20 June - Rockin' Baja Lobster - No. 97:
It was the day after Father's Day and we waited until then to avoid the rush, plus the several million tourists normally found here.
The Boy had offered to take his dad out for dinner (thank you!) but Monday is always better because it's also The Darla's only day off.
The Rockin' Baja Lobster has 4 or 5 locations throughout the county; one up north somewhere (I forget), one in Bonita, on the way to the border, one in Downtown (I think) and the one we visited in Oldtown, shortly after the turnover to that out of state company (a long story)...
We thought parking might be a problem and grabbed the first spot we saw, in the old Casa De Bandini (it WAS our favorite Mexican restaurant but the first thing the out of town concessionaire did was close it down and turn it into a French restaurant - the sacrilege!) parking lot and walked through much of Oldtown only to discover that they (RBL) have their own fairly large parking lot and it was almost empty...
So we also got our exercise in for the day.
And most of Oldtown is now way too touristy and the vendors seem to be hawking a lot of cheap souvenir type goods.
We started off with a small galvanized bucket of 3 color chips, with numerous choices at the salsa bar and some fresh hot tortillas.
We tasted close to a dozen of the salsas, everything from the standard Pico de Gallo to one based on mango, another based on hot chili oil in a paste, yet another with a tomatillo base and one more with a lot of pickled onions (I can't remember any of the others).
For our drinks, the wife had lemonade, the Boy had a Sprite and I had my normal iced tea
The boy ordered up the Baja Sampler platter with some very generic spicy wings (feh!), deep fried calamari and lobster taquitos, some pretty creamy guacamole, sour cream and chipotle and ranch sauces for dipping. He liked the calamari and lobster taquitos but only ate one wing.
The wife went for the Tacos Autenticos with 3 carne asada tacos with guacamole, beans and rice with a small Caesar salad on the side
I had to try the Lobster and shrimp bucket with rice, beans and also with the Caesar salad, lime wedges and rendered butter for dipping.
Their ads for this feature item are, to say the least, somewhat deceptive as it looks like a bucket full (in reality, it's 4 tiny little lobster tails and 4 medium shrimp) all sitting on a deep bed of wadded up napkins, almost to the top of the bucket, a lot of padding and very little food for $20...
I also thought the seasoning was a little off and everything was deep fried (had I known that, I wouldn't have ordered it for that reason as well).
I persuaded the Boy and the wife to have one of my lobster tails and a shrimp each and he and I shared one of her carne asada tacos as well.
She also had some of his platter and he had some of our side salads so everyone got a taste of everything.
After having been here a couple of years now, I think it's safe to draw a conclusion and the more I have it, the less I care for Mexican lobsters, especially the way they try to spice them up.
They aren't bad but I want to taste the sweet meat, not some cook's idea of how it should be spiced...
Service was adequate but I had to ask for more ice for my tea.
The after tax total was $52 plus change, what the hey, make it an even $60 with tip (I tossed in half so it really only cost the Boy $30 but he also bought his dear old dad a great set of flat wrenches with internal ratchet mechanisms on sale at Sears, so I made out this year!)..
I should also mention the pigeons and sparrows with the nerve to fly into the place and walk around sucking up a few chips dropped on the floor and occasionally causing a customer to duck when they fly by...
And there's the issue of the running water from the indoor fountain.
It's pleasant at first but gradually becomes annoying and I would not let them seat me anywhere near it again.
The place was decorated in the usual kaleidoscope of colors and is a fairly cheerful and friendly watering hole for the locals from what we've seen when we drive by and it's in full tilt mode but was almost empty inside (it was early) during our visit, approximately 5:00 PM on Monday.
Overall, it's OK, something we would have been lucky to have in Squarefield, but fairly average for here, nothing special...
You can see their web site here: www.rockinbaja.com
A few days later, I saw another ad for the place in the local paper, noticed how blurry and vague the photo of their bucket is, discovered their web site address and went looking for a photo of this farce. Evidently they have the good sense not to show the photo on the site...
I had considered going back there one more time, just to take a photo of this scam but...
"A Year in Food"
Have you heard about the guy who put together a book of photos of everything he had eaten in one year?
I did something very similar when I turned 39 (13 March 1987) until the day I turned 40, exactly one year later.
I wrote down EVERYTHING that I ate or drank in that time, a 3 inch thick diary of loose leaf pages (man, I used to be able to eat!).
It started when I saw a photograph (a week or so before my birthday) of how much food an average family of four can eat in a year.
It was virtually a semi-truck trailer full of stuff; I was amazed and after thinking about it for a while, a plan formed...
I also went "on the wagon" during that period, which meant no beer, no hooch, no vino, no cigars, no nothing for a year either.
I'd done that periodically over the years, generally only a month or so at a time (it's good for you).
I also figured why wait for your mid-life crisis to come to you when you can go get it yourself: bring it on!
Now, I'm an old man and I can't eat, drink or sleep like I used to be able to do.
Just 2 beers and I can feel the hangover coming, I pass out shortly after 9:00 PM, I can't sleep past 6:15 AM to save my life
But the upside is that I can afford some really great beer and high quality hooch now...
And I admit that I had stashed a great bottle of hooch, several world class beers and a cigar old Fidel himself would have loved (it was good!) just for that day, when the year was over and I could revert back to my natural tendencies.
Of course the beer tastes funny after you've been away from it for a while and you can't drink like you used to be able to do.
I kept that rubber band wrapped pile of paper for almost 20 years, lugging it around from place to place (we'd moved at least 3 times since). I finally got tired of looking at it, a sad reminder of how my stomach seems to have a mind of its' own, regardless of what I would choose were I really in control (besides, the rubber bands finally broke), so I tossed it last year when I came upon it while looking for something else...
And I didn't have a digital camera at the time (they hadn't been invented yet) or that would be my book...
A few conceptualities:
Someone needs to invent a pop top can that doesn't snap when you open it.
It wakes the dog up every morning if I do it in the living room (he sleeps on the patio) and risks waking up the Boy or the wife if I do it in the back of the house to keep from waking Wiener-Saurus Rex up.
Although it may seem trivial and of very little significance at the moment, the guy who invents this is going to make a fortune
It could be something as simple as a dimple in the top, formed when the piece is first punched out of sheet stock...
Permission to use the technology involved applied to literally millions and millions of canned drinks made every day in this country, much less in the rest of the world, would be worth millions and millions of dollars over a life time...
Hefty Serve N Store:
Have you seen those new snap together picnic plates (Hefty Serve N Store)?
Two interchangeable plastic picnic plates snap together to form a To Go container (Plates are lids, lids are plates...).
That's an absolutely brilliant idea, wish I'd have thought of it!
And it's somewhat like the modern bicycle: every single component was already in place for several hundred years before someone finally came along and put it all together...
This concept was literally sitting there, staring us all in the face, laughing at us, mocking us, and nobody noticed it (until now).
How many times have you transferred food from a plate into a To Go container or covered it with plastic wrap or foil?
Now multiply that times hundreds of millions of people around the world over the last several generations (and interpolate that figure out into the distant future), these guys will make a huge fortune off of this one...
We very rarely eat leftovers but we do give away a lot of food so we'll pick some up, test drive them and let you know all about it next month...
If you haven't seen them yet, go here: http://heftybrands.pactiv.com/ServeNStore/index.aspx
Where we ate this month (there are probably a few others but this is the gist of it):
LUNCH:
Arby's - twice
Burger King - twice, once with the wife
Buster's Windy City Dogs
Bunboy'z - a new sports bar / weenie / burger stand in Downtown El Cajon - three times so far, once with the Boy
McDonald's - Double cheeseburger ($.99), small fries (no salt) - also $.99, small soda (likewise, $.99) for a whopping total of $3.23 with tax...
Tommy's - twice and possibly for the last time as service was wretched and we walked out again*
Rally's - twice, once with the wife
Wienerschnitzel - four times: I'm so ashamed!...
DINNER:
Chili's - with the Boy
Gaglione Brothers - Mushroom Cheesesteak with extra white American cheese, fries (no salt), small Pepsi
Kip's - my third visit
Olive Garden - with the Boy
Popeyes - twice, once with the Boy
Rockin' Baja Lobster Bar & Grill - all hands on deck for this one
That's a total of at least 24 meals out this month.
As we only eat 2 meals a day here (at the most), that's 40% of our meals in restaurants this month, an extremely high proportion for us.
And that works out to a total of $267.54, as of the 28th (we write everything down so retrieving the numbers was the easy part).
*Notice the remarkable restraint I'm showing by not telling you all about it...
Abysmally Bad Service:
1) We had another incident of a waitress grabbing our glass by the rim only this was even more egregious as after I commented about it and told her I won't be drinking from that glass again, she sloughed it off and more or less outright ignored it so I told the other server all about it (and several other server horror stories) and had her bring me another soda. The next time I'm in there, I plan on telling her boss, the owner...
2) And in another incident, in another place, a waitress had to be told what the wife wanted 4 times (!) and still got it wrong, tried to charge us for a double order when all we wanted was a single and then, when it came time for me to order, started with the same stupidity all over again...
