My lunch: 2 pieces of fish (red snapper in this case), 4 shrimp & a lot of fries for $5.99
9 June: Lemon Grove Fish & Chips
We heard about this place from Ed Bedford's column "Tin Fork" in The San Diego Reader.
Evidently Mr. Bedford doesn't have a car and gets around by bus for the most part and in this case, the trolley, right across the street.
Notice the fish shaped plate and the ocean themed table cloth in the photo above.
Notice the lime wedges (instead of lemon), which seems to be a fairly common way of doing it around here (we like it).
The wife ordered The Lunch Special: 4 pieces of fish (your choice of whiting, red snapper, cod or catfish), chips and a soda ($4.99).
And Rafael, the owner, brought us containers of cocktail sauce, catsup and tartar sauce to the table after he served the food.
I thought the shrimp were pretty good, they are definitely generous with the fries, the wife liked both the cod and red snapper and says she's going to try the catfish and whiting the next time we visit.
Our total was a very modest $11.28 total, including the Sprite we shared (your choice of soda with The Lunch Special).
The menu also has such items as hush puppies, fried zucchini, mushrooms, cole slaw and wild salmon but it'll be several more visits until we get past the fish and chips as we didn't have a good place for them in Squarefield over the last 15 years or so...
Rafael is an interesting guy who previously owned several Italian eateries and has a philosophical bent. We were the only ones there right at opening time this morning (11:00 AM on a Friday morning) and he had time to talk with us a bit (besides preparing our order and unloading supplies from his truck, which was parked out front).
It's located right next door to a large Catholic church (they do a booming business on Fridays) and right down the street from the Lemon Grove branch of Por Favor, the wife's current favorite place for fish tacos (she was torn in two different directions when she realized that)...
And we should also mention the proximity of the Lemon Grove Lemon, which we showed you awhile back.
We'll be back.
17 July: Tommy's Italian Deli VI
We haven't been eating out a lot this month (busy, a lot of National Hot Dog Month stuff going on, etc) but we visited Tommy's Italian Deli for our 6th time today and made up our own sandwich (put some of everything on it).
It had prosciutto, salami, several other meats, cheese, black olives, tomatoes, pepperoncini and olive oil on a great, crusty roll.
It was well over a foot long (enough for both El Condimento and myself) and cost $10.76 including tax.
And it was pretty good but there's still something lacking and I'm not sure what it is...
I wanted to photograph it but it just wasn't very neat after we got it home and unwrapped it (next time, when we eat there).
19 July: Yoli's in Pacific Beach
We had a short business meeting in Pacific Beach Monday morning and the guy we went over there to talk to suggested we meet at Yoli's (even though he didn't eat).
The place is on Garnet Avenue, just over 2 blocks from the beach, a location to die for...
I had the beef enchilada a la cart and an iced tea, the wife had a chicken enchilada with green sauce and rice (nothing to drink).
Both the red sauce (on mine) and the green sauce were great but my tortilla was a little tough and chewy.
And as we were their first customers of the day, they were still cleaning up from the night before and the floors were still sticky (it's more of a bar than a restaurant with sidewalk seating, high walled patio area out back and a bar and a couple of fair sized rooms inside).
The total came to $11 something, make it an even $15 with tip.
And there is no web site.
22 July: Szechwan Mandarin (S&M)
As you may remember, PT of Catsup Soup Productions in La Jolla pointed us at this one and this was to be our third visit.
PT has been nice enough to point us at several places here (thanks!).
We had just picked the wife up at work and decided to visit S&M once more (it's not far from Quaalcom Stadium, right off I-8).
When we were seated, the busser set us up with a basket of fried wontons, sweet sauce and a little hot mustard (which the Boy polished off rather quickly).
With some subtle prodding by our waitress (she came by the table 3 or 4 times in the space of just a few minutes to ask if we were ready yet even though the obviously visual cue of us still reading the menu ought to have given her at least a tiny little hint) we ordered the Fish Basket with prawns, calamari, scallops, (it was our second or third time for this dish).
I also ordered my favorite, the Spicy Jumbo Prawns with green bell pepper and onion (second time); both are "keepers".
I would compare this dish to a sizzling seafood platter (a la Chevys fajitas or the sizzling beef with black pepper platter at Dynasty, our favorite Chinese place in Squarefield) and the spicing is wonderful (I suspect the secret to the sauce is most likely a liberal application of chili oil).
We also shared a small bowl of rice and ordered hot tea for the wife, iced tea for me and a Coke for the Boy.
And of course, there were the obligatory fortune cookies with the bill.
Everything was great, the total was just over $35 and with tip, it was $41 exactly.
On service:
You! Order now: This is the same waitress who told us she'd be back when we were done with our argument the last time (we took Wild Bill with us and were discussing the menu before we ordered). We were probably a little loud (everyone else had had a drink or two before we got there but I was as sober as a judge and hadn't had anything as I was the duty driver that night) but it hardly qualified as an argument...
She's pushy, mouthy (and middle-aged) but with fairly professional serving standards with a side order of Chinese lip service, ya gotta love it.
And she recognized the wife's penguin outfit (La Jolla Country Club's uniform), asked where she worked and said "Oh, good money!" to which we all had to laugh as the wife made more money working at Denny's 20 years ago and more money on unemployment when we first got here...
They were hit and miss with the iced tea refills (apparently a roving busser has that responsibility).
And the Boy had to ask for more soda, the standard pushing-your-empty-glass-to-the-very-edge-of-the-table (how can they not notice it there?) apparently not spoken here.
And I did have to ask a passing waiter for some chopsticks.
Thanks again, PT!
24 July: Por Favor in El Cajon
This used to be our favorite place when we first moved here but a succession of hit or miss meals, poor service and a host of other small factors have made us downgrade it to "Fair" now.
Fortunately, they have 2 other locations (one in downtown La Mesa and another in Lemon Grove, both less than 10 miles away by freeway) and they seem to be more stable and dependable at these places so we usually stop by one of them if it's convenient.
They had had a fourth location, on the edge of La Mesa where it runs into El Cajon but they closed it recently.
On this particular occasion, the Boy had worked all day Saturday, was tired and didn't want to drive any farther than downtown El Cajon, less than 5 miles away so we decided to see if they had improved at that location (we saw help wanted ads in the paper recently for cooks, servers, bartenders and managers there).
It was all good this time.
We ordered 2 Especials de Ramon: A good sized piece of nicely done carne asada, shredded beef taco, cheese enchilada, beans in a shell with a serious amount of cheese melted over them and a small side order of guacamole in a cup of purple cabbage (no lettuce for the Boy).
And of course there were the chips and salsa and an iced tea for me, a Coke for the Boy
And for a change, we sat on the outdoor patio (they also have sidewalk seating (it's the prime location on El Cajon Classic Cruise night every Wednesday) as well as 2 fair sized dining rooms inside.
When we first got here, I had automatically requested inside seating as the weather was almost always too harsh to eat outside in our 15 years in Squarefield but the Boy over ruled me on that point, choosing the cool and green patio instead (hey, I'm learning)...
We were waited on by a guy (Logan, #547), who used to work at the La Mesa location that closed down recently.
He was on top of things, the food arrived while it was still nice and hot and he kept the liquids flowing (Coke, iced tea) without having to ask.
And the famous Mariachi Brothers were plying their trade that evening.
This time, there were only 2 of them but they more than made up for it in volume.
Most of the locals know that San Diego is very closely tied to Led Zeppelin (they first hit it big here) and it's almost impossible to listen to the radio without hearing at least one of their songs so I told the Boy to tell the boys in the band I'd kick in $20 if they'd do some Zeppelin for us...
Our total was $30, including a slightly over 17.5% tip
26 July: Vaqueros Carne Asada (formerly El Barrilito)
We've written about this place a number of times and try as hard as we can (and believe me, we've been trying our brains out ever since we got here), we still haven't found a place with better cheap Mexican food and it's less than a mile away from La Casa Weenie.
This time, the wife and I stopped by to get our lunch to go and I had a carne asada burrito (grilled, shredded steak, guacamole, pico de gallo in a large flour tortilla, wrapped in wax paper), and the wife had the shredded beef taco with a side of rice (with green and red sauce on the side).
We brought it home to eat in the nice air conditioning as it's been in the 90's, maybe even low 100's recently and I had a Coke with mine
I also gave the wife a good portion of my burrito as I can't eat that much anymore...
The total was $8.00 including a 50 cent plus tip.
We love this place for good, cheap, quick, local Mexican food and we intend to take all of our out of town visitors (1, so far, in the year plus we've been here) by there to show them exactly what they need in their own neighborhoods when they get back home..
29 July - Geno's West Coast BBQ IV:
I stopped by Geno's on my way home this morning (shortly after 10:00 AM) and ordered the third of a rack of baby back ribs, cole slaw, beans, cheesy garlic bread (the plate offers 2 side dishes and a choice between cheesy garlic bread or cornbread) and I had a Pepsi.
Most of Geno's menu features "pulled" meats (steak, pork, etc) smothered in his sweet sauces but I noticed a sign on the side of the building saying that they also serve ribs so I had to check it out.
The ribs were OK (mine are better, with great hickory smoke flavor and fall-off-the-bone tender), the sauce has a mild after bite (I like it), the beans were almost like chili with a little bit of meat sauce, the cole slaw was adequate but I'm not too fond of the garlic cheese bread.
Geno's also charges for a second refill on soda, even if the machine (and styrofoam cups) are out where the customer does all the work...
The total was $13 plus change...
30 July:
I started to put together a complete list of where we've eaten here so far so we have a few ideas the next time we decide to go out to eat and soon came to realize that we have eaten at at least 76 new places since we left Soviet Squarefield last year (maybe even more).
That works out to slightly more than one new place every week although we've eaten at a number of these places easily a dozen times as well.
