Small mushroom cheesesteak, fries & soda at The Philadelphia Sandwich Co.
I should probably also tell you about The Darla's garden.
This was more or less an experiment as we had no idea how things would grow here (very well, it seems).
To start with, she planted 11 tomato plants and we are still plucking approximately a dozen tomatoes a day from the vines.
We've had the salsa fresca, Italian salsa, pico de gallo, tomato sauce for pasta, whole, chilled tomatoes with sea salt, sliced tomatoes on our burgers, BLT's, chopped tomatoes for tacos, the traditional Italian Tomato, Mozzarella & Basil salad, several other salads and most of the people we know have already had their share of them and the output seems to finally be slowing down.
We even mailed 2 green tomatoes and 6 almost fully ripened ones to my mom ($8 to mail 8 tomatoes by Priority Mail).
I know that's expensive but they beat anything you can buy in the stores and we wish my mom lived here so we could do a lot more for her.
At this point, we'll do most anything to get rid of a few of them and when the clerk at the Post Office mentioned he loves tomato sandwiches, I had the wife take him a bag full when we went by there the other day.
She also planted a tomatillo plant and that finally died recently but we did get a number of batches of green tomatillo sauce for our frozen, store bought pork and beef tamales.
And we are still enjoying the jalapenos from that first planting (salsa, pico de gallo, grilled, etc).
We enjoyed a fair run of zucchini early in the season but a mold killed them off (and the watermelon plant) - too much water, we think.
She planted several herbs (cilantro, garlic chives, basil, dill and rosemary) and all except the chives did very well.
Her green beans did well at first and we had them Italian style but they also died off for some reason (the tomato plants all had leaf curl which we also think is due to too much water from the sprinklers for the lawn and we're working on adjusting that now).
She's replanted the zucchini and added some crook neck squash as well.
And she's also planted a few cherry tomato sproutlings and a couple of other tomato varietals as well.
She also recently planted several other things (radishes, spinach, lemon chives, more green beans and green onions).
7 September: Claim Jumpers
We had been meaning to check this place out for almost a year now and had almost done it several months ago but they told us it would be 45 minutes before they could seat us so we went next door to Red Lobster.
On this occasion, we were celebrating the Boy's promotion at work (he's now a Shipping & Receiving Clerk which comes with a nice $2.32 an hour raise, lots of overtime, better hours and a few other benefits (but it's mainly outdoor work - no air conditioning in the building - and could be a serious drawback because of the summer heat around here if he doesn't make it into the Engineering Department by next year).
Our meal: We started out with appetizers; California rolls (snow crab, avocado, cucumber and sticky rice rolled in a soybean-sesame sheet with wasabi pepper and sweet ponzu sauces). I'm not much for this sort of thing but they weren't bad (a little too sweet for my taste).
The Boy ordered the 12 oz Filet Mignon, center cut USDA choice, medium rare (it was like buttah as they say) with a dab of garlic butter, deep fried onion strips in panko (think tempura onion rings), Coke and a trip to the salad bar.
The wife had the French Onion Soup (caramelized onion in a hearty beef broth with croutons and melted Jack cheese), with sour dough bread, butter, water, and a taste of both our dinners.
I had the Jumbo Shrimp with cocktail sauce, shoestring fries, spicy asian slaw (imagine Kim Chee), and an iced tea.
I had several tastes of the soup and it was mighty good (the wife says it's in the top 3 of everyone she's ever had and she knows her soups).
Even the Boy had a taste and had to admit it had some wonderful, rich, complex flavor in spite of the fact that he doesn't like onions.
The menu: One of the best looking dishes was the foot high slice of chocolate chocolate cake (we had already ordered too much by the time we saw it) but on our next visit...
And the menu also features a $10 (!) baked potato which is loaded with goodies including a whole chicken breast.
We had to notice the generous portions all across the board (it all looked great).
The Club Sandwich also looked great (it was huge!) as did the chicken pot pies.
And they have liver & onions, meat loaf sandwich, meatball sandwich, and some great looking brownies in the display case in the lobby...
The salad bar was also very well done.
I was being conservative when I ordered the shrimp and would have ordered way differently had I only known, especially after seeing so many great looking dishes go by as we ate (good thing I hadn't noticed that chocolate cake in the display case before we ordered)...
The service: And I did ask the hostesses and several waitresses what they would order (pasta, chicken and something else were the most popular among staff). And most of the servers appeared to be very young (usually not a good sign) but we got good service (our server was Jen, a perky young blonde who has been there 4 years now). One of the people who worked for The Darla when she was GM at The Bread Basket used to work there but our server didn't recognize the guy's name
And the chairs aren't too comfortable for a guy my size (they cut me right at the hip where the seat in my trike does and frequently results in "trike butt" when I ride). Next time, we'll sit in a booth.
We had started out thinking it would be a cross between Marie Calendars (because of all of the goodies in the bakery display case) and Tahoe Joe's (because of the summer camp lodge decor) but it's something else entirely and we will be back every once in a while (it is a bit expensive). Our total for everything was just under $75 (plus a $12+ tip).
See their web site here: www.claimjumper.com
14 September: The Philadelphia Sandwich Company
I dropped by TPSC on my way home from driving the wife to La Jolla Country Club (traffic was backed up on my regular route and since I was already in the neighborhood...).
As some of you may remember, we had vowed to never eat there again because, on a previous visit, we had been served sliced roast beef (which had been grilled and turned into a flavorless leather mess) instead of the normal chopped steak.
And on another visit, I shot a photo of my lunch (we were trying out their Cheez Whiz version) and the photo made the "cheese food" look like that alien attack in "The Blob" so we didn't include it in "A Taste of San Diego".
18 September - El Pescador Fish Market:
I'd read about this place in The San Diego Reader and since it is just a few blocks from La Jolla Country Club, I decided to check it out late one Saturday afternoon. It's a small place (essentially a hole in the wall) with 14 seats (Hot Diggidy Dogs was bigger, with 22 seats, and that still wasn't enough for us to stay there so they have my respect with pulling it off, especially with the almost total lack of parking space as well)...
After looking over the menu, asking about the specials, etc I ordered the Shrimp cocktail.
It turned out to be like just about any other shrimp cocktail, mediocre at best.
I also had a keen desire for a Crab Louie, something I'd learned to appreciate from my days in San Francisco (The Swan Oyster Depot) but one of the owners had never heard of it.
I couldn't believe that but when I described it, she told me that they have a Dungeness crab salad, which I also ordered.
I have to admit that I am somewhat of a purist when it comes to Crab Louie and this one fell far short of the mark with a mélange of assorted greens and shredded purple cabbage instead of the cool simplicity of a wedge of iceberg lettuce and maybe a slice of cucumber or maybe some chopped green onion tops, period. The crab portion was more than generous (and fresh) but still...
While we're discussing it, I should also mention my aversion to most things called "greens".
When we weren't overseas during my childhood (we were Air Force), I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house in rural Southern Illinois.
My grandfather owned a number of rental properties, the local theater, the local feed store and several farm properties including his hog pen, a beautiful sweet corn field covering an entire valley of rich Ohio river bottom land right across the street from his house on the top of the hill and then there were his several thousand chickens at an "undisclosed location"...
My brother and I used to love "slopping the hogs" as kids (carrying buckets of school lunch leftovers to the hog pens in my grandfather's 1950 Ford Tudor with the rear seats removed), throwing ears of dried corn at the hogs just for the pleasure of seeing them squeal and jump when the corn smacked into their enormous sides (it was the noise, not any pain that caused them to start) and we would augment their diets with "greens" picked outside of the pen and just beyond their reach.
Back then, these "greens" were considered peasant food at best and even worse by some, myself included and I have to admit that I still have a hard time eating them and simply cannot comprehend how they have grown into the apparent status symbols that they have (don't get me started about the packaged, precut salad fixin's)...
And, as a kid, I really wasn't one to eat my spinach or turnip greens and would generally wrap them in my napkin when no one was watching...
Part of the charm of a serious Crab Louie is the tangy sour dough bread served as a side dish and possibly a glass of very dry, crisp and cold Chardonnay as well but I had to skip the vino as I was driving and I had to fork up another $.95 for the sourdough roll.
Sourdough isn't the same here, much milder than we are used to in the Bay Area so it just didn't have the same rich, deep flavor to it, very likely as a result of the much milder weather here (sour dough develops and rises best with the cool, damp conditions of the San Francisco area).
I was also to be disappointed with the iced tea (they serve that horrid, presweetened Lipton in the can, only).
A restaurant with canned iced tea, or out of one of those instant tea machines or tea flavored with artificial berry flavorings isn't really serious in my book (how hard is it to have a server boil a little water first thing in the morning?) and so I ended up asking for a canned Sprite...
Overall, there's nothing remarkable here
PS: $17.42 total
