For the record, the seven items wound up being: char-grilled shrimp; char-grilled pork; char-grilled sausage; shredded pork skin; ground shrimp paste on a little spike of sugar cane; bean curd skin stuffed with ground shrimp; and the little Vietnamese-style deep-fried spring roll known as cha gio. You get just a small helping of each of those items, but taken altogether, along with the huge plate of lettuce, herbs, and assorted other pickled and fresh veggies that comes with the dish, it’s a whole lot of food! I had a great deal of fun wrapping and eating and wrapping and eating, and was well satisfied when I was done.
  
  Other plates I like that I have tried so far include those featuring bun (thicker rice vermicelli, not netted together like the banh hoi but piled in a mound), and com tam (broken grains of rice, that cook up a little denser and more compact than whole grain rice). Each of these come with assorted toppings much like the banh hoi. Anh Hong also does a very creditable version of the spicy beef/pork/noodle soup bun bo Hue.
  
  I’ve only just begun to plumb the depths of that lengthy menu, so I guess I’ll be making a lot more visits to that funky establishment with the equally lengthy name. Lucky me! Close
• 

  Le's Thai Chinese Vietnamese Restaurant

  Neighborhood: Linda Vista Cuisine: Vietnamese , Vegetarian , Thai , Chinese , Asian

  Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, with meat or without, this modest little eatery does it all, ably and at extremely reasonable prices.
  
  It was Read More…

  Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, with meat or without, this modest little eatery does it all, ably and at extremely reasonable prices.
  
  It was Read More…

  Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, with meat or without, this modest little eatery does it all, ably and at extremely reasonable prices.
  
  It was as I was working my way through one of my first samplings of Le’s lunch special bowls, an aromatic Thai coconut milk-based curry with chunks of vegetables and extremely yummy soy “chicken,” that it hit me: I’d had this lunch before. Not the exact same recipe, mind you, but close enough that I could notice the family resemblance. This vegetarian curry was, in fact, extremely reminiscent of one of the “bowlz” served at Sipz Café, the vegetarian pan-Asian fusion cafe up on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. And indeed, when I queried the owner, he smiled shyly and confirmed that Sipz was run by relatives of his.
  
  You wouldn’t guess the relationship between the two restaurants just to look at Le’s. Unlike the snazzily painted and jazzed up Sipz, Le’s is a modest, plainly-furnished little diner-ish place, one of several inexpensive eateries ringing the Vien Dong Market in the heart of Linda Vista’s Vietnamese neighborhood. Further, Le’s menu ranges into all sorts of territory Sipz does not venture--meat and seafood entrees, just to name a couple of examples.
  
  Le’s, in fact, has one of the more complicated menus I’ve come across in the many Asian restaurants I’ve visited. There are separate sections for Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese entrees, as well as sections for vegetarian entrees and for those lunch special bowls. Further, the dishes range from those more familiar to non-Asian customers, to a whole section in back dedicated to more authentically Asian dishes, including several I'd not encountered before.
  
  For instance, in the back of the menu I found a dish whose Vietnamese name was translated as “Kung Pao Deer.” Deer? Really? Yes, but despite the name it was prepared not at all like Kung Pao dishes I knew from Americanized Chinese restaurants. As the helpful server alerted me when I ordered, this was apparently a Vietnamese version, matching slightly chewy, mild-flavored slivers of venison with the crunchy texture of tree ear fungus, all bathed in more coconut-milk-based sauce. An intriguing dish, and very satisfying over steamed rice.
  
  Other dishes I’ve discovered and enjoyed so far in Le’s voluminous menu include a great Thai spicy fried rice (kao paht prik); and a very enjoyable take on Thai green papaya salad (som tom)--unlike many Thai restaurants in town, Le’s serves you not a measly little portion of this salad, but a big platter meant to be shared with others (or wolfed down by one very insatiable som tom fan).
  
  Le’s also does a great job with their Vietnamese rice noodle combos, in which various assortments of grilled meats, seafood tidbits, sliced cha gio (Vietnamese style spring rolls) and more are served along with springy bun rice vermicelli noodles, or the eminently wrappable woven strips of rice noodles known as banh hoi.
  
  This is yet another place I’ve never seen crowded--I’m not sure how some of these places manage on that level of patronage, but I’m glad they do. The diners tend to be locals and workers of a mix of ethnic backgrounds, dropping by for a quick meal on premises or as takeout. And I will continue to be among them--there’s still a whole bunch of other intriguing dishes in the back of the menu that I need to check out. Close

• A Taste of India

  Neighborhood: Mission Valley Cuisine: Indian

  Not far from the chain-restaurant jungle of Mission Valley, this modest restaurant serves up homey comfort-food, Indian style.
  
  Call me a food Read More…

  Not far from the chain-restaurant jungle of Mission Valley, this modest restaurant serves up homey comfort-food, Indian style.
  
  Call me a food Read More…

  Not far from the chain-restaurant jungle of Mission Valley, this modest restaurant serves up homey comfort-food, Indian style.
  
  Call me a food snob, but I loathe chain restaurants. Give me a choice between even a high-end well-regarded franchise establishment and a lowly little one-off diner, and I’ll choose the diner every time. Ironically, though, I’ve found myself living in one of the chain-restaurant purgatories of San Diego--Mission Valley, which seems to contain at least one outpost of every franchise restaurant known to humankind.
  
  But having lived in the Valley a while now, I have discovered there are indeed some real-deal non-franchise restaurants tucked away here and there, if only you know where to look. For instance, if you head east past the malls and the stadium to the quiet residential neighborhood of Grantville, you will discover in a little strip-mall a charming restaurant by the name of A Taste Of India.
  
  To be sure, there is another Taste of India up in Miramar. But you have only to step inside the Mission Valley outpost to realize this place is not aspiring to be the next franchise concept. For one thing, the hostess may be dressed all in Indian attire--except for sensible running shoes. For another, even though the spacious dining room is attractively appointed with real tablecloths and horseshoe booths lining the walls, the concrete floor still bears splotches from whatever floor covering the previous tenant used to have down there. No, this is definitely a homey operation, serving a buffetful of nice homestyle Indian cooking.
  
  A Taste of India does have menu service too, but they so expect everyone to opt for the buffet that you have to prompt them to bring you a menu. That’s okay, though; the buffet is a great way to go. Available for both lunch and dinner, the buffet usually offers four different meat entrees, two different dals (legume dishes), three or four vegetable curries, a couple of different appetizer items, a nice little salad bar including chutneys, raita, Indian-style pickles, and fruit, rice of course, and a couple of desserts. In addition, an order of the Indian flatbread known as naan will be brought piping-hot straight from the tandoori oven to your table.
  
  As is common with this genre, the items in the buffet change up regularly, but recurring favorites of mine include their smooth and creamy saag paneer (creamed spinach studded with cubes of house-made Indian cheese); the channa masala (a dal of nicely-spiced chickpeas); the lamb vindaloo (in which the spices get a kick from a vinegar-laced sauce); a delicious and unusual curry of sliced mushrooms; and, when it’s fresh, the tandoori chicken (if it’s been sitting in the buffet table for awhile, alas, it tends to dry out).
  
  A Taste of India also makes some of the better samosas I’ve had in a while. Their version of the deep-fried savory pastry is huge, almost the size of my fist--and yet despite its size, the crust is nice and flaky, the spicy potato filling moist and soothing. Getting a fried pastry that size to behave itself that well takes some serious deep-fryer skills. The result is sort of the Indian answer to the potato knish--in other words, a perfect comfort food.
  
  Overall, the level of spiciness in the buffet is pretty mild, at least by my lights--I did once overhear a spice-timid Anglo customer ask for, and quickly receive, samples as well as staff suggestions on which dishes were mildest. The accommodating staff also tends to group the milder dishes on one side of the buffet and the hotter ones on the other. And if you like it hotter still, you can always kick things up several notches with the wicked little mint chutney hiding in the salad bar.
  
  Because of its relative newness and modest location, not all that many people have discovered A Taste of India yet. I seldom find it crowded, though the folks I see dining here, including the Indian customers, seem to be as satisfied with their meals as I am. And now that you know where this hidden gem resides, the next time you’re in Mission Valley you too can ditch the chain purgatory and come share the secret--and a much better meal than you would have had otherwise. Close
• 

  Sunrise Super Buffet

  Neighborhood: Kearny Mesa Cuisine: Asian , Chinese

  When you’re in the mood for some nice unpretentious comfort food, the homey fare at this Asian buffet will take good care of Read More…

  When you’re in the mood for some nice unpretentious comfort food, the homey fare at this Asian buffet will take good care of Read More…

  When you’re in the mood for some nice unpretentious comfort food, the homey fare at this Asian buffet will take good care of you.
  
  I admit it--one of my favorite culinary guilty pleasures is a good Asian buffet restaurant. Sure, such places are not particularly highbrow; sure, as Asian food goes the fare can be pretty Americanized. But sometimes you just want some good simple-minded comfort food with lots of variety for a reasonable price, and Americanized Asian food fills that bill for me just fine. And to judge by the number of folks crowding into Sunrise Super Buffet, I’d say I’m far from alone in that opinion.
  
  Sunrise, as the name implies, is a clean modern place punctuated with bright sunny colors, tucked into yet another strip mall in the booming mass of Asian eateries lining Convoy Avenue in Kearny Mesa. There are several other Asian restaurants in the that strip mall besides Sunrise--but it always seems like Sunrise pulls the biggest crowd. This is good news for buffet fans for two reasons: firstly, its popularity says something about its quality; and secondly, all that customer volume means the food in the buffet line is replenished frequently, ensuring optimum freshness.
  
  You can see lots of little signs that show that this is one buffet restaurant that cares about its food. Stir-fried green vegetables are brightly-colored and crisp-tender, not grayish and flaccid. Cornstarch-thickened sauces are light and silky, not thick and gloppy. Americanized Chinese standards like beef with broccoli share space with dishes such as huge but perfectly-tender squid rings. The appetizer table includes steamed pork buns and siu mai dumplings as well as egg rolls and fried wontons.
  
  The expansive salad bar goes well beyond the standard selections. At various times I have spotted along its length kimchee, seaweed salad, tender little tendrils of octopus in a fiery-hot sauce, tiny button mushrooms in a cool creamy dressing, lots of fresh fruit, and other items suggesting a more authentically Asian sensibility is at play in the kitchen. Small wonder you’ll see a goodly number of Asians among the customer base, which otherwise runs the gamut from retirees to local business people to families to military personnel from the nearby MCAS Miramar.
  
  Like most buffets, Sunrise tends to rotate their dishes on a regular basis, but a few dishes I like that make frequent appearances are those big tender breaded squid rings; and a seafood combo that matches lots of plump shrimp and a modest amount of surimi with crisp-tender cauliflower in a light creamy sauce; and big oysters on the half shell (usually making their appearance in the evenings).
  
  Even Sunrise’s full-on American-style dishes can surprise you with their quality. For instance, sometimes instead of the inevitable steamship round of beef they offer a smoked pork roast that is worth checking out. While a bit on the salty side, the pork has great flavor, and is literally fork tender. And Sunrise joys my tightwad heart by including the beverage of your choice (with refills) in the price of the buffet.
  
  (Alas, even Sunrise can’t rescue the concept of buffet sushi. But there’s enough other stuff to choose from, you don’t need to bother with the sushi bar.)
  
  So whenever you feel the need of a nice big dose of unpretentious comfort food--or have to feed a gaggle of teenagers fully into that growth-spurt bottomless-pit eat-anything-not-nailed-down mode--head on over to Sunrise Super Buffet and join the throng. Close
• 

  Mien Trung Restaurant

  Neighborhood: Linda Vista Cuisine: Vietnamese

  This little hidden-gem Vietnamese café serves no pho, but their bun soups and other dishes are so great that you won’t miss it.
  Read More…

  This little hidden-gem Vietnamese café serves no pho, but their bun soups and other dishes are so great that you won’t miss it.
  Read More…

  This little hidden-gem Vietnamese café serves no pho, but their bun soups and other dishes are so great that you won’t miss it.
  
  If someone hadn’t clued you in to Mien Trung, you may well have never thought to check it out, because admittedly it doesn’t look like all that much. A little sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it storefront, it shares a tiny building and parking lot with an equally petite but more prettified Thai restaurant. Don’t be distracted by the Thai joint’s more nicely-kept-up façade -- it’s Mien Trung you want, because behind that façade lurks some really excellent Vietnamese home cooking.
  
  If you’re already into Vietnamese food, you might be a little disoriented by Mien Trung’s menu. First of all, whereas many Vietnamese menus are almost novel-like in length, Mien Trung’s is short and sweet. For another: where the heck did the pho go? Relax -- you have not missed, and will not miss, the pho. Here, instead, the emphasis is on bun: rice noodles that are thicker than those used in pho, and with a round cross-section. Mien Trung serves these noodles in a variety of soups and platters, including what may well be the best version of bun bo Hue in San Diego.
  
  Mien Trung’s bun bo Hue features a rich, complex, and extremely spicy broth, not dumbed down in any way for non-Vietnamese palates. There’s both a standard and a deluxe (dac biet) version; I recommend going for the deluxe gusto. The huge dac biet bowl contains not only the standard bun bo Hue ingredients -- bun noodles, meaty slice of pork hock, morsels of beef brisket and tendon, cubes of congealed pork blood -- but also a couple of peppercorn-studded pieces of cha lua, a mortadella-like Vietnamese pork sausage. (The staff sometimes omits the pork blood from orders placed by non-Vietnamese customers they don’t already know; be sure to make your preferences known either way.)
  
  Equally delicious, to the point of threatening to take the place of Mien Trung’s bun bo Hue in my soup affections, is their version of bun rieu oc dac biet (that’s bun noodle soup with crab and snail, deluxe version). The bun rieu broth, not as spicy as the bun bo Hue broth but still with a chile kick, is packed with crab flavor. The dac biet bowl, in turn, is packed with bun noodles, chunks of fried bean curd and ground crab patty, wedges of tomato, and huge de-shelled snails. At other places I’ve had this soup, the snails have not only been puny but rubber-eraser tough. Here, though, they’re terrifically tender, with just the slightest pleasant little crunch. The garnish of crispy friend shallots adds a savory finish; the accompanying saucer of sweet/hot/salty/spicy dipping sauce goes especially well with the snails.
  
  If for some reason you’re not in the mood for soup, I would recommend any of the combo plates matching steamed rice or (soupless) bun noodles with various toppings. The Com Thit Nuong Vol Trung Chien -- steamed rice topped with barbequed pork strips and a sunny side up egg -- is particularly great comfort food. The pork is tasty, the egg perfectly cooked, and the runny egg yolk and savory pork juices seep into the rice, making it good to the last bite.
  
  The handful of tables in Mien Trung’s plain but spic-and-span dining room are continually busy at meal-times, mainly occupied by Vietnamese office workers and students from nearby Mesa College. There is also a steady stream of people coming in for individual takeout meals and larger catering orders. This despite the fact that Mien Trung’s parking lot is a little challenging to get into, and sometimes even harder to get out of. Tip: if you can, avoid the parking spaces in back, as you’re in greater risk of getting parked in back there. And it’s right-turn-only when you pull out of the lot, taking you away from the main drag of Linda Vista Road -- but just continue onward two traffic lights to Armstrong Street, where you’ll be allowed to make a legal U turn. Close

Places that vegetarians and vegans can call home, at least for dinner anyway.

• 

  Jyoti Bihanga Restaurant

  Neighborhood: Normal Heights Cuisine: Vegetarian , Eclectic/ International

  In a restful, airy room paying homage to their guru, peaceful servers please your body and soul with hearty, homey vegetarian fare.
  
  Read More…

  In a restful, airy room paying homage to their guru, peaceful servers please your body and soul with hearty, homey vegetarian fare.
  
  Read More…

  In a restful, airy room paying homage to their guru, peaceful servers please your body and soul with hearty, homey vegetarian fare.
  
  The first thing you notice when you walk through the door of Jyoti Bihanga is how blue it is. The walls of the high-ceilinged, airy room are all painted the perfect pale blue of a cloudless spring day. Large portraits of Sri Chinmoy, the guru whose followers run this café, grace these walls, along with colorful art created by the guru. Smiling sari-wrapped servers glide through the room, tending to their casually-clad guests. Meditative ambient music tinkles in the background, and a bookshelf in the corner offers works by the Guru for borrowing and notecards for purchase.
  
  None of this felt at all sanctimonious to me. In fact, it felt soothing, and even refreshingly innocent. How can you not be charmed when sunlight is streaming through big lace curtained windows on such cheerfully sky-blue walls?
  
  The menu at Jyoti Bihanga is similarly charming and innocent, featuring a mix of comfort foods, forays into Eastern cuisines, and SoCal health-food classics, all vegetarian with numerous vegan options. Some of my foodist friends who scoff at vegetarian cuisine feel there's something especially dodgy about vegetarian dishes that seek to reproduce omnivore favorites like meatloaf and burgers. I say to these scoffers, hey, what does it matter as long as the food is good? At Jyoti Bihanga, they do 'em good, both the exotic and the vegetarian diner fare.
  
  The menu proclaims their "Neatloaf" dinner as their best-seller. Now even carnivore loaves can be a dicey proposition in restaurants, often too dense and dry for any sauce to rescue. Jyoti Bihanga keeps their Neatloaf tender and moist by blending eggs and ricotta with brown rice and other grains, its savory seasoning offset with a tangy topping. It's worth noting here that Sri Chinmoy's followers are also fond of expressing their devotion through athletics such as track and field; the Neatloaf dinner is a carbo-loader's dream, offering a huge portion of the Neatloaf along with an equally-hefty serving of excellent mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, very good toasted whole-grain bread, and a choice of salad or soup (the a la carte version omits that last choice).
  
  A specials board features a daily selection of soups, a curry of the day, and an additional daily special. On a recent visit, a cup of creamy zucchini soup was a springlike light-green concoction of the featured vegetable blended with cream and sour cream, snappy from lots of black pepper. Their idea of a cup of soup, by the way, is as generous as their idea of an entrée, big enough to pass for a bowl serving in other restaurants. Even the "small" house salad they serve with entrees is bountiful—and beautiful, too, a composed plate of very freshly-grated strands of beet and carrot nestled on greens, with a choice of inventive dressings.
  
  It is also possible to eat lightly at Jyoti Bihanga, choosing from their selection of entrée salads, appetizers, sandwiches, and wraps. Beverage choices include a full range of teas both herbal and caffeinated, chai, organic coffee, natural sodas, and smoothies. Homey desserts like carrot cake and rice pudding round out the offerings.
  
  Prices are modest, especially considering the huge portion sizes: full dinners hovering around $8 to $10, sandwiches and wraps in the $6-to-$8 range, and snackier items $5 and below. They are mainly open for lunches and dinners, but on two to three Sundays a month they also offer an all-you-can eat breakfast buffet (call ahead to find out this month's buffet dates).
  
  I couldn't resist, at last, asking about the significance of all the blue, as another Sri Chinmoy-affiliated restaurant I'd know from my Seattle days was also awash in that color. My smiling server informed me the color signified "vastness" and "spirituality." Apparently it must also mean pleasing wholesome food in a restful environment. Hey, it's cheaper than a meditation retreat … and a lot more filling. Close
• 

  Spread

  Neighborhood: North Park Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Eclectic/ International

  This stylish little North Park restaurant blows away all stereotypes about vegetarian cookery with its novel, playful—and delicious—cuisine.
  
  Maybe the most compelling Read More…

  This stylish little North Park restaurant blows away all stereotypes about vegetarian cookery with its novel, playful—and delicious—cuisine.
  
  Maybe the most compelling Read More…

  This stylish little North Park restaurant blows away all stereotypes about vegetarian cookery with its novel, playful—and delicious—cuisine.
  
  Maybe the most compelling thing I can say about Spread is that it’s not just innovative and excellent for a vegetarian restaurant—it’s innovative and excellent, period. And just happens to be vegetarian as well.
  
  Actually, there’s nothing “just happens to be” about Spread’s vegetarianism. The creative team behind this little North Park restaurant are very clear about their “uncompromising belief in eating exclusively vegetarian and/or vegan,” to quote their website. But alongside that commitment is an equally strong “mission to stimulate and challenge the culinary imagination of their diners.” And that they do, with results equally entertaining and delicious.
  
  The minute you enter Spread’s storefront space in the recently-renovated North Park Theater, you realize this is not your hippy parents’ vegetarian restaurant. Stark white walls and black-on-black flooring serve as a backdrop for whimsical 1970s-era retro-modern furnishings, including a pair of bubble chairs suspended from the ceiling. Over in one corner is a DJ turntable setup; it sees action during Sunday brunch, when diners are serenaded by mellow beats. Even the tableware is amusingly non-standard, with such touches as spoons with heart-shaped bowls and Jetson-esque soup goblets which, in other settings, might have been meant for ice cream.
  
  The menu changes frequently depending on whatever produce is fresh and in season; yet there are recurring themes that unify the menu’s explorations, one of which is the frequent use of nut butters. Before Spread was a restaurant, it was a producer of gourmet nut spreads that are as far from Skippy as their current enterprise is from tofu burgers. Spread still sells its remarkable namesake spreads, many of which make their way into menu offerings. Edible flowers also turn up in many Spread dishes, often in novel applications. And then there's Spread’s fabulous way with vegetables. This last is a big point with me, as both my palate and my health regimen appreciate lots of veggies, but are often disappointed by the lackluster treatment vegetables often receive in restaurants—even in some vegetarian places, where you’d think they’d be the stars of the show. But no such issue arises at Spread.
  
  Some examples from recent visits: a tangy hibiscus-infused mole sauce dresses a plate of perfectly crisp-tender broccoli, cauliflower, baby corn, baby carrot, brussels sprouts, beets, and more; scatterings of shredded raw beet and cacao nibs help cut the sauce’s richness. A deep-flavored cauliflower bisque owes its silky yet non-cloying creaminess to a touch of soymilk, while succulent bits of cauliflower provide texture contrast. A Thai veggie pizza successfully uses peanut butter as the sauce/cheese replacement, complementing rather than blotting out the flavors of the other ingredients. A non-traditional sangria underpins blood-orange juice with just the right touch of cinnamon. Even the drinking water comes in for some creative attention, poured from a pitcher stuffed with an assortment of fruits and flowers—on one evening a whole Buddha’s Hand citrus fruit, on another a sea of rose petals.
  
  Perhaps my favorite Spread dish so far has been a kind of deconstructed pot pie, in which a little ramekin of assorted vegetables is sauced with a gorgonzola-heavy blend of cheeses and topped with house-seasoned croutons. As with the cauliflower bisque, little bits of vegetable swim up out of the cheese sauce to provide juicy little explosions on your tongue. I eat this dish simultaneously wondering at the chef’s talent for getting the vegetables so right, and simply sitting back with each mouthful and going “mmmmmmmmm . . . !”
  
  Spread definitely caters to a clientele that’s up for this kind of playfully outside-the-box food. It’s not unusual to see, among the assortment of artsy hipsters and early-dining theater-goers, at least one large party there to make an Event of dinner. Yet the place is just the opposite of pretentious—the hanging bubble chairs and DJ table, not to mention the general informality, proclaim that this is a place to have fun with your food. It’s just that, with Spread, the food is at a higher level of fun than the norm. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Close

• Cafe India

  Neighborhood: Point Loma Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Indian

  In the heart of the chain-restaurant jungle surrounding the Sports Arena, Café India offers an oasis of flavorful and healthy eating.
  
  If Read More…

  In the heart of the chain-restaurant jungle surrounding the Sports Arena, Café India offers an oasis of flavorful and healthy eating.
  
  If Read More…

  In the heart of the chain-restaurant jungle surrounding the Sports Arena, Café India offers an oasis of flavorful and healthy eating.
  
  If you’re a vegetarian and/or a health-conscious eater, the dining options in the vicinity of the Sports Arena can look particularly bleak. There must be one of every major chain restaurant known to humankind scattered throughout the surrounding shopping centers and strip malls, along with innumerable one-off taco joints, burger joints, teriaki joints . . . and other joints of an even more unsavory nature (so to speak). But never fear: hidden away in one of those shopping centers—camoflaged, in fact, behind a big honkin’ Red Lobster—Café India’s vegetarian buffet offers a little oasis of veggie serenity.
  
  Café India does have a full table-service menu, featuring very competent versions of all the Indian restaurant standards I’ve come to expect, both vegetarian and meat-based. They even go a little beyond that standard, offering to make most dishes on the menu fully vegetarian or vegan by use of meat analogues, tofu, soy milk and the like. The menu also includes such innovations as smoothies (just a step away from the yogurt drink known as lassi, which they also carry), and wraps during lunch hours. Organic vegetables are used whenever available, and all their mock meats are made from non-genetically modified soybeans.
  
  But almost every time I come here, I wind up getting the buffet, because it’s such a deal and such good eats. Available for both lunch and dinner, the buffet always features both white and brown rice, two different types of dal (lentil) soups, four vegetarian curries (usually two all-vegetable dishes, a potato-based dish, and one featuring legumes), plus raita, salads, and fresh fruit. Included with the buffet is a serving of the terrific tandoori-baked bread known as naan, made fresh to order; dinner also includes dessert.
  
  The vegetable curries vary from one day to the next. Sometimes these will be dishes I recognize and love, like a lovely palak paneer, spicy spinach studded with cubes of mild crumbly Indian cottage-style cheese. Or a korma style dish, a mild curry in a creamy sauce—on one visit I encountered an especially glorious version featuring perfectly-cooked cauliflower. Other days, it looks like the kitchen came up with a creative mix of whatever vegetables looked good that day—these are no less tasty for being improvizations. As I’ve mentioned in other Eats.it recs, I’m a real stickler for properly-prepared vegetables, and Café India satisfies me every time.
  
  Carnivores are not neglected even at the buffet: for a small surcharge, you can add a serving of meat to your buffet meal. And as I said, there’s a whole regular menu, including a selection of dishes offering a choice of chicken, lamb or shrimp. In particular, they do a very respectable tandoori chicken—not only tasty, but with a less intense red color than I’ve seen elsewhere, suggesting that the kitchen did not dump a whole vial of food coloring into the marinade. And all their meats are hormone-free—apparently they care as much about the health of their meat eaters as they do their non-meat-eaters.
  
  Admittedly, this oasis of healthy eating will never win any prizes for high style and glamour. The décor is a comfortable if slightly shopworn blend of the homey and the homely. Rustic dark wood beams and booths look more suited to a coffee shop than an Indian restaurant. Bunches of plants and a trio of Hindu god-figurines cluster around a pleasantly tinkling fountain, only partly distracting the viewer from the fountain’s faux-stone construction. And sometimes the soothing sitar and tabla music on the house PA gets overwhelmed by the talk-radio station blaring from the kitchen.
  
  But I find all these details more endearing than anything else—especially with the scent of good food in the air, and that buffet beckoning to me just beyond that fountain. Close
• 

  Ranchos Cocina

  Neighborhood: Ocean Beach Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Mexican

  This pair of folk-art festooned restaurants serves delightfully healthy but not dumbed-down rancho style cuisine, in omnivore, vegetarian, and full-on vegan variants.
  
  Read More…

  This pair of folk-art festooned restaurants serves delightfully healthy but not dumbed-down rancho style cuisine, in omnivore, vegetarian, and full-on vegan variants.
  
  Read More…

  This pair of folk-art festooned restaurants serves delightfully healthy but not dumbed-down rancho style cuisine, in omnivore, vegetarian, and full-on vegan variants.
  
  Ever since I moved to San Diego, I’ve been working my way up a steep learning curve with regard to Mexican cuisine and its various Southern Californian reinterpretations. It’s been a fun climb, but one of the first speed-bumps I ran into was how unfriendly to my health regimen a lot of the food could be. Americanized Mexican food in particular seems to delight in big meat, big fat, and lots o’ carbs -- certainly delicious, but not things I can get away with eating much of.
  
  Enter establishments like Ranchos Cocina to save my Mex-craving day.
  
  The two locations of Ranchos Cocina (there used to be a third, but it’s been “closed for renovations” for a loooooooong time now) serve rancho cuisine, a style derived from the cookery of early Spanish settlers, or rancheros, in what eventually became California. The cooks on these ranchos combined indigenous ingredients such as chiles with European imports such as olive oil, in ways distinct from later Mexican/American amalgamations. Ranchos Cocina takes their rancho cuisine even further by offering vegetarian and full-on vegan versions of many of the dishes on their menu.
  
  And it is a huge menu, running to a couple of hundred items -- even after bunches of visits, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. But I can say that, just about every time I decide to branch out and try something new, I’ve been at the very least satisfied, and often very much so.
  
  Vegetarians will rejoice that Ranchos Cocina has come up with one of the tastier meat substitutes I’ve had the pleasure of sampling. Their meaty-textured vegan shiitake patties turn up as an option along with chicken, beef, cheese, beans, and/or seafood in many of Ranchos’ dishes. They are especially effective in Ranchos’ take on mole enchiladas. There, the meatless fillings admirably sop up Ranchos’ enjoyably complex-flavored version of mole poblano, making for a dish that fills you up without weighing you down.
  
  Vegetarians and health enthusiasts alike will also be pleased to note that they can choose to substitute refried beans, standard Spanish rice, and corn tortillas with whole black beans, brown rice, and whole wheat tortillas respectively.
  
  Omnivores do not go lacking at Ranchos. For instance, the place does a respectably flavorful version of carne asada, which again turns up as filling for burritos, tortas, quesadillas, tacos and the like. And about their taco offerings: at first I was non-plussed at their price, almost twice as much as those at your average walk-up taco stand. But that was until I saw one delivered to a neighboring table, and noted the nice amount of stuff that was stuffed into them. One alone does make a more than adequate light meal.
  
  But perhaps my favorite “light” meal at Ranchos (so far!) is what the menu calls Mexican seafood chowder. It’s probably more accurate to call it by its Mexican name, caldo de mariscos -- it consists of a generous helping of whole shrimp and chunks of firm fish fillet in a big bowlful of chile-spiced tomato-based broth, served with warm tortillas to help sop it all up.
  
  I also have to say a good word for Ranchos’ coffee. I’m always impressed when a restaurant bothers to make decent coffee, and Ranchos’ is excellent, laced with cinnamon for an irresistible flavor kick that makes it a pleasure to linger over an extra cup. Which lingering, I confess, you should plan on doing -- alas, one of the things Ranchos is not quite so good at is fast service. So avoid joining the line waiting to get into the North Park location for dinner before a show at the nearby theater -- it’ll likely end in frustration.
  
  Rather, choose Ranchos Cocina for a leisurely meal when you have time to enjoy their outdoor dining areas, and their interiors studded with Frida Kahlo-esque folk art objects. Especially at their OB location, you’ll find you have lots of mellow company. Close
• 

  Ranchos Cocina

  Neighborhood: North Park Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Mexican

  This pair of folk-art festooned restaurants serves delightfully healthy but not dumbed-down rancho style cuisine, in omnivore, vegetarian, and full-on vegan variants.
  
  Read More…

  This pair of folk-art festooned restaurants serves delightfully healthy but not dumbed-down rancho style cuisine, in omnivore, vegetarian, and full-on vegan variants.
  
  Read More…

  This pair of folk-art festooned restaurants serves delightfully healthy but not dumbed-down rancho style cuisine, in omnivore, vegetarian, and full-on vegan variants.
  
  Ever since I moved to San Diego, I’ve been working my way up a steep learning curve with regard to Mexican cuisine and its various Southern Californian reinterpretations. It’s been a fun climb, but one of the first speed-bumps I ran into was how unfriendly to my health regimen a lot of the food could be. Americanized Mexican food in particular seems to delight in big meat, big fat, and lots o’ carbs -- certainly delicious, but not things I can get away with eating much of.
  
  Enter establishments like Ranchos Cocina to save my Mex-craving day.
  
  The two locations of Ranchos Cocina (there used to be a third, but it’s been “closed for renovations” for a loooooooong time now) serve rancho cuisine, a style derived from the cookery of early Spanish settlers, or rancheros, in what eventually became California. The cooks on these ranchos combined indigenous ingredients such as chiles with European imports such as olive oil, in ways distinct from later Mexican/American amalgamations. Ranchos Cocina takes their rancho cuisine even further by offering vegetarian and full-on vegan versions of many of the dishes on their menu.
  
  And it is a huge menu, running to a couple of hundred items -- even after bunches of visits, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. But I can say that, just about every time I decide to branch out and try something new, I’ve been at the very least satisfied, and often very much so.
  
  Vegetarians will rejoice that Ranchos Cocina has come up with one of the tastier meat substitutes I’ve had the pleasure of sampling. Their meaty-textured vegan shiitake patties turn up as an option along with chicken, beef, cheese, beans, and/or seafood in many of Ranchos’ dishes. They are especially effective in Ranchos’ take on mole enchiladas. There, the meatless fillings admirably sop up Ranchos’ enjoyably complex-flavored version of mole poblano, making for a dish that fills you up without weighing you down.
  
  Vegetarians and health enthusiasts alike will also be pleased to note that they can choose to substitute refried beans, standard Spanish rice, and corn tortillas with whole black beans, brown rice, and whole wheat tortillas respectively.
  
  Omnivores do not go lacking at Ranchos. For instance, the place does a respectably flavorful version of carne asada, which again turns up as filling for burritos, tortas, quesadillas, tacos and the like. And about their taco offerings: at first I was non-plussed at their price, almost twice as much as those at your average walk-up taco stand. But that was until I saw one delivered to a neighboring table, and noted the nice amount of stuff that was stuffed into them. One alone does make a more than adequate light meal.
  
  But perhaps my favorite “light” meal at Ranchos (so far!) is what the menu calls Mexican seafood chowder. It’s probably more accurate to call it by its Mexican name, caldo de mariscos -- it consists of a generous helping of whole shrimp and chunks of firm fish fillet in a big bowlful of chile-spiced tomato-based broth, served with warm tortillas to help sop it all up.
  
  I also have to say a good word for Ranchos’ coffee. I’m always impressed when a restaurant bothers to make decent coffee, and Ranchos’ is excellent, laced with cinnamon for an irresistible flavor kick that makes it a pleasure to linger over an extra cup. Which lingering, I confess, you should plan on doing -- alas, one of the things Ranchos is not quite so good at is fast service. So avoid joining the line waiting to get into the North Park location for dinner before a show at the nearby theater -- it’ll likely end in frustration.
  
  Rather, choose Ranchos Cocina for a leisurely meal when you have time to enjoy their outdoor dining areas, and their interiors studded with Frida Kahlo-esque folk art objects. Especially at their OB location, you’ll find you have lots of mellow company. Close
• 

  Sipz Fusion Cafe

  Neighborhood: Clairemont Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan , Pan Asian/Pacific Rim

  This cheerful café uses Asian vegetarian culinary techniques to make delicious pan-Asian dishes without a speck of animal products.
  
  I am no Read More…

  This cheerful café uses Asian vegetarian culinary techniques to make delicious pan-Asian dishes without a speck of animal products.
  
  I am no Read More…

  This cheerful café uses Asian vegetarian culinary techniques to make delicious pan-Asian dishes without a speck of animal products.
  
  I am no vegetarian, but I have been cutting down on meat for health and budgetary reasons, so I’ve come to love Sipz Fusion Café. As the "fusion" in the name implies, Sipz offers vegetarian dishes blending a variety of culinary influences—-mainly Southeast Asian with the occasional Italian foray, plus an assortment of pan-Asian sushi rolls. Almost all dishes are full-on vegan; the few that contain eggs or dairy are marked in the menu. Most entrees are served as modestly-priced "Bowlz," all-in-one combos in which the entree is presented in a large bowl with a scoop of white rice (or brown rice for a small additional charge).
  
  Sipz' cuisine draws upon the centuries-old vegetarian traditions of Asian Buddhist culture, in which soy products are coaxed by seasoning and skill into convincing replicas of meat, fish, and fowl. To be sure, some restaurants from this tradition I have sampled are better at this trick than others. Sipz has got to be one of the best I've come across so far—all their mock meats are tasty, and a few are so clever that if I weren’t eating them in a vegetarian restaurant I’d swear they were the real thing. Among their best fakes, and one of my favorite items, is the Thai Curry Chicken Bowl, featuring big meaty chunks of "chicken" along with eggplant, potato, straw mushrooms, onions, and bamboo shoots in a rich spicy coconut-milk based sauce.
  
  Another dish I love is their Green Papaya Beef Salad Bowl. A variant on the traditional Thai green papaya salad, the mound of shredded green papaya comes topped with crushed peanuts, torn mint leaves, and mild, slightly sweet/spicy strips of barbecued “beef.” The dressing, served on the side, pulls off the classic Southeast Asian balancing-act of sweet/sour/salty/spicy so well that I'm tempted to drink the leftovers. And it does this without a drop of Thai fish sauce, a key ingredient in the non-vegetarian original.
  
  The sushi menu presents a variety of maki and handrolls, beautifully executed by their young itamae. I have particularly enjoyed their Thai Hand Roll, in which strips of "chicken," lettuce, cabbage, and carrots are sparked with a subtly sweet/spicy Satay peanut sauce; and the simple and earthy Shiitake Mushroom Baby Roll. Sipz’ itamae also does an impressive take on the trendy Dynamite Roll: slices of crab-and-veggie maki are topped with more veggies and a spicy creamy sauce, then baked until that sauce turns to a gooey bubbly delight. You can even choose to have your sushi made with brown rice, which Sipz makes work surprisingly well.
  
  Sipz also offers scrumptious desserts ranging from chocolate cake to whole fresh coconuts stuffed with sweet rice and mung beans, plus a wide variety of beverages including boba teas, smoothies, and coffees. They also offer a short list of domestic wines, and beers from Asia, Europe, and the US.
  
  Vegetarian restaurants have a certain reputation as being either hair-shirt or hippie-esque, but the Sipz atmosphere is much more with-it than that. Their space is informal, bright, and modern, with a graphiti-like mural of whimical sea creatures occupying one entire wall. The crowd is a mix of the youthful, slightly studenty/alternative folks you think of when you think "vegetarian," along with older couples and the occasional family with young children.
  
  Leaving out the meat also results in modest prices—most of Sipz’ entrée bowls are below $7. So whether you're a full-fledged vegan, a non-vegetarian dealing with the "Omnivore's Dilemma," or just an adventurous eater on a budget, Sipz Cafe will delight your wallet as well as your taste buds. Close
• 

  The Linkery

  Neighborhood: North Park Cuisine: Eclectic/ International

  The Linkery is such a mellow place, it may take you awhile to realize that you have walked in on a delicious little Read More…

  The Linkery is such a mellow place, it may take you awhile to realize that you have walked in on a delicious little Read More…

  The Linkery is such a mellow place, it may take you awhile to realize that you have walked in on a delicious little restauranting revolution.
  
  Your first clue that The Linkery is not your average restaurant may be the huge chalkboard taking up dining room wall space amidst all the blonde wood and low-key lighting. There you’ll see not only the day’s specials, but also a wealth of info about their ingredients, revealing a deep dedication to small regional producers. Or maybe it’ll hit you as you survey the menu, and realize they not only redo that menu on a weekly basis, but also create all of their sausages in-house, and serve cask-conditioned beers from some of the best local microbreweries. Certainly you’ll figure out something is up when you look at your bill and see the notice “We do not accept tips—all costs are included on each check.”
  
  Jay Porter, the owner of the Linkery, is a man with a mission, as you’ll quickly discover from the restaurant’s extensive website. He aims to present what he calls “handmade cuisine,” featuring terrific ingredients from equally-devoted producers, in a casual, modestly-priced neighborhood restaurant in which the staff and customers form an interactive community. In fact, this emphasis on community underpins one of the meanings of the restaurant’s name, referencing the links the restaurant forms amongst its customers as well as between them and the sources of their food.
  
  But mostly, the “links” meant here are of the sausage variety, and they are definitely something special. There are almost six dozen varieties in The Linkery’s repertoire, running the gamut from bratwurst to creamed truffle to boudin noir to seafood to you-name-it. On any given night there will be three or four types available, which you can add to any dish on the menu whether it’s sausage-based or not. These beauties are made in small batches, packed into natural casings, and contain no nitrites or other artificial additives whatsoever. They’re also made with a lower percentage of fat than traditional sausage recipes, proving that a healthy sausage does not have to be an oxymoron.
  
  Oh yes—might I add that these sausages are seriously delicious? Un-gunked up by artificial additives, the high-quality meats and seasonings are able to shine through, especially after a flame-grilling that crisps up the nicely chewy natural casings. Just a couple of examples: their Boerewors, a South African beef/pork/lamb sausage, showcases the wonderful lightly gamey flavor of the lamb. And their Kasekrainer, a Viennese street-food favorite, spikes its cheese-enriched goodness with a lively jolt of cayenne. The knowledgeable staff will be happy to suggest which sausage goes best with which dish on the menu, as well as great matches from their extensive wine list and current beer offerings.
  
  As I said, the menu varies weekly, depending on available ingredients and how they inspire the staff. But you can always count on a variety of sausage dishes, from the traditional (a gorgeous choucroute featuring not only the sausage of your choice but also house-made bacon fabricated from Duroc pork) to the creative (sausage tacos, in which the sliced links are bedded down in flame-grilled corn tortillas with all the trimmings). Other menu regulars include a fine hunk o’ steak, some surprisingly excellent vegetarian entrees (including a “Mexico City style” lasagna with some of the smoothest, silkiest whole-wheat pasta I have ever tasted, again made in-house). Then there’s a truly outrageous burger made of house-ground beef and topped with a fried free-range egg—and optionally, one of the house sausages, for those who really want to max out their cholesterol.
  
  Oh, and one additional thing I love about The Linkery: the opportunities for light dining as well as more substantial meals. It’s refreshing to find a restaurant with so many options for me to put together a light meal that fits well within my health regimen, with just the amount of high-quality meat I desire and no more, accompanied by vegetable sides that receive the same loving care as the main. It’s also great to know that if I bring along one of my super-carnivore friends, they’ll have a host of satisfying big-meat options to choose from. And regardless of what either of us choose, we know it’s going to be excellent. Close

• Kung Food Express Café - CLOSED

  Neighborhood: Bankers Hill Cuisine: Vegetarian , Vegan

  NOTE: Kung Food has closed; a new restaurant with a different name now occupies this location.
  
  This unconventional Banker’s Hill cafe serves Read More…

  NOTE: Kung Food has closed; a new restaurant with a different name now occupies this location.
  
  This unconventional Banker’s Hill cafe serves Read More…

  NOTE: Kung Food has closed; a new restaurant with a different name now occupies this location.
  
  This unconventional Banker’s Hill cafe serves delicious vegan fare via buffet or drive-through--plus healthy desserts that actually taste terrific!
  
  Nestled amidst the chichi condo complexes and upscale office buildings of Banker’s Hill is an incongruously hippy-dippy establishment that, in various incarnations, has been feeding grateful vegetarians since the 1970s. In that time, it has undergone a name change or two, and at one point closed down completely, but since late 2004 it has gone by the name of Kung Food Express Café.
  
  The “Express Café” part of the current name (the “Kung Food” bit dates from its earliest days) indicates this place’s aspiration to provide vegans, raw food enthusiasts, and just plain folks who want to eat lighter with a service that most mainstream eaters take for granted: fast food. The heart of the operation is a pay-by-weight buffet, featuring cold and hot entrees and a salad bar. Made-to-order items such as coffee drinks and smoothies are available from a service counter, as well as a menu of grilled items after 5 pm. They also offer one of the very few vegan drive-through windows in the country, with a separate menu featuring vegan burgers and sweet potato fries.
  
  The food is not only fast but tasty. The eclectic menu is a mix of vegan takes on animal-food-based dishes, forays into world cuisine, and just plain all-out comfort food. The entire menu is 100% vegan, avoids refined flours and sugars, opts for organic products whenever available, and includes a significant number of raw foods. The buffet items tend to vary from one visit to the next, but my favorite among the regulars is the “chicken” parmesan, featuring juicy, impressively meatlike tofu cutlets in a thick savory tomato sauce. They also make some truly delicious vegetable dishes, such as lemon-dressed collards, tamari veggie stirfry, and a mix of cabbage and other leafy things going by the name of Essential Greens.
  
  Among their evening grill items, I especially like the so-called Terrific Tempeh Reuben. Now I’m originally from New York, where I developed some pretty strong opinions about Reubens, and I confess that at first I had trouble making this tempeh business jive with those preconceptions. But eventually, this open-face creation of mellow browned tempeh slices on dense chewy-crusted house-made bread, accented with Russian dressing, sauerkraut, and melted soy cheese, managed to win me over. Nope, they didn’t bother trying to make the tempeh taste like corned beef, but the interplay of nutty tempeh against tangy sauerkraut and dressing works just fine the way it is.
  
  One additional thing I love about Kung Food is their line of desserts, which I can enjoy without blowing my health regimen out of the water for the rest of the week. They make a range of pies, cookies, brownies, cakes, and macaroons, frequently featuring whole grains, raw foods, and alternative sweeteners such as agave nectar. The resulting goodies are much less sweet than conventional desserts, but that’s a plus as far as I’m concerned, as I usually find conventional desserts tooth-achingly over-sweet for my tastes. Some of my favorites: a “live” coconut cheesecake with a delicate filling of coconut-laced silken tofu on a nutty chewy wholegrain crust; little fruit tartlets consisting of that same crust layered with gorgeous sliced fresh fruits; and anything chocolate! Spared the excessive dose of refined sugar, Kung Food’s chocolate items are able to show off the deep, complex, slightly bitter qualities that I most favor in that confection.
  
  Kung Food’s physical presentation is admittedly a bit eccentric. The rambling little enclave of buildings is fronted by an equally rambling courtyard filled with a random assortment of chairs and tables. And the layout of the buffet area can sometimes confuse the uninitiated, even with the recent addition of helpful signage. But the adjoining dining room is gorgeous, painted in restful earthtones and decorated with new-agey artwork. And the courtyard, screened from the bustle of 5th Avenue by strategically-placed greenery, is a wonderful place to relax in the sun. Grab a table and a latte or smoothie and catch some rays; you’ll soon notice that you have plenty of company. Close

• Pokez Mexican Restaurant

  Neighborhood: East Village Cuisine: Vegan , Mexican , Latin American , Vegetarian

  Ample portions of hearty SoCal-Mex eats, with vegetarian/vegan as well as omnivore options, served up with a laid-back punk-hipster twist.
  
  Pokéz has Read More…

  Ample portions of hearty SoCal-Mex eats, with vegetarian/vegan as well as omnivore options, served up with a laid-back punk-hipster twist.
  
  Pokéz has Read More…

  Ample portions of hearty SoCal-Mex eats, with vegetarian/vegan as well as omnivore options, served up with a laid-back punk-hipster twist.
  
  Pokéz has become something of an unofficial clubhouse for the artists, musicians, punks, and other assorted hipsters of San Diego’s East Village neighborhood. But it’s not just the restaurant’s alternative cachet that keeps them lining up out the door at dinnertime. This joint serves up some seriously good cheap eats, in portions that would keep any skateboarder carbo-loaded for hours on end.
  
  If you were ever a fan of the 1980s underground comic book Love and Rockets, walking into Pokéz will make you feel like you’ve just fallen into one of Los Bros Hernandez’s magic-realism Chicano-punk epics. The street-corner storefront is just dripping with keeping-it-real atmosphere, from the vibrant mural on the 10th Avenue exterior wall to the assortment of recycled tables and booths furnishing its haphazardly red-, white-, and green-painted interior. The alterna-punkish waitstaff are admittedly a little on the random side, especially when the place is slammed. But as long as you’re not expecting the hyper-meticulous service typical of the much more expensive restaurants over in the Gaslamp, you should get along just fine.
  
  The menu—featuring a whimsical drawing of a feather-headdressed Zapotec dude delivering a burrito via skateboard—is a mix of classic SoCal-Mex favorites augmented by a few unique creations of the Pokéz staff. A refreshing difference from many similar menus is an emphasis on healthier ingredients. The kitchen strives to use organic produce whenever possible, avoids lard and MSG, and keeps a tight rein on the salt shaker. Many dishes are available in vegetarian and full-on vegan versions; the beans and rice accompanying most entrees are always 100% vegetarian.
  
  One of my favorite items is their Tostada Salad served in a flour tortilla bowl. I have suffered through many lackluster versions of this salad in other places, but Pokéz’s presentation restored my faith in this old standby. Instead of the puny, oil-soaked, coffee-filter-shaped tortilla bowl I’d grown all too familiar with, Pokéz’s tortilla bowl is a towering, freeform affair, perfectly fried to a pale-gold crisp. Piled into this tribute to the deep-fryer jockey’s art is a mountain of lettuce, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, salsa fresca, sour cream, and your choice of beef or wonderfully spicy chicken strips. The vegetarian version features tofu as the main protein and omits the eggs.
  
  Pokéz’s burritos are equally massive, coming perilously close to violating B. Kliban’s “never eat anything bigger than your head” rule. Just one example: Jony’s Breakfast Burrito (from the “breakfast served all day” section of the menu) packs eggs, potatoes, cheese, guacamole, sour cream, rice, beans, and a generous portion of bacon into a tortilla-wrapped package as big around as my bicep. It comes with a surprisingly enjoyable side of marinated red cabbage salad and, like Pokéz’s other burritos, can be ordered topped with ranchero sauce and melted cheese.
  
  As I mentioned before, the lines and the wait can get long if you hit Pokéz during the dinner rush. However, if you wander by in the off hours on weekdays, you can often find the place near-empty, except for a few regulars enjoying a late breakfast, a cup of coffee, and some chat with the ever-insouciant waitstaff. At those times, just ignore the “Please Wait for a Table” sign and saunter in as if you were a regular too . . . and you’ll very shortly find yourself welcomed like one. And not too long after that, you’ll find yourself well filled with good, homey food for not much dinero.
  
  Hours: Mon-Fri 10am – 9pm; Sat-Sun 9am – 9pm
  Website: http://www.pokezsd.com/
  Parking: on-street parking; pay lot across 10th Ave.
  Freeway access: Take 163 south till it empties into 10th Avenue; continue south to E Street.
  Transit access: 2, 5, 15
  Close