Johnny B's Burgers & Brew in La Mesa (notice the Boy's Ford Ranger at right)
1 April - Fuddruckers
On the way back from dropping the wife off in La Jolla, I stopped by the La Mesa Fuddrucker's for their Ribeye Steak Sandwich with grilled onions and mayo, fries and a large Sprite.
There really isn't a lot to say about the food there other than they were probably the first company to deliver the product in this manner, hauling in their own cow carcasses, butchering them on site, grinding their own burger meat, making their own weenies, in-house bakery, etc.
My meal cost $12.13 total.
1 April - Gordon Biersch Brewery
The Boy and I visited this place on a Friday evening but it was still relatively early so it wasn't too crowded.
It's our goal to check out all 5 or 6 microbreweries here in the next few months.
He ordered the Combo Platter of Chicken, Shrimp and Steak Skewers served with Rice Cakes and toasted sesame seeds ($13.95).
I ordered a Wedge Salad with Crumbled Bleu Cheese and Bacon ($3.95) and the Pepperoni Pizza with "...housemade dough, hand-tossed and oven fired with Tomato Basil Sauce and Mozzarella Cheese..." ($9.95).
And they brought us a basket of some pretty good bread and herb flavored butter.
The Boy had a Coke, I ordered my usual iced tea and it came to $42 total, including the tip
See their web site here: http://www.gordonbiersch.com/
Like the Karl Strauss Brewery we checked out last month, there are no sausage dishes on the menu (what's with that anyway?) and no way to email them to tell them they are letting down a large number of their customers by not having at least one dish on the menu. It's traditional!
3 April - Vaquero's Carne Asada (formerly El Barillito)
I love this place but there is a small problem with the amount of oil that sometimes comes off of the taco shells from the deep fryer.
It doesn't happen all the time and I've spoken to the woman who takes orders at the window (her English is marginal and I suspect the cooks don't speak any English at all) and she's been able to cut it back a bit but it's still too much so I'm going to talk to Victor, one of the partners, when I get a chance. The food's great there but I don't need that useless oil to make me any fatter than I already am...
And I had the usual today: 2 shredded beef tacos with a small amount of lettuce and 2 kinds of cheese (shredded Cheddar & Monterey Jack).
Oh, and a Coke ($5.06 including tax)...
4 April: Johnny B's Burgers & Brew
Johnny B's (see photo at top of page) is a charming little neighborhood place in La Mesa, the next town over towards the ocean (where summer temperatures drop off from the high desert heat we get here; wish we had moved there, less than 5 miles away, instead).
And I wish we had something like Johnny B's around here as the burger is good, the place was full of people having a good time (a couple of pool tables, a large number of TV's tuned to at least 2 different games, a nice, old fashioned bar with a fairly large selection of beers, etc).
We'd been meaning to check it out for quite some time and since I was on my own for dinner tonight (the wife is at work and the Boy is playing basketball with a few co-workers and they generally grab something after they're done).
Their menu is fairly basic and straightforward: a 1/3 lb burger (have it your way), a chicken sandwich, fries, onion rings and little more.
Monday through Friday, the lunch special is a 1/3-pound cheeseburger, fries and a soda or draft beer for $5.75.
And on weekends you can get a 10 ounce steak, eggs & hash browns for breakfast or a steak with fries and salad for lunch / dinner for $7.75.
They also have a frequent-burger card which they stamp each time you order their specialty.
Of course, I had the cheeseburger (with everything), fries and a Coke.
The meat was flavorful, the bun was grilled perfectly and the garden is served on the side so you can build it exactly the way you like it
Service was prompt and cordial.
My total was $7.97 including tax, what the heck, make it an even $10 with tip...
Sign-On-San Diego rates it as having one of the 3 best burgers in town and we have to admit that they seem to know what they are doing in that department as the owner handled grilling duties on the patio, where I sat, enjoying the excellent, balmy Spring weather.
The place was filled with the wonderful aroma of meat drippings smoked over flame, the crowd was not unattractive or unfriendly and it was a great way to grab a quick bite on a warm and pleasant late Sunday afternoon in April and we will be back.
5 April - Szechwan Mandarin II:
As most of you know, the wife got hired on at La Jolla Country Club in the middle of last month. She's still at Steele Canyon Golf Club too and gets in 3 or 4 short shifts at both places every week.
During training at La Jolla, they called her in 5 nights a week and she had also picked up a few extra shifts at Steele Canyon (a celebrity golf tournament, a wedding, etc) as this is a fairly busy time of the year for the people in her racket.
This meant that she has been working anywhere between 8 and 10 shifts a week, without a day off for the last 4 weeks.
She's off today and besides a little laundry and working in her garden, she's not doing much of anything else, including cooking so we're going out for Chinese tonight, our second visit to Szechwan Mandarin, and we're going to try a few new dishes there as well.
Wild Bill is going with us too so we'll have a pretty fair handle on the place by the time we're done tonight.
As you may remember, we checked this place out last month and we pretty much enjoyed everything we had (with a few minor exceptions) and we're going to expand our tasting tonight.
I dialed up their web site (it's no longer there) and the wife and I have taken turns reading their various menus and each came up with a list of things we might want to try. After the Boy and Wild Bill do the same shortly before we leave, we'll arrive at consensus in the car, on the way there.
Our report:
We ordered a la cart this time; Spring Rolls, 3 dishes, a small bowl of rice and tea.
We prefer the Spring Rolls to their Egg Rolls, which we had our first visit.
Both are served with Sweet & Sour Sauce and Chinese Hot Mustard for dipping.
The first dish was Beef with Snow Peas and the beef was buttery and tender, the Szechwan Shrimp left much to be desired, however (the wife does this dish better than any restaurant we've ever tried*) as the sauce was almost like Sweet & Sour instead of the fire in most Szechwan dishes and although the Seafood Lo Mein featured some great ingredients (jumbo prawns and large chunks of fish), it was slightly greasy.
Service was amusing as we were debating what to order when the waitress asked if she should come back after we finish our argument.
Our total was $58 including the tip, a standard 15% plus slightly more (better to over tip a little rather than under tip).
*See this great recipe below.
DARLA'S SZECHWAN SHRIMP:
The ingredients:
1 pound medium-size or large shrimp
1 tablespoon salt
Cooking sauce (recipe below)
2 1/2 tablespoons salad oil
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper,
Green onions, thinly sliced
Instructions:
Shell and devein shrimp
Place shrimp in a bowl and sprinkle with salt and rub it in with your hands
Let stand for 15 minutes, then rinse well, drain, and pat dry with paper towels
Prepare cooking sauce and set aside
Heat a wok or wide frying pan, over medium heat
When oil begins to heat, add shrimp and stir-fry until shells turn pink (3 to 4 minutes)
Remove from pan
Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in pan over medium heat
Add garlic, ginger, and pepper and stir-fry for 5 seconds
Return shrimp to pan, add onions, and stir once
Stir cooking sauce, pour into pan, and cook, stirring, until sauce boils and thickens
The Sauce:
In a bowl, combine 1 tablespoon each Worcestershire and dry sherry, 2 tablespoons catsup,1/4 cup water, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 11/2 teaspoons cornstarch.
Makes 3 to 4 servings
9 April - The Tin Fish V:
We were supposed to go to Ensenada today to check out Joey Buttafuoco's hot dog stand for the gringos at the Ensenada airport, then the plan was to eat a 12 lb lobster (the wife and the Boy were both off on the same day, for a change) but the driver (Wild Bill) couldn't make it so...
I'm really not a "fish guy" but I love this place (The Tin Fish, at the end of the Imperial Beach Pier, the most Southwest point in the continental US, just across the Tijuana River from Mexico) and even if it's all fried fish, it's a great walk to the absolute end of the pier with some great sea air and some of that world famous California sunshine. It's a place we'd recommend to everyone who comes to San Diego for a visit.
The wife ordered the Grilled Halibut Taco (she's "gone native" on us and has the fish tacos at Por Favor, Vaqueros, both country clubs, Rubio's, etc) and we agreed to split the Tin Fish Platter with fish, shrimp, calamari, scallops, cross-cut fries and cole slaw.
The boy popped for the appetizer: plate with a different fish, shrimp, oysters, crab cakes, etc.
Of course there were plenty of condiments (tartar sauce, cocktail sauce, catsup & lemon wedges - we don't call him El Condimento for nothing ) and we all decided to share a bucket of soda (Sprite).
We spent a total of $37 for it all and it was great.
They have a second location in the Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego and a larger operation (The Boston & Maine Fish Company) in Horton Plaza, which is also in downtown San Diego.
The web site: http://www.thetinfish.com/
By the way, they're shooting a movie there (at nights) and the pier has a bunch of additions to make it resemble the Santa Monica pier. The flick is about the early days of skate-boarding and it's called "Dogtown" or something like that.
On our way home, we stopped at Sam's Club and spent almost exactly $100 for 2 cases of Coke in the glass bottles, a case of Heineken, a bottle of Chivas Regal, 64 bottles of drinking water (2 cases of 32), a large jug of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO in TV speak) and a few other things.
10 April - Mario's de La Mesa:
"You want me to shoot the cook?" El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) in "Once Upon A Time In Mexico"
PT of Catsup Soup Productions also pointed us at this one (a friend of his who knows the restaurants in this part of the county suggested it).
We had been scheduled for some cheese steaks here at home but the wife inadvertently left the steak at the club after using their meat slicer...
Mario's is in a small house down the way from Johnny B's (above) and has a small outdoor seating area as well as several small dining rooms.
Parking is tight in the neighborhood and I imagine even more so during their peak hours.
The menu says it's family owned and prices are fairly nominal.
We started out with a basket of chips and salsa and an iced tea for me, a Coke for the Boy.
The chips were fresh and the salsa was spicy, due to a fair portion of jalapeno seeds throughout.
The Boy ordered the Antojitos (appetizer) platter, essentially quesadillas and taquitos with guacamole and sour cream and a beef Taco a la cart while I ordered my usual first time selection; the beef Taco / Enchilada platter with beans and rice.
We both agreed that the beans were probably the best we've had since we moved here, the enchilada was very flavorful but the guacamole on the taco seemed to dominate it all, especially the beef (we love the green goo but aren't fans of throwing it on everything).
The place was clean, staff was personable and attentive and the service was very quick, especially at 5:00 PM on a Saturday afternoon.
Our total was $28 including a generous 20% and slightly plus tip and we will be back when we find ourselves over that way around meal time.
Like I've said before, we are surrounded by some excellent Mexican food down here, so much so that there are now approximately half a dozen places we eat at on a regular basis and a couple (at least) that we'd go out of our way for, time permitting, etc.
There are a dozen or so online reviews for this place but they do not have their own web site.
21 April: Old Country Restaurant & Deli in La Mesa
I read about this place in The San Diego Reader so after dropping the wife off at work, I made a slight detour to check it out.
I had the Black Forest Ham, with some sort of smoked white cheese (she didn't say), on a French roll with mustard / mayo and pickles only.
When I say mustard / mayo, I don't mean mustard and mayo but rather the mustard was mixed in with mayo to save them an extra step (they lost me right there as that is simply not acceptable in a good deli).
I prefer my mustard on the bottom of a sandwich, along with other items that appeal to the taste buds in that part of the mouth (the baser tastes like pickles and onions) and the mayo on the top part of my sandwich along with the other, sweeter things such as tomato, lettuce, etc.
I took it home and grabbed a soda there to eat while I watched a little noontime TV.
The total was $5.95.
21 April: Mario's II:
We're taking the wife this time so she (we) can check out the tamales and a few other things that the reviews say are the signature dishes here. We had the normal gringo stuff (taco, enchilada, taquitos, quesadillas, etc) the last time so it'll be everything but that this time.
Our report:
For our second visit, the Boy insisted on having a beef enchilada with the regular ranchero sauce again, the wife had a pork tamale a la cart and the beef and chicken enchilada plate with salsa verde, hold the beans and, against all that I've ever learned, I ordered the beef fajitas.
The tamale was probably the best of it all, everyone agreed on that point, the verde sauce was also very good but the service was pretty poor.
We ended up waiting for quite some time for the waitress to take our order even though there were no other customers in the place.
Then, when the food came, it was room temperature at best (best guess: the waitress let it sit in the window for quite some time), we watched her to see if she ever scanned our table (a good waitress scans every table in her section almost continuously), looked to make eye contact or noticed all of us looking around at one point and finally had to go get more tortillas and extra napkins ourselves.
The menu describes the fajitas as served on a sizzling platter and this was just not the case; I made a point to put my hand flat on the cast iron pan to demonstrate that at most, it had been warmed briefly before it was dished up.
It was a lot of food and we certainly did not finish it all (plus there were chips and salsa).
With a Coke for the Boy and an iced tea for me, the total was just over $36 not including an 11% tip...
22 April - Geno's II:
I had been meaning to get back here for a second tasting for quite some time and instead of the shredded pork sandwich we had the last time, I ordered the Tri Tip with mayo only.
I'm on a county-wide search for a good steak sandwich, a decent French Dip, a good roast beef and possibly an Italian beef sandwich as well.
When the guy took my order, he repeated it back to me "Tri Tip with Geno's mayo" and I should have known something was amiss then...
Geno's mayo, whatever it is (I couldn't identify it), is way too sweet for my palate and it ruined the great smokey flavor of the meat for me.
The portions were generous (and I mention the great bun again) but the Geno's mayo thing is right up there with the mustard / mayo thing and that horrible, sickly sweet artificially-flavored berry / ice tea from the machine that many places have taken to serving the last couple of years.
If I freaking want fruit juice, I'll ask for it and those that rile me the most are the ones that change over to that and then don't tell you or mention it on their menu so when you take a sip, your first inclination is to spit it out all over the place. I make it a point to complain loudly about that.
It's also considerably (several times) more expensive than having a server brew up a batch of real tea a couple of times a day and one of the first things the wife did when she was the GM at the Bread Basket was to call the company and tell them to come take their machine out.
I don't know if I mentioned it to you but the beginning of the end there for her was when an overdue bill for coffee came across her desk and it was for well over $10K and the owner was on vacation, apparently oblivious to the fact that she really couldn't afford to go on vacation...
And like a pit bull that can't let it go: the mustard / mayo thing is never right as some meats need more mustard (salami comes to mind) while others (like a good quality thinly sliced ham) need more mayo to do the job properly.
And don't even get me started on honey mustard this and that or even honey-roasted or glazed as I prefer to season my food myself...
My total at Geno's was just over $7 including a refillable soda.
24 April: Trophy's
Trophy's is a small Southern California chain of sports bars with locations in San Diego, La Mesa (the one I visited), Newport Beach, La Jolla and Las Vegas. I'd actually walked through one before (in San Diego) but had already had my lunch so I decided to check it out today.
Of course, I'd forgotten my glasses (I mistakenly thought there was a Togos in that shopping center and already knew what I wanted, a small hot roast beef on white with mustard, mayo, pickles, peppers, Swiss cheese, salt and pepper) and I couldn't read the menu at Trophy's.
When I asked the waitress what she would order for her lunch, she said it would have to be the calzone (which I don't see on the "to go" menu I brought home) with a number of ingredients such as spinach, which lost me right there...
Instead, I ordered the steak sandwich (open faced thin cut top sirloin on grilled sourdough with fries and a side salad - bleu cheese dressing) for $13.95 and an iced tea ($21 total after taxes and tip)
The steak was mediocre at best, there was no garnish for it, I had to ask for some mayo, the salad wasn't really edible (it looked like a salad but), the fries were lukewarm, the service was spotty (I never saw my waitress after she took the order except for her to pop up soon after the food arrived all at once, then asked me if everything was great, to which I am supposed to reply that it is with a mouth full of food and then again, when she presented the bill).
The only reason I even considered this place was that I still haven't found a serious steak sandwich here yet and I didn't find it there either...
Their web site: http://www.trophys.tv/
24 April: Chili's in Santee
There's no new ground to plow here and I only mention this for the fact that it was another day we had to eat out twice as they keep jerking the wife's schedule around at both clubs and that often leaves us with no meal options for the day (I don't know the recipe well enough to pull it off, it's a larger meal, one meant for 3 or 4 people or things are still frozen and won't be defrosted in time for tonight's dinner).
On this visit, we had our usual, beef fajitas, well done, no lettuce or pico de gallo, Jack cheese only with extra tortillas (the Boy and I split it) and he had a side salad with double bleu cheese and I had a few bites of it as well (all the stuff he doesn't like, like lettuce).
We also had the usual iced tea for me and a Coke for him.
The total was just over $15, make it an even 18 bucks after the tip...
28 April: Claim Jumpers / Red Lobster
The Boy and I were on our own for dinner as the wife was working late so we stopped by Claim Jumpers to check it out.
It gets good word of mouth here and we also know a couple of the wife's co-workers who also work there (part time).
Design wise, it's as you would suspect: log cabin decor and grub-stake vittles (Tahoe Joe's meets Marie Callendar).
I forgot my glasses (again) and couldn't read the menu so we ended up at Red Lobster, where I already knew what I wanted.
We split a Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail, the Admiral's Feast (lobster tail, crab legs, deep fried shrimp, scampi, rice pilaf with cocktail sauce, tartar sauce, lemon and rendered butter for dipping) salad (with a double shot of bleu cheese), cheddar biscuits, iced tea and a Coke for the Boy.
The total was $41 including the standard slightly over 15% tip...
There's really nothing to add as we've all been to Red Lobster and recognize it as the Denny's of seafood...
