User Profile - SanDiego Eats It

Ellen B.

45 Eats.It Staff Recs

Happy Family, Kearny Mesa
09/07/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This little Korean café tucked inside Zion Market makes its customers happy with its sizzling specialty, dolsot bibimbap.

Don’t you hate it when you pull up to one of your favorite little restaurant finds only to discover they’ve just switched management? Well, that just happened to the little restaurant find I am about to tell you about, but fortunately it looks like they had the good sense not to mess with the dish that keeps bringing me back to this place.

The joint in question is nothing if not humble -- a little food-court type café contained within the wonderful Korean grocery store Zion Market -- and it used to go by the no-it’s-not-a-joke name of Happy Meal. The new management has changed the name to the only slightly better Happy Family, but other than signage they seem to be leaving everything as-is: a handful of tables, a counter where you place your order and take a number, and a kitchen behind that where the staff puts together a number of homey Korean luncheonette favorites. Including the dish that keeps bringing me back here: dolsot bibimbap.

Bibimbap literally translates as “mixed rice;” the basic dish consists of a variety of seasoned vegetables -- some raw, some cooked, and some pickled -- laid out prettily over a mound of steamed white rice. The whole affair is usually topped with a little ground beef and a sunnyside-up egg. When you’re served this dish, you add squirts of the hot chile sauce known as gochujang to taste, and then mix everything together; the gochujang and egg yolk form a sauce that moistens everything and brings it all together into, well, one big happy family.

As to the dolsot variation of this dish: a dolsot is a traditional stone bowl meant to hold an individual portion of food. The bowl is heated until it is rocket-hot, and then the rice and bibimbap toppings are all layered into it. The whole affair is then (carefully!) delivered to your table, sizzling in a way that would make your average plate of fajitas green with envy. The rice gets a wonderful brown crunchy crust wherever it touches the surface of the stone bowl; as you keep stirring the dish and eating away, more and more bits of rice and toppings take their turn against the hot stone and get further crunchy bits. It’s great fun to eat, as the dish keeps changing as you work your way through it -- though you do have to watch not to burn yourself on that hot bowl!

Now, lots of Korean restaurants serve bibimbap, including dolsot bibimbap -- so why do I keep coming to this little food court joint to get mine? Because they do a very nice job of it, for a lower price than a lot of those other Korean places. For well under ten bucks, you get a generously-sized dolsot full of food, along with tea, a cup of soup, and four small servings of the little side dishes known as banchan. The bibimbap toppings vary a bit, but typically include such items as carrot, mushrooms, spinach, zucchini, cucumber, soybean sprouts, and bracken fern stems (a vegetable beloved by Koreans), in addition to the standard fried egg with a bit of ground beef hiding under it. The banchan selection also varies, though kimchee is ever-present.

All these little bits and pieces add up to a heck of a lot of food -- by the time I’ve finished stirring and eating my sizzling bowl of goodness, I’m definitely feeling well sated. And then, even though I’m full, I usually take a turn around Zion Market and see what else looks good. All in all, a lovely little foodie adventure for not a lot of bucks.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Harar Ethiopian Restaurant, North Park
09/02/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
Inside this little weatherbeaten house is some wonderful spicy Ethiopian fare, sure to please both meat-eaters and vegetarians.

That friend of yours, the huge “Monk” fan who identifies rather too strongly with the title character’s neatness obsessions? Don’t bring that friend to Harar -- it’ll only end in tears. But if you are enough of a fan of good, adventurous eats that you don’t mind venturing into a rather, erm, rustic environment to get it, check this place out -- you’ll have a lot of fun.

For not only does Harar have the whole traditional Ethopian eat-with-your-hands trip going on, its setting is definitely on the funky side. In fact, the tiny tin-roofed house wedged in between auto repair places can best be described as ramshackle. Inside, you’ll find a tiny dining room and bar whose folksy décor has a decidedly low-budget DYI look to it. Out the back door is a roomier, though no less improvised, outdoor dining area, roofed over with wood lattice and blue tarps. Still with me on this? Good. Because not only do I find this look more endearing than anything else, but the food is definitely worth the funk.

For those not up to speed on Ethiopian food, the basic premise is a variety of stewed dishes, some mild and some laden with chile heat, all served on big rounds of a soft spongy flat bread called injera. Made from a tiny, highly nutritious grain called teff and fermented in the manner of a sourdough, injera develops lots of little bubbles like an English muffin as well as a delightful slightly-sour tang. Instead of using silverware, you tear off bits of injera and use it to scoop up bites of stew. Both carnivores and vegetarians will find joy with this cuisine, as Ethiopian cooks do magic with beef, chicken, and lamb as well as with split peas, lentils, and a whole range of vegetables.

One of the best ways to get a quick intro to Ethiopian cuisine at Harar is to order one of their combos. The meat-eater’s combo features yedoro wot (a chicken stew), yebere sega wot (braised beef), and yebeg alicha (braised lamb), along with a house-made cheese. The vegetarian combo comes with five items (and sometimes, in my experience, as many as seven); these include a couple of different legume stews as well as various of their vegetable dishes. Both of these combos are served on injera; a accompanying basketful of additional injera cut into strips and rolled up for easy handling allow you to sop up every last bit of tasty sauce.

Being the vegetable fan that I am, I especially love Harar’s way with vegetables. Standouts here include their take on collard greens, stewed until meltingly tender; the yatakelt wot, a mixed vegetable stew including wonderfully sweet strips of braised carrot; and a lovely spiced eggplant stew.

Another great way to sample a bunch of different dishes is to take advantage of Harar’s Friday night all-you-can-eat buffet. From 6 to 10pm, you can choose from eight or more dishes, both meat and vegetarian, plus injera, all for $12. Admittedly, the physical setup is as low-budget as the rest of the joint: big disposable foil pans over sterno cans, paper plates, plastic forks for those who are still working on their injera-scooping skills. But the food is no less fun for the humble surroundings. Bring a bunch of friends, kick back in the informality of the outdoor dining courtyard, order yourself a beer or some of the Ethiopian honey wine known as tej, and have yourself a fine messy feast.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Lestat's Coffeehouse, Normal Heights
08/27/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This funky Normal Heights favorite has it all: a full menu of coffeehouse refreshments, free wi-fi, a happening music scene -- plus round-the-clock operation.

I admit it -- in the pursuit of good grub I’ll put up with some pretty lackluster surroundings. But when it comes to coffeehouses, I require a bit more in terms of atmosphere and amenities. After all, the whole point of a coffeehouse is to hang out for a significant hunk of time, and that’s only attractive if you find the place’s vibe enjoyable. And of the various coffeehouses in this town, the one whose vibe I most enjoy is Lestat’s.

Located in the shadow of the “Normal Heights” sign, Lestat’s gleefully goes out of its way to live up to the neighborhood’s nickname of Abnormal Heights. Stone gargoyles perch on its façade. Edward Goreyesque antique furniture contrasts wackily with the often-freaky works of locak artists on display. A mix of artsy-alternative types, students, working stiffs, and interesting local characters hang out or surf the net over the free wi-fi, unperturbed by the mainly alternative rock pumping over the sound system. Other patrons gravitate to the sidewalk dining area to smoke and shoot the breeze, while still others prefer to make their way past the café counter and out the back door to the courtyard dining area. Even the bathroom carries on the vibe, with a bulletin board jammed with flyers advertising everything from political protests to local bands to esoteric spirituality workshops.

They also know how to make a decent cup of coffee -- and all the stuff that goes along with that. The folks working the café counter offer a full range of coffee drinks -- all the variations on espresso, all the iced and frozen and flavored concoctions, the assortment of herbal and black teas, the smoothies and juices. I confess I’m a creature of habit and usually get something simple, either a latte or an iced coffee -- but having had some pretty lame-ass excuses for same at other places, I appreciate having a place I can depend on to not screw them up.

Lestat’s also offers a versatile menu of sandwiches, soups, salads, baked goods, and other café fare. An especially nice touch is their set of combo specials, such as the Souper and Souper Duper (a cup of house-made soup with a half or whole sandwich respectively). Sandwiches are substantial, made with good-quality fillings and great bread; soups are filling and flavorful, such as their garlic-laced vegetarian lentil. The Souper and a coffee drink is usually more than enough to totally sate me for lunch.

And if that weren’t enough, Lestat's also runs a wonderful little performance space just next door, which hosts a packed calendar of music both unplugged and amped including some local big names (Jason Mraz has been known to pop in, and my personal musical hero Mike Keneally has done one of his rare San Diego performances here).

In other words, the management has done everything right to make Lestat’s this neighborhood’s clubhouse. That’s probably why the joint is always jumping at all hours of the day and night. Yes, it’s open 24/7. That fact alone should win the place a prize for being such a refreshing alternative to the Denny’s of the world -- not to mention the gosh darned Starbuck’s that somebody had the supreme bad taste to open up just across the street. I honestly don’t understand why anybody bothers going to that outpost of the conglomerate. I mean, why in the world would you choose to hang in such a sterile plastic box, when just a few short yards away awaits coffee and wi-fi with a heaping helping of funky creativity?

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here dozens of times.
Ichiban Japanese Restaurant, Hillcrest
08/20/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This little Hillcrest café pumps out Japanese-style comfort food that has folks lining up at their door--especially during their sushi happy hours.

Every weekday afternoon between 3 and 7pm, a line of hungry people forms outside a modest sidewalk café on University Avenue near the intersection with Normal Street, all patiently waiting for their raw fish fix. The two-for-one sushi roll happy hour at Ichiban has become something of a fixture on the Hillcrest food scene, and justly so because this little café puts out a damn nice product at a terrific price.

Make no mistake -- this is not super-high-quality drop-big-bucks-for-omakase type sushi -- nor does it pretend to be. Rather, the emphasis here is on decent, fresh, everyday-type sushi, made fast and priced right. And outside of the sushi happy-hour madness, Ichiban also offers an extensive menu of Japanese homestyle dishes that are equally satisfying to belly and wallet. My understanding is that there this kind of establishment is common all over Japan, roughly equivalent to our luncheonettes and diners. And indeed you will regularly see Japanese expatriates among the customers, stopping by to get a little hit of home.

By this point, the staff at Ichiban has got their sushi happy hour down to a science, so that even when the line grows long you know you’ll whip through it fairly quickly. First of all, while they have some limited credit-card service at other times, it’s strictly cash-only during the sushi rush. (There is an ATM just inside the little indoor dining area.) The happy hour selections, a subset of their full roll menu, are posted on a big sign you can peruse as you wait; or grab a photocopied menu from the rack by the door. Place your order and pay, get a number, find a seat -- they can get scarce, so a number of folks choose takeout instead -- and a runner will soon find you with your meal in hand. And then prepare to inhale your rolls.

The selection of rolls in Ichiban’s full repertoire covers all the usual suspects that tend to especially appeal to American palates -- in other words, rolls named after California, Philadelphia, and other US locations are much in evidence. They also assay some of the more complicated roll variants, like caterpillar and rainbow. I’ve been quite pleased with their soft shell crab roll. And yes, they do produce competent nigiri and sashimi too.

But don’t let any sushi fixation you may have blind you to the rest of the menu. There’s a whole side of the photocopied sheet given over to appetizers, salads, soups, rice bowls, and other entrees, all of them homey classics. I’m especially fond of their bentos. The Bento B, the larger of the two, is one of the most expensive things on the menu at just under ten bucks, which is still quite reasonable, especially considering the amount of good food you get -- nice little portions of baked salmon, fried shrimp, sashimi, chicken teriaki, and California roll, plus rice, miso soup, and all the little garnishes a practiced bento-assembler always tucks in here and there.

The chicken katsu curry is another pleaser. For those not familiar, the Japanese have their own unique adaptation of curry -- the emphasis is on a moat of thick, savory sauce, into which you can mix your rice and dunk your katsu cutlet (a piece of chicken coated in crunchy Japanese panko crumbs and deep-fried). Ichiban’s version features a nicely-flavored sauce with a modest amount of heat; the chicken cutlet may not be the hugest in the world, but its coating is excellent, and it’s accompanied by big chunks of well-cooked potato as well as rice, miso soup, and a pleasant little green salad. Again, a lot of food for an impressively moderate price.

Ichiban’s cramped little dining room will never win any points for glamour, but the sidewalk dining area provides some prime people-watching if you can score a table.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Great Moon Buffet, Pacific Beach
08/13/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
Crowds flock to this solidly reliable Chinese-American buffet in the non-beachy end of PB.

High-class dining experiences and authentic regional ethnic cuisines are certainly lots of fun -- goodness knows I’ve had plenty of great meals at places that specialize in those. But every now and then, an undeniable desire for a certain kind of middle-brow comfort food hits me, and that’s when you’ll find me lining up at one of my favorite Chinese-American buffets.

Mind you, you’re not going to find any earthshaking culinary surprises at such places -- but then, comfort food isn’t about surprises. Just the opposite: it’s about foods that soothe because they’re reliably, simply, uncomplicatedly yummy. And one of the most reliable entries on my short list of good local Chinese-American buffets is Great Moon.

In a lot of ways, Great Moon Buffet is indistinguishable from others of its size and level of quality. The buffet tables at the center of the sprawling dining room follow the usual arrangement: one big table has all the salad bar/cold salad/fruit offerings; another has soups and dim sum; another has more American-ish dishes like prime rib and baked salmon; still others are given over to Chinese-style entrees, sushi rolls, and desserts. The décor is sort of dressed-up chain buffet with a few discreet Asian touches, and one or two strokes of over-the-top glitz -- most notably, a huge crystal chandelier that would do a hotel banquet hall proud. And like the better members of this class, Great Moon has a small army of staffers who efficiently whisk away empty plates, keep your drink (included in the price of the buffet) topped off, and most crucial of all, keep all those pans in all those buffet tables filled with fresh food.

But like any good buffet of this type, Great Moon has a few recurring specialty items in its repertoire of dishes that are worth seeking out -- as you can tell from the way the regulars descend on certain corners of the buffet when a new pan of food emerges from the kitchen. For instance, you may risk being run over by a mini-stampede whenever the servers bring out a fresh pan of oysters on the half-shell, but if you manage to score a few of these babies before they’re all vacuumed up, you’ll be rewarded by some respectably fresh and meaty specimens. If they’re all gone by the time you get there, never fear; just hover for awhile and keep your eye peeled for when the servers bring out the next batch.

Among other seafood items that Great Moon does really well are their salty crabs -- nice plump little specimens deep-fried shells and all, chopped in half for easy access to the ample body meat. They also offer shrimp several different ways, including cold peel-and-eat, butterflied and sauted, and deep-fried with head and shells intact (the latter a distinctly Chinese presentation, occasionally enlivened by slivers of jalapeño here and there). A frequent favorite of mine in the salad bar is a chopped octopus salad dressed with an incendiary chile sauce. Mussels on the half shell make their appearance in several guises as well.

Of course Great Moon also has all the Chinese-American buffet standbys -- you know, the standard rotation of beef with broccoli/moo goo gai pan/kung pao chicken/vegetable lo mein/etc. etc. etc. -- and executes them quite competently. They do go the extra mile by always offering a couple of different nicely-prepared vegetable dishes, such as green beans, bok choy, and/or mushrooms, so you can pretend you’re going for a healthy and balanced meal here.

One difference about Great Moon is its location in Pacific Beach, a neighborhood more known for beachy cafes, taco shops, sushi joints, and other such youthful places. But apparently PB has taken to this decidedly middle-American dining experience in its midst, as among the crowds of families, seniors, working stiffs, and other more typical buffet patrons you’ll see a goodly number of twenty-something surfer-dude types. Hey, they know good post-surfing refueling grub when they see it.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Cilantro Live!, Hillcrest
08/05/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
Experience tasty and inventive exemplars of raw-food vegan cuisine at this newest outpost of a San Diego County-based micro-chain.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone noticed that Hillcrest, with its bevies of adventurous and health-conscious diners, offered the perfect demographics for an all-raw-foods restaurant. And now the neighborhood has a beautiful and accomplished practitioner of this food philosophy in the form of Cilantro Live! (the exclamation point is part of the restaurant’s official name).

For those of you who may have missed this trend, raw-foodism holds that food is at its optimum for human health and nutrition when spared from any heat-based cooking techniques. Cilantro Live!, which has previously opened outposts in Chula Vista, Carlsbad, and Lemon Grove, draws its line in the sand at 112 degrees Fahrenheit -- above that temperature, the management holds, enzymes vital to human health get destroyed. They do serve their soups gently warmed, and use techniques such as grinding, blending, soaking, sprouting, and dehydrating to prepare some ingredients; but otherwise all foods are au naturel -- not to mention 100 percent vegan, and largely organic.

Personally, I remain agnostic with regard to the health claims made for the raw-foods lifestyle, but I’m always interested in eateries dedicated to showing how “health food” can be delicious and satisfying, and that goal Cilantro Live! achieves handily. In fact, it delights and fascinates me to see their raw takes on a number of conventional mainstream dishes. Their cheeseburger plate, for example. By this point, even non-vegetarian restaurants have figured out how to grill up a pre-made vegetarian burger patty and sling it on a hamburger roll with all the usual fixings. But how in the world does one make even a vegetarian burger when one has declared verboten the cooking and baking processes needed to create that veggie patty and roll?

Well, at least the way Cilantro Live! does it, you grind a blend of sun-dried tomatoes, flax seeds, red peppers, garlic, and mushrooms, and form that into a patty; and then you grind a mix of almonds, flax seed, and buckwheat, and form that into your bun. The result, in both cases, is dense and flavorful, with a slight and pleasant chewiness -- kind of like a moister, savory version of halvah, if you’re familiar with that Middle-Eastern sesame-seed candy. No, it’s not likely to displace a carnivore’s vision of the archetypal burger according to Carl’s Jr., but given current cutting-edge dining trends, I’d say this Cilantro Live! creation could easily pass as one of those fashionable “deconstructed” dishes. Oh yeah -- instead of a pile of fries, the Cilantro Live! burger comes with a generous helping of lightly but excellently dressed mesclun.

Other dishes I have become quite fond of are their Live Wraps, featuring various fusion-themed pates, vegetable garnishes, and sauces served open-faced on big beautiful romaine leaves. An order comes with three such wraps; you can get all one variety, or a mix of any three that strike your fancy. It is admittedly a little messy and awkward to actually roll one of these generously-laden lettuce leaves into a wrap and eat it that way -- I suspect most diners eat them as-is -- but either way, they do burst with lively flavors. Varieties of these wraps that I especially like include the Pizzzzaza (featuring sun-dried tomato pate) and the Buenos Vida (with cilantro pate).

Cilantro Live!’s dessert menu is equally yummy, upping the inventiveness ante by eschewing refined sugars and other excess sweeteners. Their so-called Rawberry Shortcake, for example, tops a base of ground almonds with a mixed berry coulis, a scoop of vanilla-flavored cashew ice “cream,” sliced strawberries, and a sprinkle of grated coconut. The coulis pops with tart juicy flavor; the cashew ice “cream,” while showing a slight tendency to ice crystals, generally is surprisingly creamy and satisfying. A selection of juices and smoothies rounds out the menu offerings.

The restaurant’s décor and vibe are just as fresh as the menu, featuring a big airy space with green plants climbing one whole wall and a fountain burbling over fieldstones in another corner. Table service is augmented by a juice bar, where one can look directly into the open kitchen area and watch one’s meal being lovingly . . . not cooked.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here once or twice.
Super Cocina, City Heights
07/30/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This modest little City Heights eatery serves homestyle food that will teach you how much more there is to Mexican food than tacos and burritos.

As I have noted in other recommendations, I’m pretty egalitarian with regard to the wide array of restaurants in San Diego that call themselves “Mexican.” As long as the food is tasty and well-executed, I can find enjoyment in everything from the most Americanized “healthy Mexican” outpost to the most keeping-it-real taco truck, and all points in between. But when I want to school my tastebuds in the kind of authentic cooking you can normally only find if you wangle an invitation for dinner in a Mexican family’s home, I make a beeline for Super Cocina.

Super Cocina has become something of a legend among San Diego food freaks, who make pilgrimages to the unpretentious little building in the heart of City Heights to sample its huge and ever-changing repertoire of homestyle Mexican dishes. The owner makes a point of hiring staff who are great home cooks as opposed to trained professional cooks; they hail from all over Mexico, and so do the dishes they turn out. On any given day, there will be a handful of daily specials, plus the handful of always-offered standards, so you have to make multiple visits to experience the full array of possibilities. Fortunately, this is no chore, as the food is addictively good and ridiculously inexpensive.

The little dining room is drenched in the kind of real-deal atmosphere no concept-restaurant designer can hope to duplicate -- little metal-frame tables and chairs, tile floor and terra-cotta-colored walls, a TV eternally tuned to a Spanish language station, and a continual stream of local folk of all ages and stations coming to get good grub cheap. Service is cafeteria style: you come up to the counter, get a trayful of goodies, and pay -- strictly cash only, so remember to hit the ATM on the way over.

The menu, posted above the steam table counter, divides the main dishes into guisados (stews) and caldos (soups). You can get a small or large serving of any one item, or a combo of any two items plus beans and rice, all accompanied by fresh corn tortillas. The servings are way generous -- when I have a combo for lunch I’m often tempted to skip dinner. Many of the staff behind the counter are not fluent in English, but I’ve always managed to muddle through with my badly-remembered high school Spanish and a smile. I’m more of the plunge-in-and-give-it-a-try school, but I’m told the staff are very accommodating about offering samples of any dish you fancy.

Of the items I’ve enjoyed so far, I am most enamored of their birria. Like all good home cooking, there are probably as many versions of this classic goat meat stew as there are Mexican matriarchs justly proud of their cooking prowess; Super Cocina’s version features big chunks of the meat gently braised for hours until it’s almost falling off the bone, in a deep-red broth that, while not hot-spicy, is complex and satisfying. I’ve also had some pork in pipian sauce (a green mole-like sauce based on ground pumpkin seeds) that was out of this world, and a menudo in which the tripe was melt-in-your-mouth tender. Oh, and their version of carnitas is not to be missed--super-moist and full of flavor.

If you just can’t break yourself of the taco habit, you can make your own with the meat from any of these dishes plus the accompanying tortillas. As for me, well, I don’t know if this is a “done thing,” but I wind up tearing up my tortillas and putting them in the broth or sauce accompanying the dish, in an effort to let not one precious drop go to waste. And once you try Super Cocina yourself, you will understand my motivation … and may well find yourself doing likewise. That stuff is liquid gold.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Golden City Restaurant, Kearny Mesa
07/23/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This Kearny Mesa eatery pleases their mainly Chinese clientele with hot pot dishes and other authentic comfort food classics.

There’s no missing the gaudy purple-and-green sign blaring out "Golden City" from the strip mall at the corner of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard and Kearny Villa Road. It turns out, though, that the interior of Golden City is nothing like its signage -- instead, the big square room soothes with ivory-colored walls and big windows that fill the space with sunshine during the lunch service. But that is only the first of many surprises you’ll encounter at this excellent eatery, whose delicious and mellow home-style cooking brings out scores of Chinese diners at all hours of the day and night.

On the extensive menu you will find a number of warhorses of the Americanized Chinese restaurant repertoire -- particularly the menu for the lunch hour, when the place gets some non-Asian customers taking breaks from their jobs. But mostly you’ll find dishes that make no capitulations to Anglo tastes -- entrees featuring such ingredients as sea cucumber and fish maw, and cooking methods such as hot pot.

Hot pot here means a braise in a clay pot, and Golden City has a large and mouth-watering selection. For those whose familiarity with Chinese cooking techniques extends only as far as stirfries, the Chinese take on braising can be an eye-opener. Ordering the Assorted Seafood Bean Curd in Hot Pot on the dinner menu, for instance, brings you a rocket-hot little pottery casserole loaded with goodies: chunks of firm light-fleshed fish and tender squid, nice big shrimp and slices of scallop, whole black forest mushrooms and strips of Chinese greens, all united by a mild ginger-laced brown sauce--plus squares of fried tofu, plumped from all the tasty juices from the other ingredients.

Hot pot dishes are also available on Golden City’s lunch and late-night menu, and while a few of them take a little longer to prepare, they are eminently worth the wait. One prime example bears the innocuous name of Steamed Pork with Preserved Vegetable. Turns out that the cut of pork used for this dish is the belly, with skin and layers of fat intact. Westerners smoke this cut to make bacon; but here a chunk of the fresh meat has received a long preliminary braise before being steamed to order in another of those little clay pots. This is not a dish for those who are phobic about eating fat, but those who are free of such hangups can revel in the silky fork-tender texture of the fat and skin, as well as the moist and tender meat beneath. The huge portion, in more mild brown sauce accented by a sprinkling of chopped preserved mustard greens, is even more remarkable when you realize the price is under $7, and comes with rice, soup and a little egg roll at lunch. (When ordered during late-night service, from 9pm to midnight, the soup and egg roll are omitted.)

Golden City’s soups also surprise with their lavish ingredients and portion sizes. When I ordered the Roast Duck Noodle Soup (again from the lunch/late night menu), I expected maybe a few modest chunks of duck. Instead, I got several big meaty hunks of on-the-bone roast duck with lovely golden skin, along with sprigs of bright-green gai lan on a bed of thin al dente egg noodles. The broth in which all these items floated was perhaps a hair on the too-mild side, but the loveliness of the other ingredients more than made up for that--especially, again, considering the modest price.

I’ve still only just scratched the surface of this place’s lengthy menus, but I look forward to even more pleasant surprises as I find out what each of those intriguing dish names mean. And I’m especially pleased to add this place to my list of late-night alternatives to the usual boring chain burger joint. After all, life’s too short to eat unsurprising food, regardless of the hour.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
El Cuervo Taco Shop, Hillcrest
07/16/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This Mission Hills standby churns out a steady stream of excellent taqueria fare to a crowd of neighborhood fans.

In a neighborhood with a Mexican eatery of some sort on seemingly every other street corner, El Cuervo may not at first grab your attention. I confess I’d been driving past it for years without thinking to stop and check it out. But I eventually got a tip that this place was a cut above your usual taqueria, so I dropped in one day -- and boy am I glad I did. Now the House of the Crow is on my regular rotation of excellent cheap eats -- along with seemingly the entire staff of the nearby medical centers and most of the surrounding neighborhood.

One of my yardsticks by which I judge taquerias in this town is whether their menu includes any “variety meats.” Not that I don’t have a good time at places that stick to just beef, chicken, and pork, but when I see lengua (beef tongue), cabeza (beef cheeks), and buche (pork stomach) on the menu, it gets my attention. For one thing, most gringos don’t care for these offal meats, so their presence tells me the kitchen is cooking for Mexican diners and is therefore a touch more authentic than your run-of-the-mill Cali-Mex burrito-factory. And for another, I’m one of those crazed gringas who adores offal, and will gleefully indulge whenever the opportunity presents itself. El Cuervo awoke my offal-radar right away with their yummy “TJ style” mini-tacos. They come four to an order, served open-faced with just a sprinkling of chopped cilantro and green onion, a liberal squirt of lime juice, and the occasional dollop of guacamole. In addition to the above-mentioned organ meats, you can choose pastor, carnitas, and asada; you can have all four tacos with one meat or two each with any two meats.

Oh, and about El Cuervo’s carnitas. I’ve also learned to judge taquerias by how well they do this slow-roasted shredded pork delicacy, and I’m pleased to report that El Cuervo’s version definitely measures up -- great savory roasted-pork flavor, the meat properly moist with nice crunchy bits from a quick once-over on the griddle. The huge portion on their carnitas plate will take care of any meat deficiency you might be suffering from. You can also satisfy your protein needs in a delicious fashion with their pollo adobado. This is especially good as a burrito filling, with the deep-flavored vinegary sauce moistening the flour tortilla wrapper from the inside out. The fish burrito is excellent too, packed with a generously sized filet, its breading good and crunchy from the fryolator. If you want to pretend you’re eating healthy, you can accompany any of these with such goodies from the excellent salad bar as fresh whole radishes, thick slices of cucumber, and a very good pico de gallo; there’s no room for the tray of roasted jalapeños in the that salad bar, so they’re waiting for you on a corner of the service counter.

El Cuervo’s big rec-roomlike space, with its collection of heavy octagonal wooden tables, tends to get packed during lunch hours. But the line waiting to place orders at the counter moves fairly fast, and patrons tend to be okay about sharing tables when asked. In the slower off-hours, people hang out and watch telenovelas on the TV, while a continual parade of takeout customers trots in and out.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
The Lumberjack Grille, North Park
07/09/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This North Park eatery pleases both gay and straight patrons with its homey atmosphere and classic diner fare.

No matter where you come from or what part of the community you identify with, you probably have a soft spot in your heart for good old fashioned diner fare. And no matter who you are, you’ll feel right at home at the Lumberjack Grille, a place that has made welcoming folks from all walks of life its business.

Long-time San Diego residents tell me that this building originally housed a branch of the Sizzler steakhouse chain. It then spent a couple of decades as the home of The Old Mill Café, a family-style restaurant beloved by neighborhood seniors on a budget, and with a discreet following among local gay residents. And then in 2003, when The Old Mill’s owners put the operation up for sale, it was bought by an enterprising gay entrepreneur, and renamed in honor of the hearty fare served in the California lumber camps of yore.

The new owner, Mike Rocklin, wisely decided not to give the place any sort of gussied-up trendoid neo-diner makeover. The booths and lunch counter, while neat and clean, definitely have that lived-in look that only time and the passage of many customers can provide. Not that there haven’t been any changes made; a smattering of lumberjack-oriented antiques decorate the walls, a few of the efficient and friendly waitstaff sport fashionable tattoo work, and various Gay Pride flags fly from the roof. But the clientele remains the same mix of locals of all sexual orientations, and the atmosphere remains enjoyably laid-back.

Nor, thankfully, has there been any attempt to turn the menu into any sort of exercise in “updated retro comfort food.” It’s all unreconstructed diner classics: breakfast-all-day, burgers, sandwiches, salads, dinner specials, and a small smattering of Mexican specialties, a common fixture on California diner menus. There are even some favorite dishes from The Old Mill Café days still on the menu. One of these holdovers is The North Park Broiler, and boy am I glad because it’s one hell of a nice sandwich: a huge juicy grilled chicken breast topped with pepper-jack cheese and a split-open Ortega green chile, served on grilled sourdough bread. Like all their sandwiches it comes with a choice of sides -- I usually go for their enjoyable coleslaw, but the green salad is also a great choice as it’s big enough to pass for an entrée salad in more chichi places.

Huge servings are in fact the rule here, in keeping with the diner spirit. If the side salad’s size startles you, wait until you set eyes on one of the entrée salads -- it arrives in a glass bowl big enough to serve a family of four. Mind you, these are not sophisticated salads -- there is a goodly amount of iceberg lettuce under all the toppings. But everything’s fresh and crisp, and the prices can’t be beat. My favorite is the taco salad, in which the glass bowl is replaced by one made from a flour tortilla, brimming with beef, lettuce, tomato, avocado, chili, salsa, and sour cream. Whoever said salads can’t be filling has never tackled one of these babies.

In true diner fashion, every day of the week sports its own dinner entrée specials, including choices of soup or salad and rice or potato, plus vegetable side, roll, beverage, and dessert, all for $10.95. Just to rattle off the entrée choices is to take a trip into diner nostalgia: meat loaf, roast turkey, Yankee pot roast, chicken and dumplings, corned beef and cabbage. Again, portions are huge -- when I’m there on Sunday afternoons, I only choose the pot roast special if I’m planning to take a nap for the rest of the afternoon. Now that’s what I call comfort food.

Just across the street from this little establishment, a huge brand-new condo complex rears its stylish head; and all up and down the nearby University Avenue the signs of gentrification keep springing up. But in the face of all that change, The Lumberjack Grille has found a way to move forward without abandoning its low-key past, and that makes me very happy indeed.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here dozens of times.
Madras Cafe, Miramar
07/02/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Anh Hong Pho Pasteur, Linda Vista
06/25/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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!

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Cocina D. Sanchez, Normal Heights
06/17/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This Normal Heights Mexican eatery distinguishes itself with great deals on tasty meals both on weekdays and weekends.

Goodness knows there’s no dearth of Mexican restaurants in San Diego, from barrio-authentic to Americanized tourist trap, from the lowliest little taco stand to the latest ultra-haute creative concept. The majority of these places strike a reasonably happy medium of enjoyable food at moderate prices, but nothing that would make them the automatic choice over the several other joints you might find just down the street. Cocina D. Sanchez, in the shadow of the Normal Heights sign spanning Adams Avenue, is a good solid exemplar of this happy medium -- except that they do offer a few things that make them stand out from the crowd.

The first is their weekend brunch deals. On Saturdays it’s the Cerveza Brunch: from 9:00am to 2:00pm you can choose from an extensive list of breakfast entrees, most including sides of rice and beans, as well as fruit, a Mexican pastry, and up to three glasses of beer for each adult. The Sunday Champagne Brunch is the same deal only with up to three glasses of the bubbly stuff. (Abstainers and the underage can substitute coffee, tea, or a variety of juices for the booze.) The breakfast choices run from old standbys such as huevos rancheros, to the humorously-named “OK Gringo” (standard American two-eggs hash-browns breakfast-meat plate), to some more adventurous dishes such as nopalitos con huevos, eggs scrambled with strips of prickly pear cactus, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. I especially like this latter entrée -- the slightly tart nopalitos contrast nicely with the eggs and the other vegetables.

The second thing which endears Cocina D. Sanchez to me, especially my tightwad heart, is their weekday meal deals. From 11:00am through 5:00pm you can get one of the day’s three or four specials (again usually accompanied by rice and beans), along with a choice of soup or salad, plus a big glassful of the Mexican beverage of the day, all for a really nice price. They change up the daily specials from time to time, but a recurring item I especially like is the chile colorado burrito, full of tender chunks of braised beef in a rich mild brown sauce. Also among their daily specials is a very pleasant rendition of chile relleno. Admittedly, the side salad is a bit on the perfunctory side, but the soup choice is excellent -- usually a cup of tortilla soup chock-full of vegetables in a flavorful chicken-based broth. The soup comes ornamented with fried tortilla strips sticking up out of the soup at a jaunty angle -- vertical food! How positively trendoid!

Cocina D. Sanchez is a small place, but I’ve seldom seen it crowded. Often there’s only one or two tables occupied besides mine, served by a lone (extremely affable) gentleman. The décor is equally modest, with booths lining the walls and low-key wall art with a minimum of Mexican themes. During the weekend brunches there’s greater customer volume, and an additional server to help out. But usually you find yourself having a nice leisurely meal in a dining room quiet except for a pair of TVs set to news or Spanish-language stations at civilized volumes. Sometimes the leisurely meal pace has to do with the server being occupied in the back -- but at least as far as I’m concerned, his occasional absences are more than made up for by his friendliness and helpfulness -- not to mention the generally mellow vibe of the place.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Pho Saigon Star, Allied Gardens
06/10/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
A friendly all-in-the-family staff and excellent food makes this newcomer to San Diego’s pho scene a definite winner.

I always check the circulars the postal carrier leaves in my mailbox for signs of new restaurant life in my neighborhood, and I was very pleased to strike pay dirt recently when I saw an ad for a new Vietnamese pho shop. Certainly there are plenty of pho cafes lining El Cajon Blvd, not that far a drive for me. But having one mere blocks away was irresistible . . . provided they could deliver the goods.

Well, I’m even more pleased to report that this new joint is definitely on the ball. It’s called Pho Saigon Star, and it’s just a block away from Kaiser Permanente’s Zion Hospital. It’s a family-run business all the way -- mom is in back making the food while her very personable son works the neat-as-a-pin dining room with the aplomb of a longtime professional. Which he is, having worked in the hospitality industry for several years as a concierge and bell captain.

The menu is relatively streamlined for a Vietnamese restaurant: appetizers such as egg rolls (the deep-fried numbers) and spring rolls (the ones wrapped in stretchy rice-paper); all the variations on the classic noodle soup known as pho; a selection of bahn mi, the sandwiches on crusty French rolls; combos served on rice and on bun (rice vermicelli noodles); fried rice and stirfried noodles; and all the wonderful Vietnamese drinks such as that dark French-style coffee with sweetened condensed milk.

Everything I’ve tried so far has been excellent. While the rolls on their bahn mi don’t quite match the crisp-crusted goodness of my all-time local favorite, K Sandwiches in Linda Vista, Saigon Star has got the fillings nailed. The BBQ pork bahn mi has a very generous portion of the featured meat, coated with a light sweet glaze that plays well with the pickled shredded daikon and carrot. The pho features a well-executed mildly-seasoned broth and again a generous portion of meats, including some of the rarest rare steak I’ve yet gotten in a bowl of pho in this town (of course, like every other pho joint, they put the thinly-sliced steak in raw and let it cook in the hot broth -- the fact that it’s so rare when the soup arrives at the table means there was almost zero delay in that trip from kitchen to customer). The bun noodle combos are also excellent, and yet again very well proportioned --and in a touch apparently aimed at making the food more friendly to newcomers to Vietnamese food, they slide the ground-shrimp-on-sugarcane off the stick of sugarcane and slice it before serving.

One dish they feature that I don’t usually see on Vietnamese restaurant menus is green papaya salad. I’m used to associating that dish more with Thai and Lao cuisines, but I also know there’s a lot of culinary comings and goings between those countries and the nearby Vietnam, so I was eager to try Saigon Star’s version. The personable young man mentioned that the version with beef jerky was his favorite, and I’m glad I followed his lead—the shreds of flavorful dried beef were a great contrast with the lightly crunchy shreds of green papaya, and the little cup of spicy/salty/tart/sweet sauce served on the side was absolutely out of this world.

Alas, I’m about to move out of the immediate neighborhood of Pho Saigon Star, so I won’t be able to frequent it quite as often as I’ve been doing so far. But I’m definitely going to make some trips back to keep checking it out. It’ll certainly take the sting (so to speak) out of any future visits I might need to make to Zion Hospital.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Bully's East, Mission Valley
06/04/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This old-school dressy-but-casual steakhouse, a San Diego institution, serves some damn fine slabs of prime rib.

There are a number of restaurants I recommend enthusiastically to others even though I may have only tried one type of dish there, simply because they do that one dish so very well. Such is the case with Bully’s East, which is my go-to place when I feel the urge for a nice chunk of prime rib at a nice price, but in a more enjoyable environment than those cheesy chain steakhouses.

Bully’s East is a fine exemplar of what old-school San Diego steakhouse dining was like, back before the town got all gussied up with high-end trendoid steakhouses and other marketing-heavy restaurant concepts. The original Bully’s, founded in 1966 by racetrack professional George “Bully” Bullington, is still going strong with their outposts in La Jolla and Del Mar; their management team opened Bully’s East in 1971, in what was then an old A&W Root Beer stand on the south rim of Mission Valley. Since then, Bully’s East has branched off and become a separate enterprise from the rest of the Bully’s establishment, but has retained that horsey-set feel and classic steakhouse look.

Bully’s modest wood-shingled exterior still hints at its former incarnation as a root beer roadhouse. Inside, though, it’s all clubby red leather upholstery and dark woodwork, with horseshoe-shaped booths, a grand old bar just made for hanging out and shooting the breeze with the affable bartender, and a lot more dining-room real estate than you’d expect from the outside, all expertly served by a small army of well-trained and friendly waitstaff. Yet despite all the classy touches, the place is not at all stuffy or formal. Many of the diners are dressed as if they just came in off the golf-course to celebrate the day’s game with dinner and drinks; the sporty types mingle with the occasional family party with well-behaved children and parties of seniors taking advantage of the early-bird dinner special. And that early-bird special is what I come to take advantage of too.

Bully’s has an extensive menu with all the classic steakhouse favorites, including several cuts of steak, assorted poultry, ribs, and seafood items, and several different sized cuts of their fabulous prime rib, from an eight-ounce petite cut to a 32-ounce monster slab. None of these dishes are especially low-budget, though the prices are well inline with the quality and the service. But if you time your arrival to land between 4:30 and 5:30pm any day of the week, you can choose from that petite cut of prime rib or a small handful of other entrees for a bargain price, which includes your choice of potato as well as either soup or salad. Regardless of the size of prime rib you choose, the meat is tender and flavorful, cooked just to the doneness you requested, and comes with a nose-tingling horseradish sauce and bowl of au jus. The mashed potatoes make a wonderfully comfort-foody complement; or you can go with the baked potato and totally cholesterol yourself out with butter and sour cream.

With the money I save on the early bird dinner, I can cheerfully indulge in a cocktail and a dessert. That friendly bartender definitely knows his stuff; a Manhattan ordered straight up arrives in a martini glass icy-cold from its ride in a shakerful of ice, and tastes perfectly proportioned. Other booze choices include a goodly selection of draft beers and wines by the glass. As for dessert, the crème brulee makes a soothing end to a mellow dining experience.

Bully’s East is also notable for serving its full dinner menu as late as 12:15am seven days a week. They also have a plethora of other happy hour specials, as well as a bistro menu, a lunch menu, and a weekend brunch. I keep meaning to check out these other offerings one of these days. But somehow I keep getting distracted by that early bird prime rib special. And why not, when it’s so good in so many ways?

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Le's Thai Chinese Vietnamese Restaurant, Linda Vista
05/28/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
A Taste of India, Mission Valley
05/21/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Siete Mares, Barrio Logan
05/14/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
Yes, there is more to Mexican cuisine than tacos--and El Siete Mares proves it with seafood soups to warm the soul.

In Barrio Logan, just down the street from that landmark of working-class people-power known as Chicano Park, is a humble-looking storefront painted in tropical shades of electric blue and orange. And behind that colorful façade lurk some of the most eye-opening -- in many senses of the phrase -- soups I have ever had the pleasure to pour down my startled gullet.

The name of this place is El Siete Mares, and the specialties of the house are caldos de mariscos -- seafood soups -- including the one for which the restaurant is named. At first glance at a bowlful of this soup, you may think it’s something akin to other, more widely-known soup/stews such as bouillabaisse or cioppino -- only with a brighter-red broth and with seafood more typical of Mexican waters. But then you sample a spoonful and feel the fire, and realize that this is indeed a whole other kettle of fish.

I suspect that, like most folk recipes, there are probably as many variants of caldo de siete mares as there are cooks who learned how to make it from their mothers. But all versions owe their red color--and their heat--to a flavoring base containing lots of dried chilies. Certainly the primary flavor I taste in the soups served at Siete Mares the restaurant is chiles--complex, earthy, with a strangely appealing bitter undertone, and a medium-robust level of heat that I find easy to eat lots of. Which is a good thing, because this stuff is addictive.

Further, the big bowlful of soup is loaded with seafood: chunks of firm white fish fillet; tender slices and tendrils of octopus; shrimps, scallops, even a bit of lobster tail in the shell … each spoonful finds another little tidbit of oceanic goodness. The octopus in particular is so admirably well-tenderized that sometimes I order the version of the soup with just octopus, so I can revel in all those lovely little tentacle-y bits.

All soups come with a platter bearing chopped onion, chopped cilantro, lime wedges, and a squirt bottle of incendiary hot sauce, all of which you can use to customize your soup experience. The soups are also accompanied by fresh hot corn tortillas; I often tear a couple of these up and put them in the soup to max out the wonderful broth.

El Siete Mares offers a number of other seafood dishes too, including the inevitable fish tacos -- only their fish tacos are damn fine, not like the sloppy drippy creations served up by establishments catering to the Anglo population. They also do a lovely ceviche, consisting of nice fresh chopped shrimp, cilantro and tomatoes cured in a perky lime/chile marinade. A ceviche tostada and a fish taco from the side-order section of the menu make for a great and filling lunch on their own.

This is very much a “local flava” joint, where you will hear most of the patrons speaking Spanish, and see a number of them chatting with the staff like the old friends they are. On weekends they open up the bigger dining room, and occasionally a trio of mariachis (in street clothes, not costumes) works the room serenading tables. Even then, I’ve yet to see the place crowded or hectic; this is a place to hang out and savor your soup, and maybe a cerveza too.

Two caveats: they do charge an extra buck if you pay by credit card; and they do charge for bottled water. So bring cash--and instead of water go for that cerveza, or perhaps an agua fresca from the big glass jars.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Sunrise Super Buffet, Kearny Mesa
05/07/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here dozens of times.
El Zarape Mexican Restaurant, University Heights
04/29/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This busy little University Heights taqueria excels in seafood--including fish tacos that pass muster with those in the know.

One of my food-enthusiast friends, a lifelong San Diegan deeply knowledgeable about Mexican cuisine, can wax pretty droll when asked about Mexican food in our fair city. For example, when some visitor asks: "so where can I find the best fish taco in San Diego?" this friend tends to roll her eyes and respond: "Try Ensenada." For in her opinion, vanishingly few of the places in San Diego purporting to serve "authentic" fish tacos come anywhere near those served in the seaside towns of Baja California, where this morsel originated--with one of her few exceptions being El Zarape in University Heights.

Personally, I don't have anywhere near this friend's background and experience in the glories of Mexican cuisine, but I can say that El Zarape makes some damn fine fish tacos--as well as a whole array of other Mexican goodies of a casual street-food nature. And to judge by the crowds of University Heights locals who frequently pack this little place, I'd say I'm not alone in that judgement.

While El Zarape's extensive menu covers all the bases of a typical SoCal taco shop, from breakfast burritos to carnitas platters, seafood is definitely the featured player. In addition to the basic fish taco featuring breaded fried fillets of mild white fish, they offer tacos filled with shrimp, scallops, salmon, lobster, and mahi-mahi. Various of these seafoods also turn up as burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, chimichangas, and more.

I do dig their fried fish tacos, as well as their grilled mahi-mahi tacos, but I'm especially fond of their scallop burritos. Inside the big flour-tortilla wrapper you'll find a sizeable portion of plump little bay scallops, dressed with the utmost restraint: a little white sauce with hints of lime and chile, mere sprinklings of chopped tomato and grated Mexican cheese--and that's it. That's all it needs.

And the kitchen demonstrates equal restraint with the rest of their seafood offerings. Some people may be persuaded that it isn't a real fish taco unless you've got more of that darn white sauce running down your hands than staying in the taco. But El Zarape lets the fish stand up on its own. And need I point out that, in order to pull off that trick, they have to be supremely confident in the quality of their fish?

On the other hand, if you are a fan of a SoCal-style everything-but-the-kitchen-sink big-as-your-forearm burrito, El Zarape has you covered too. Inside their Veggie Supreme burrito, for instance, you will find shredded lettuce, beans, rice, potatoes, guacamole, cheese, and--gosh, I don't know what-all else is in that thang, but boy is there ever a lot of it! It's definitely a grand and glorious mess o' food--and very satisfying.

In terms of decor and ambiance, El Zarape manages to bring a little touch of class to the taqueria format without wrecking the informality. Yes, they've got the huge menu on the wall and the self-service salsa bar against the opposite wall, and they use the order-at-the-counter listen-for-your-number-on-the-PA system. But there's also lovely Mexican tilework on the walls and tabletops, and a nice little sidewalk dining area out front where you can enjoy the low-key hipster vibe of the north end of Park Blvd.

Alas, though, there aren't all that many tables in the smallish space, and only a couple more out front in the sidewalk dining area. So if you go during the mealtime rush when seats get scarce, bring a friend along to help scout out and hold down a table while you wait in line to place your order. Also, when the place is jumping it might be a little while before your number is called, so send that friend over to the little salsa bar for some of their hot pickled carrot slices to nosh on while you wait for those excellent fish tacos.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Veg N Out, North Park
04/22/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
This informal little North Park café specializes in excellent meat-free versions of burgers, hotdogs, and other homey diner fare.

So you’ve made a commitment to healthier eating -- or to full-fledged vegetarianism -- but you find yourself still craving an occasional big sloppy burger or fully-loaded chili dog? Well, never fear, my healthy-minded friend: a little North Park eatery with the whimsical name Veg N Out is here to help.

The father/daughter team who own and operate Veg N Out wisely decided to go for an informal, diner-style menu, featuring burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, and other fare familiar to recent (or current) omnivores. Only every single item on the menu is completely meat free, and many of the items can be made completely vegan for a small additional charge. Over a dozen different styles of burgers are offered, with toppings ranging from the frankly granola-head, sprouts and all, to creations that in a meat-ified version would give Carl’s Jr. a run for their money

My personal fave -- so far -- is their Ranchero Burger, consisting of a big, surprisingly meaty mock-meat patty simply dressed with cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onions, and a mayo-based barbeque chipotle sauce. Like all the other burgers, this one is served on a generously-sized whole wheat bun and comes with a choice of hand-cut potatoes, the side salad of the day, or a tossed green salad. I usually opt for that green salad, which is also of goodly size. The house-made berry balsamic vinaigrette is quite nice, but I recommend their wonderful creamy tarragon dressing.

Among their non-burger sandwiches, I favor the Chick’n Bacon Swiss. Here an extremely tasty -- and very chicken-like -- soy cutlet is topped with some surprisingly authentic-tasting crispy mock bacon, plus lettuce, tomato, onion, and lots of melted Swiss, all nestled into a nice fresh wholegrain hoagie roll. Like the burgers, this creation is big and filling, even without the choice of green salad or side of the day.

Oh, and Veg N Out seems to have cracked the code on how to make a vegetarian hot dog actually taste great. They’ve obviously picked a good product to start with, a mild-flavored jumbo tofu dog with excellent texture. But they’ve also mastered how to cook it right so it’s tender and juicy. You can get it just topped with mayo, mustard, ketchup, and your choice of sweet or dill relish, or start loading on the diced onions, tomatoes, house-made chili (also meatless, natch), and grated cheese, all piled onto a wholegrain hotdog bun. Especially when I think of the mystery meat-byproducts, chemicals, and high percentage of fat crammed into the casing of a typical “real” hotdog, I’d much rather be eating one of these “fake” dogs, wouldn’t you?

Veg N Out also has a wonderful catch-all section of their menu dedicated to starters, which tend to be big enough to serve as meals all on their own. Their felafel starter is a case in point. The menu tells you it comprises ten felafel balls with a side of tahini sauce. What it doesn’t tell you is that these aren’t the little puny felafel balls you might be used to from other places, but big hearty spheres nearly an inch and a half in diameter. Only order this if you are ravenous, have a friend to help you finish them, or are prepared to take the remainder home.

Veg N Out’s space is as homey and unpretentious as its menu. You order at the counter, and then the server finds you whether you’ve chosen a table in the small, tidy dining room or the little sidewalk dining area out front. The clientele ranges from the young hip urban types you’d expect to see in a vegetarian restaurant to office workers stepping in for a quick lunch or a to-go order. A discreet little table against one wall bears an assortment of literature and flyers including some vegetarian and alternative resources, but there’s no preachiness involved. Veg N Out is too mellow for that kind of thing -- they know you’re here because you love a big sloppy burger.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Mien Trung Restaurant, Linda Vista
04/16/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Ranchos Cocina, Ocean Beach
04/09/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here dozens of times.
Ranchos Cocina, North Park
04/09/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here dozens of times.
Arirang House Restaurant, Kearny Mesa
04/02/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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?

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Humphrey's Backstage Lounge, Shelter Island
03/26/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
Enjoy refined eats and drinks plus lovely harborside views with a side of live music in this well-appointed Shelter Island resort lounge.

When you think of clubs where live rock music is performed, the first thing that springs to mind is probably not fine dining or elegant cocktails. And certainly not plush interiors or romantic harborside views. More likely cheap beer and dodgy burgers in a dive decorated with neon beer signs and fading tour posters -- at least that’s the type of joint where I squandered many hours of my gleefully misspent youth. But times have changed and so have I, and while I still love to rock out, I’m a little less willing to put up with swill and splinters. And fortunately, thanks to Humphrey’s Backstage Lounge I don’t have to.

The Backstage Lounge benefits greatly from two other powerhouses of the Humphrey’s Half Moon Suites resort complex. The wildly popular Humphrey’s Summer Concerts series has given the management the experience and influence to book similarly excellent local talent for their indoor live music venue. And the kitchen of Humphrey’s by the Bay, the more formal dining room just across the lobby from the Lounge, also supplies the fare for the lounge’s crowd of hungry music lovers.

The Backstage food menu is short and sweet, repeating many of the dishes that appear on the restaurant menu as starters or light luncheon fare. Among my favorites is the warm shrimp and scallop salad, featuring a trio of huge perfectly-seared diver scallops plus an equally massive trio of shrimp, bedded down on baby spinach and bathed in a beurre blanc; for those of us looking to eat more lightly, the kitchen is very accommodating about serving that beurre blanc on the side. Another standout is their version of that standard starter, breaded deep-fried calamari. Humphrey’s well-executed version presents a generous portion of tender lightly-battered ringlets of squid with a pair of dipping sauces, one a seasoned aioli and the other a spicy red sauce.

For those wanting some more substantial bar grub, Humphrey’s Burger in Paradise will satisfy any beef-craving Parrothead. Humphrey’s burger is a half-pound slab of ground Angus beef, topped with Gorgonzola cheese and served on a Bread & Cie bun, accompanied by a haystack of slender perfectly-crisped French fries -- a far cry from your bad old memories of rock dive grease bombs. Other sandwich offerings rotate on occasion, but usually include some kind of classic triple-decker club sandwich, on which the kitchen has had the good sense to lavish a whole lot of very good bacon.

Now if you must, you can get a Bud Light out of the bar--but why would you even bother when there are several real beers on tap, plus a bunch more available by the bottle? As for mixed drinks, the bar does offer some of those overly-sweet pseudo-martinis and headache-in-a-glass iced “tea” concoctions that too many people somehow think of as fashionable or something. But the bartenders also know how to make a damn fine real grown-up’s cocktail, so my advice is to skip the silly kid’s drinks and have them mix you a real Manhattan straight up, or a real martini with gin and vermouth only, and see what a talented bar is really capable of. Or go with a nice glass of wine from their attractive list, another benefit of sharing a kitchen with a serious restaurant.

Lolling about in the Backstage Lounge’s gilded-jewelbox interior on one of their brocade-upholstered chairs, soaking in the gorgeous marina views out the big bay windows while larger-than-life photo portraits of famous rock and jazz performers smile down upon you, you may think you’ve wandered by accident into rock-show heaven -- or at the very least, a nobody-gets-on-the-guestlist VIP lounge. All this, and some terrific live music acts too -- life is sure looking up since my CBGB’s days.

I have a connection with this business: I used to work for a band that performs frequently at this establishment.. I've been here dozens of times.
Krakatoa, Golden Hill
03/18/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
Come hang out on the big beautiful verandah of this Golden Hill favorite and enjoy some excellent eats and coffee drinks.

Given the high proportion of writers, artists, musicians, and other creative/bohemian sorts who call the Golden Hill/South Park area home, it should come as no surprise that the neighborhood has a great selection of coffeehouses. I’ve had lots of fun getting to know them all, as each has its own unique character. And one of the more beloved coffee characters in the area is the old (by SoCal standards) brown-painted wood house that is home to Krakatoa.

Outdoor deck dining is a way of life here in San Diego, and if all that Krakatoa had going for it was its deck, that would be ample reason in itself to visit. Krakatoa’s beautiful outdoor dining area is more like an extra-large verandah, wrapping around the coffeehouse as well as a couple of tree trunks, with lots of gorgeous foliage and a couple of bright red umbrellas for shade. The inside of the coffee house is just as charming and funkified, with deep-red painted walls and random tiki touches to echo the place’s tropical volcano theme. Locals love to hang out for hours both inside and out with their laptops, taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi hotspot.

But Krakatoa has a lot more going on than just the deck and the Wi-Fi. Firstly, the coffee: they exclusively use Illy coffees, offering both an extensive array of espresso drinks and a choice of brewed coffees. I especially like the brewed French roast; they also do a great job with a latte, getting some nice foam out of the steamed milk. To go with those coffees, Krakatoa does all their baking in-house, including the excellent telera rolls on which they build all their sandwiches.

All the main menu items sport volcano names, which can make ordering quite entertaining -- just try saying “I’ll have the Traitor’s Head, please” to the server behind the counter without breaking into a grin. And you do want to say “Traitor’s Head” out loud -- it’s a yummy well-filled roast beef sandwich with a just-right horseradish cream spread on its lightly-toasted telera. All sandwiches come with a side of Jessie’s (justly) Famous Potato Salad, featuring big perfectly-cooked chunks of spud mixed with flecks of hardboiled egg in a savory dressing. There are several specialty sandwiches available, including a couple of meat-free choices; or you can build your own from a selection of meats and cheeses.

Another personal favorite of mine here, and a surprising rarity on local café menus, is Krakatoa’s large well-made fruit salad. The El Pinacate is a soup-plateful of chunked fresh fruit, with a minimum of melon and a maximum of more interesting fruits like pineapple, mango, strawberries, and kiwi, topped with cottage cheese, golden raisins, very fresh chunky granola, and a drizzle of honey. It’s wonderfully refreshing, and makes a great breakfast or light lunch. Krakatoa also does a full array of smoothies, including such interesting variations as strawberry cheesecake (with real cream cheese) and peanut butter and banana. And if you don’t feel like being all healthy and virtuous, there’s that house-baked array of muffins, brownies, cookies, and cakes to tempt you.

And you just gotta love a place that, on the busing station out on the outdoor deck, keeps a jar of dog biscuits for its guests’ canine companions. Bring the pooch, have a latte and a pastry, then take a stroll up 25th to nearby Golden Hill Park to work it off -- sounds like a perfect morning to me.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Kung Food Express Café - CLOSED, Bankers Hill
03/12/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here five to ten times.
Cafe India, Point Loma
03/04/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
The Linkery, North Park
02/25/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Spread, North Park
02/19/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Jimmy Carter's Mexican Cafe, Mission Hills
02/12/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
This little Mission Hills café serves delicious Cali-Mex fare, in a mellow setting especially suitable for a leisurely weekend brunch.

I frequently find myself in the Hillcrest area and in need of sustenance on Sunday afternoons. But rather than fight the parking insanity and waits for tables at the popular University Avenue establishments, I cut over to Washington Street and the quieter scene but no less pleasing dining options in Mission Hills. And one of my favorites in that neighborhood, especially for weekend brunch, is Jimmy Carter’s Mexican Café.

Nope, no connection with the president, nor even with cooking from the American Southeast. This Jimmy Carter has had a successful restaurant on Banker’s Hill for some years now, with a menu featuring an eclectic mix of dishes from various world cuisines. He decided a few years back to open a second place on Washington near Falcon (love those bird-named streets of Mission Hills), focusing solely on what he has called “San Diego border food.” The resulting dining space is a mellow little room perfect for a laid-back meal on your own or with friends, warmed by Mexican tile on floor and tables and rustic shades of light-yellow and green on the walls.

Their chef hails from Mexico, and executes both Americanized Mexican favorites and more authentic dishes with equal skill, creating a dining experience a few cuts above the run-of-the-mill Cali-Mex joint. You know right away something is different about this place when the server brings to your table, not the standard salsa for your complimentary basket of tortilla chips, but a trio of condiments. These comprise a hot basic salsa, an even hotter salsa verde, and some of the better hot pickled carrots I’ve had in this town—tender slices of well-marinated carrot with a hint of cumin under the heat. I’d call this an indicator of Jimmy’s whole approach with this restaurant—a little more style, and a lot more flavor, than the typical eatery at its modest price-point.

One test of whether a Mexican-style place has its act together is their carnitas, and Jimmy Carter’s serves a very respectable version, properly tender with little crunchy bits here and there, and full of that savory roasted pork flavor. As in most joints of this style, you can get the carnitas as an entrée plate or as the filling of tacos, burritos, enchiladas, or tostadas. Other entrée plates ramble around Mexico and the chef’s imagination, with dishes such as pollo en mole and camarones rancheros a la Diabla. The white-board specials are also worth checking out—I recently had a an excellent special billed as a chile verde burrito, filled with chunks of chicken and topped with a light, refreshing (and hot) green chile sauce.

The weekend breakfast menu, served till 2:30pm, has the full array of Mexican-style egg favorites: chilaquiles, breakfast burritos, three styles of huevos rancheros, plus an assortment of Mexi-themed omelettes and scrambles. I love their version of machaca, the combination of shredded marinated beef and soft-scrambled eggs, which appears both in burritos and on its own. Tnose carnitas make pretty darned good brunch fodder too.

The ever-casual Mission Hills locals have adopted this little café, and if you go on weekends you’ll be sharing the space with some dedicated brunchers, hanging out with friends over frequent refills of very good coffee. Bring a few friends of your own and have a relaxing afternoon repast. This is one mellow little joint whose food and ambiance invite you to do just that.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Thai Cafe, Clairemont
02/05/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Tioli's Crazy Burger, North Park
01/31/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
Crazy-good gourmet burgers, draft beers, and wine by the glass in a super-casual setting with a little European class.

If there is any insanity afflicting the two German gentlemen behind Tioli's Crazy Burger in North Park, it is of the variety my mother used to call “crazy like a fox.” They saw that there was a great need for an inexpensive, super-casual café that still had a little class and style. Someplace you could get a burger-and-fries without being overrun by kiddies in a dining room decorated with clowns. Someplace you could relax with a draft beer or glass of wine without getting drenched in attitude or soaked for the bill. They saw this need, and they exploited it to the hilt.

Restauranteur Wolfgang Schlicht and chef Lothar Manz acquired a sunny little exposed-brick-lined space that had previously been a neighborhood family Italian restaurant, and dressed it up a little with lots of artwork (all for sale) and a little dark wood bar. They then crafted a menu that's all about burgers. A good couple of dozen burgers, as a matter of fact, ranging from the Good Ol' Plain Burger, a purist beef patty, to burgers featuring various internationally-themed toppings, to burgers made of “gourmet” meats like ostrich and buffalo (they did have a rattlesnake burger on the menu till California game laws intervened). There are also portobello and veggie burgers for the non-carnivores, as well as a selection of salads.

The burgers are huge hand-formed patties, and are presented on soft rolls with a kaiser-like twist to their tops, open-faced so as not to wilt the generous serving of burger-vegetation (lettuce, tomato, pickles, and nice big slices of red onion). They're served a la carte, but with the basic burger starting at $3.95 and their mountain of fries going for $1.95, you won't mind. Prices for the other burgers range up to $13.95 for the Gator Burger with Curry Fruit Tapenade, but most hover around the five-to-seven dollar range. Chef Manz grills them expertly, with lots of good char on the outside; the inside of a burger ordered medium obligingly showed a nice pink inside.

Service is ultra-casual—you place your order at the counter, then take a seat at one of the tables clothed in red-checked plastic to await your meal. Casually-dressed couples, small groups, and solo diners feel free to linger in the inviting space, conversing or browsing the newspapers or following a game on the TV over the bar. If the owners aren't busy, they'll often come out from behind the counter and hang with their patrons, and even chat in German if you sprechen Deutsches. Lingering is further encouraged by the selection of seven international draft beers, plus a smallish but nice selection of domestic and imported wines by the glass or bottle.

Messrs. Schlicht and Manz also run a separate catering business, known as Schatzi's Catering. The catering menu is mainly inspired by the cuisines of the Alps, including southern Germany, Northern Italy, and Austria as well as Switzerland. The European influence is less obvious in the Crazy Burger menu, but does make its presence known by the ever-changing specials on the white-board behind the counter.

If there is one thing these Crazy Burger guys do that could qualify as identifiably crazy, though, it's the happy hour special they offer. Every day from 3 to 6pm, you can get their full-size turkey burger, usually priced at $5.50, for a mere $2.99. It comes with an intriguing orange/mustard topping that's a terrific combo of sweet and spicy, with the orange flavor really coming through. There's also a featured wine-by the-glass special as well as a beer special. Sitting in their laid-back lair with this big honkin' burger and a nice chilled glass of Riesling, I was definitely feeling like life was crazy-good.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
East Buffet, Miramar
01/31/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
JJ's Sunset Deli by the Bay, Downtown-Gaslamp
01/31/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
A well-made, well-priced ribeye sandwich and other simple delights make this tiny waterfront deli a cut above the usual.

Its website touts it as “the little deli with a million dollar view,” serving the “best steak sandwich in all of San Diego.” While I’m not quite prepared to go that far, I can say that JJ’s Sunset Deli serves a damn fine sandwich, and its location behind the Convention Center at the foot of the Embarcadero Marina Fishing Pier provides some damn fine scenery.

I stumbled upon JJ’s by happy accident last summer, when I arrived early for one of the pop concerts held in Embarcadero Marina Park South. Bound and determined not to dine in the large gimicky chain restaurant that also "graces" the park, I followed the fragrance of grilling meat to the water’s edge.

There I found a comfortable-looking man in ball cap and graying ponytail, standing before a free-standing propane grill with spatula in hand. This turned out to be JJ. He’s been here since about 2003 or so, operating out of a little hexagonal brick building meant to be a snack bar for the fishermen and joggers who usually have this park all to themselves. JJ, however, has made this joint much more than the typical park concession stand.

Yes, he still sells bait and tackle for the anglers, but he’s also added a little enclosure containing four attractive wooden tables with umbrellas, as well as the outdoor propane grill and a menu that would do an indoor sit-down luncheonette proud. He serves breakfast burritos and other morning fare till 10:30am, a variety of sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, chili, and similar offerings thereafter till closing, and even beer, wine, and chocolate mud pie. He also takes credit and debit cards for charges over five bucks—though a good half of his menu items won’t even scratch that limit.

About that ribeye sandwich: you place your order at the counter and take your seat, and shortly JJ emerges from the brick hexagon with a covered dish, steps up to the grill and proceeds to cook your steak while you watch. He then disappears back inside for a moment, to return with a paper plate bearing your completed meal. The five-to-six ounce slab-ette of ribeye is tucked into a fresh mini-sub roll with grilled onions and provolone cheese; it’s perfectly cooked, and perfectly tender. Accompanying the sandwich are generous containers of ranch beans and your choice of potato salad or cole slaw, plus a small handful of pepperoncini and pickle chips. At just under $7.50 for the lot, this might not be the best steak sandwich plate in San Diego, but I daresay it’s one of the very best for the price.

Plus you get to hang out and watch the fishermen putter about on the pier, the ships cruise by on the Big Bay, and the small but steady stream of workers from the Convention Center and beyond come by seeking lunch to go. Obviously I am far from the only one to discover this little hidden gem, nor the only one to prefer it to the glitzier and pricier places in the nearby Gaslamp. Many of these drop-ins get the ribeye sandwich, but the chili, either alone or atop a hot dog, also has a strong following.

JJ’s location, while charming, is admittedly a little off the beaten path. But the next time you need a break from some interminable meeting in the Convention Center, or a snack while waiting for the concert grounds to open their gates, or just a nice quiet lunch in a pretty little park, you’ll be glad to know that JJ and his grill stand ready to serve you.

I do not have any connections with this business
Big Kitchen, South Park
01/29/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
South Park's hippy-dippy answer to “Cheers” serves up rib-sticking diner fare with a free side of community and a hearty “tres bien!”

The theme song to the classic sitcom “Cheers” had it right: sometimes you just want to go someplace where everybody knows your name ... or if they don't, they still treat you as if they've known your name, and you, for years. From the moment I first ventured through its doors, the Big Kitchen Café quickly became that kind of place for me.

Visually, the joint ain't much to look at: a pair of side-by-side dining rooms, a bit on the cramped side, equipped with ancient wood booths and furnishings including, in the right-hand dining room, a venerable U-shaped lunch counter. Just about every square inch of visible wall space is covered with memorabilia—knickknacks, clippings, photos of the obscure and the famous. I especially dig the lifesize cardboard effigy of Jerry Garcia propped up in one corner.

And, yes, somewhere among the photos is one of Whoopi Goldberg. Every review of the Big Kitchen I've ever read feels obliged to mention that Whoopi used to work here back before she hit the big time—so why should I be different? What those other reviewers fail to mention, however, is that the outrageous Ms. Goldberg probably did not stand out one whit from the rest of the restaurant staff, nor from most of the clientele. Virtually all the employees and regulars are entertaining characters, and they're ready to prove it with a grin or a joke or a spontaneous conversation, especially if you grab a seat at that lunch counter.

The food at the Big Kitchen is classic diner fare with the occasional boho twist. Breakfast is served at all hours of operation, and includes all the usuals—omelettes and other egg dishes, biscuits and gravy, pancakes and waffles—plus such hippy-esque options as brown rice and tofu. The breakfast combo known as "Judy's Favorite" also happens to be my favorite. Named for BK's owner and guiding spirit Judy "The Beauty" Forman, this item features eggs scrambled with spinach, mushrooms, and a touch of sherry, served with toast and a huge helping of excellent homefried potatoes. If you can spare the calories after all that, BK also makes a terrific coffee cake, moist and tangy with the taste of sour cream.

The stars of the lunch offerings are the daily specials. I'm currently having a passionate lunch affair with Thursday's special, the open-face meatloaf sandwich. You get a major slab of the mighty meaty loaf and an equally-ponderous portion of rustically mashed potatoes, all slathered with a mild, comforting brown gravy—plus a green salad so you can pretend you're eating healthy. Oh yeah, there is indeed a slice of bread somewhere underneath the meatloaf. I've yet to actually eat that bread—by the time I've dug down to it, I'm already full, and will remain so for the next several hours.

BK often gets line-out-the-door mobbed during the weekend brunching hours. I much prefer the more laid-back pace on weekdays; the staff can take a little time to socialize, and the regulars hang out, read the paper, shoot the breeze, and occasionally help pour coffee and bus tables. If you're there when Judy the Beauty is “On Duty” (as the menu phrases it), she'll sometimes serenade you to the tune of whatever oldie is playing over the PA, and celebrate your menu choice with her trademark cry of “tres bien!” Now that’s what I call community.

I have a connection with this business: I work part-time for a retail shop that has an on-going business relationship with The Big Kitchen Cafe.
Sipz Fusion Cafe, Clairemont
01/22/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business
Jyoti Bihanga Restaurant, Normal Heights
01/17/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Influx Cafe, Golden Hill
01/16/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
This Golden Hill café offers coffee and lovely light fare in a mellow retro-modern space.

Taking Broadway east from Downtown up to Golden Hill is like traveling to a whole other world. Once you cross over the I-5 and start climbing the hill, you suddenly find yourself in a neighborhood straight out of small-town yesteryear: wide serene streets, beautifully-cared-for homes that were not built just yesterday, and the occasional little café where the locals mellow out. And the very first one of those cafes to greet you on your trek east on Broadway is a coffeehouse named Influx.

The owners of Influx have taken a corner storefront in a turn-of-the-century wood-frame building and turned it into a café space of Zenlike simplicity. Bare white walls, bare ruddy-toned hardwood floors, white Saarinen tulip chairs and mod red sectional sofas—it's a 1950s retro-modern look that somehow meshes just fine with the neighborhood's old-fashioned vibe. The big south-facing front windows let in lots of light, and a tiny patio space along the 20th Street side of the building sports a couple of tables and a bench for outdoor coffee-klatching.

The menu is equally elegant in its simplicity and quality. The assortment of espresso drinks, brewed coffees, teas and juices includes a few out-of-the-ordinary choices, like Mexican mocha and Vietnamese coffee. All pastries and breads are baked on-premises, including croissants, available on their own and as the base for breakfast sandwiches and scrambles. Bagel sandwiches range from the so-called Traditional (with lox and cream cheese—nu, vhat else?—plus tomato, red onion, and capers) to the Vegan (featuring hummus). Diners seeking healthier fare can opt for bowls of yogurt, granola, or oatmeal.

But for me, it's Influx's sandwiches and salads that are the real standouts. I've developed an especial affinity for the laconically-named Feta 1 sandwich and Goat salad. Feta 1 (there is a Feta 2 too) features its namesake cheese strewn over a flavorful roasted eggplant spread, garnished with red onion, tomato, mixed greens, and basil, all on some really terrific foccacia bread. In the Goat salad, savory chevre balances nicely with dried cranberries, candied walnuts, and a nice tart-sweet balsamic vinaigrette, topping a bed of mesclun and accompanied by two huge slivers of perfectly-crisped crouton. This and the other salads can be augmented with chicken, turkey, tuna, or Black Forest ham. Or you can get your heavy protein fix with one of the other sandwiches, which include turkey, ham, tuna, and fresh buffalo mozzarella.

With all these gourmet touches and high-quality ingredients, Influx still manages to keep its prices quite reasonable. Nothing on the menu costs more than $6.50, and their espresso drink prices could put Starbucks out of business.

Influx is popular but seldom crowded. Depending on the hour, you'll see a small but steady stream of casually-dressed passers-by dropping in for coffees, studenty sorts hanging out to study, websurfers taking advantage of the café's WiFi hotspot . . . and at least a few office workers escaped from downtown for a brief lunch getaway. I don't blame those escapees one bit. Why in the world would one suffer with the crowds, high prices, and chaotic vibe of lunch downtown, when just a brief car or bus trip can take you away from all that?

But so far, it seems that only a few folks from outside Golden Hill have discovered the secret of Influx, so I can still count on plenty of parking and an empty table whenever I need some civilized coffee and light eats in a peaceful atmosphere.

Hours: Daily 6:00am – 9:00pm
Website: http://www.influxcafe.com/
Parking: on street (not too congested)
Freeway access: I-5 Pershing Drive exit; CA-94 25th St. Exit B
Mass transit: Bus route 2

I do not have any connections with this business
Kono's Cafe, Pacific Beach
01/16/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
Inexpensive, generous portions of excellent surfer grub keep the line out the door at this informal ocean-front café.

There's something about hanging out around a beach that generates a huge appetite, whether you're surfing the waves, jogging along the shoreline, or just lying on the sand catching some rays. That would explain the large number of eateries lining Pacific Beach's Ocean Front Boardwalk, as well as main drags Garnet Avenue and Mission Boulevard. Yet with all the choices available, there is one joint that consistently sports a line out the door even on a weekday in the dead of winter, when other places are deserted or closed.

That place is Kono's Surf Club Café, and the reason is that they do their job so well. The first thing they've got right is location. Kono's is at the very end of Garnet Avenue, just across the Boardwalk from historic Crystal Pier. Kono's maximizes their geographical advantage with a pair of outdoor decks on either side of the Boardwalk. The landward-side deck features an espresso bar; the seaward side deck, tucked behind a little gift shop, offers unrestricted views of the beach.

The second thing Kono's has got right is the food. The menu is classic surfer grub: hearty informal fare tailor made for pre-exertion carbo-loading or post-exertion carbo-replenishment. Half the menu is breakfast-all-day items, featuring eggs, pancakes, French toast, a quartet of breakfast burritos, and their so-called "Kono Potatoes," homefries laced with onions, green peppers, and cheddar cheese. The balance of the menu is filled out by an assortment of burgers, sandwiches, fries, and salads. All dishes come in huge portions, all hover around $3 to $6 in price, and all are simply satisfying.

Those breakfast burritos, for instance: inside each super-fresh flour tortilla wrapper is at least three jumbo eggs' worth of perfectly-scrambled eggs, moist, rich and creamy. Depending on which of the four burritos you choose, your eggs will come mixed with bacon, sausage, avocado, green chili, ham, and/or more of those Kono potatoes. All burritos also include cheese plus a "pica sauce" for just the right little kick of hotness. The assembled burrito is a veritable log of food that will set you up right for hours of surfing … or a major nap.

Even Kono's salads demonstrate that same dedication to abundance. Order the Caesar Salad (with or without chicken) or the Cobb Salad, and a dinner-plate-sized paper plate arrives filled to the brim with extremely fresh lettuce, plus quantities of other toppings. When other places put chicken on a salad, you get maybe a few strips of bird, grilled at some indeterminate time in the past; at Kono's, your salad will be nearly eclipsed beneath the load of moist hot-off-the-griddle breast meat.

The final thing Kono's gets right is their service. Yes, that line is out to the sidewalk, but Kono's has got a system in place to whip you through that line in no time flat. To best work the system, first nip up to the front of the line and grab a photocopied menu off the pile on the service counter. Then take your place at the end of the line, and peruse your choices at your leisure.

As you work your way forward through the little tropical-themed indoor dining area, just relax, enjoy the vibe of all the happy casually-dressed people chowing down, admire the gleaming surfboards hanging on the walls. Before you know it, you'll be face-to-face with the cheerful guy at the counter waiting to take your order and your first name. Then go find seating, either indoors or on one of the decks; when your order is ready, a runner will come find you wherever you wound up. Regulars augment this routine by arriving in a group, so that half the party can go claim prime seats while the other half gets in line.

Kono's is open from 7am seven days a week, because the surf, and the surfers' hunger, wait for no-one. Personally I will never be at risk of being mistaken for a surfer, but I'm still pleased to know I can fuel my day of lollygagging around PB with a good solid meal at this hang-loose café.

Hours: M-F 7am-3pm; Sat-Sun 7am-4pm
Parking: On-street parking—very scarce, especially on weekends and in summer
Freeway access: I-5, Garnet Street/Balboa Ave. exits
Transit access: Bus routes 8, 9, 27, 30

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Pokez Mexican Restaurant, East Village
01/16/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
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

I do not have any connections with this business
T. Deli, Hillcrest
01/16/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
This attractive little storefront café offers tasteful light lunch fare and gourmet teas at prices only a little higher than your typical fast food joint.

A lot of my little restaurant discoveries are happy accidents. One case in point is T-Deli. I happened to be on this relatively quiet block of University Ave. in Hillcrest and in need of a quick bite between appointments. I was about to make my way to one of the "usual suspects" in the immediate area, when I glanced at random into the window of this little storefront café, and thought "Well! This looks promising!"

These folks had taken a simple storefront deli and given it some style—walls painted in soothing earth tones, dark wood furniture, a display of the classic Japanese cast-iron teapots known as tetsubin. And on the walls behind the service counter, dozens of big glass jars full of loose teas.

Clearly, this was not your average quick-service sandwich joint. This was made even clearer when I ordered a Caesar salad, and witnessed the fellow behind the counter proceed to dress the greens with the technique of a high-class chef. As I enjoyed my perfectly-dressed salad, I decided this was a place I had to explore further.

I've come to realize that T-Deli is a lovely exemplar of that prized cheap eats find, the classy but still affordable alternative to the fast food jungle. The menu is nothing unusual: classic combos of meats, cheeses, and veggies in sandwiches, wraps, paninis, quesadillas, and tortas, plus salads, teas, and coffees. It's the quality of the ingredients and the care with which they're assembled that makes this place stand out.

The artisanal breads T-Deli uses have substance and flavor, and play especially well with their panini press. A roast beef and provolone panini I had there recently was perfectly toasted and just oozing with melty-cheese goodness. A cucumber salad combined crescents of carefully de-seeded cuke and cubes of genuinely flavorful tomato in a delicate creamy herbed dressing. A recent sandwich/salad combo special came with, not one of those demitasse-sized paper cups of the cuke salad, but a big healthy serving of the stuff in a china.cup.

T-Deli's namesake tea blends are imaginitive and quite tasty. There are green tea, black tea, and caffeine-free herbal varieties, bearing inventive names such as Long Island Strawberry. All their teas are also available for purchase by the ounce. And for the coffee drinkers, they offer French press coffee, to my mind the optimum way to enjoy dark roasts.

The handful of tables inside T-Deli and the couple more in the sidewalk dining area out front make for a quiet, pleasant neighborhood hang. And because this is a less-heavily trafficked stretch of University Avenue, it is actually possible to enjoy the outdoor tables without getting continual facefuls of auto exhaust.

Best of all, while the prices might be a little higher than a conventional fast food shop, they are still quite reasonable. Most lunch items hover around the six dollar mark—in other words, still well within Tightwad Gourmand territory.

And for the money you get a much tastier, not to mention classier, lunch than you'd ever get from any joint with a clown for its corporate symbol. A quick lunch can definitely be a much more civilized experience than that, and T-Deli shows how it's done.

Hours: Tues, Wed: 11am-7pm; Thurs-Sat 11am – 11pm; Sun: 11am-5pm; Mon closed
Website: http://www.tdeli.com
Parking: On street
Freeway access: 163, Robinson, University, or Washington Ave exits
Transit access: MTS bus routes 1, 10, 11

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here three to five times.
Hodad's, Ocean Beach
01/16/07 The Tightwad Gourmand
The real deal, an authentic hippie/surfer-esque feeding and watering hole—complete with "no shirt, no shoes, no problem" attitude and fabulous burgers.

If someone were to twist my arm and force me to name my all-time favorite neighborhood in this city of neighborhoods, I would have to pick Ocean Beach. I just really groove on this preserve of old-school Southern California funky alternative culture—and apparently I'm not alone, to judge by the perennial appearance of the slogan "OB: an attitude, not an address" on the bumpers of OBcean vehicles.

And if I were forced -- forced, mind you -- to single out one favorite food emporium from among this neighborhood's selection of wonderfully mellow restaurants, I would have to pick Hodad's.

A "hodad," as this joint's menu informs you, is surfer-speak for a non-surfer who hangs out on the beach trying to pass as a surfer. In other words, a poser. The joint named Hodad's, though, is no poser. This is the real deal, an authentic hippie/surfer-esque feeding and watering hole, as signaled even before you enter by its whimsical exterior art —- not to mention its signature vehicle in the lot next door, a smartly shortened and custom-painted VW bus complete with surfboard on the roof rack.

Further creative VW mutilation awaits you once you step inside: protruding from the left-hand wall is the front-end of a classic split-windshield bus. The open interior of the bus cab is set up as a booth just big enough for two to dine —- or for several children to enjoy some freaky let's-pretend time. Other seating is provided by booths, plus a long surfboard-shaped communal table running through the center of the room. Most of the remaining wall-space is taken up by hundreds of old vanity license plates, which are lots of fun to read as you await your burger.

Burgers are pretty much the main event here at Hodad's, and they do them up seriously well. The variations are simple and straight forward: single or double burgers, with or without cheese and bacon, with or without the vegetative toppings, with or without fries. Oh yeah, I guess there are a couple non-burger options on the menu too, including a vegetarian option . . . but you know you're really here for the burgers, right? And the vibe. Can't forget the vibe.

As to those burgers: their single burger is hugely tall, defying any normal human's ability to wrap their mouths around the thing. How patrons cope with the double burger, I haven't a clue, unless they can unhinge their jaws like a snake consuming a gopher. Ordered with everything, the burger comes piled with shredded lettuce, a big slice of tomato, pickle chips, and —- my favorite burger topping -— big fat rings of onion. All of this goodness is piled on a soft roll, and the whole deal helpfully wrapped with a paper napkin to keep this Tower of Burger Babel from tumbling down. The big fat burger patty itself accounts for a respectable part of this concoction's height; one ordered medium-rare arrives properly charred on the outside and juicy-red on the inside. In a basket with a mountain of expertly-done seasoned fries, the whole thing will set you back only $6.75.

And for that princely sum you also get to lounge about with all the dudes and dudettes (mostly but by no means all 20-somethings), enjoying the "no shirt, no shoes, no problem" atmosphere as everyone chows down on burgers and sucks down beers or shakes, while the PA plays music you haven't heard in public in decades. They were playing Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Karn Evil 9" on a recent visit, a tune of great significance to my teen years. Ah yes: "welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, I'm so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside...!" Thank you, I most definitely will—again and again.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.
Saigon Restaurant, College Area
01/10/07 The Enlightened Gourmand
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.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here dozens of times.

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