Author - Grant
Based In - San Diego, California
Today’s Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157616198898743/
The blog has been steering away from food recently and been concentrating more on the daily grind which can be caused by one of two scenarios. 1) We just haven’t had any decent meals recently (this can especially be the case when traveling through the back of beyond where the only place selling food within a 50 mile radius is the local Shell station). 2) We’re on a health kick cycle where we are exercising regularly and eating healthily and every chicken salad tastes the same as the last one. The good news is that neither scenario is currently applicable as we’re in a major metropolitan area (9th largest city in America by population apparently) and we are also both on the path towards being eligible for Super Heavyweight bouts. As such, we’ve been trawling the eateries of San Diego recently and the results have been mighty good so here’s a few words about them. The really promising thing is that we have stumbled on all of them without any recommendations so if this represents a random sample of eateries then I can only conclude that San Diego has a lot to offer foodies and fatties alike. Here’s a sample of the best three...
Going chronologically, after a good 10 mile bike ride along the various golden sandy beaches that line the
coast of San Diego (where we spent most of the ride looking enviously east at the huge beachside mansions rather than west at the magnificent Pacific Ocean), we found ourselves in La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya). Generally considered where the posh people hang out, we probably looked a little out of place arriving in the official uniform of the British tourist when the weather is over 50F of shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops but we were made to feel as welcome as royalty when we took a sun-drenched seat in the beer garden of Karl Strauss. The place just happens to be a micro-brewery (coincidence that we stumbled on it? Kate still thinks so) and within 60 seconds of arriving I was leaning back with a beautifully hoppy yet refreshing ice-cold Tower 10 IPA and wondering if life gets any better. Well it does, it can come with food. Having been conned out of fish & chips a week ago in Sedona, Kate pounced at it when it appeared on the menu and it turned out to be a pretty good effort but the batter was a bit think and, for me, it was just a bit too warm for that kind of meal. Instead, I went for a salad that I think epitomizes California. It was kind of like a huge mound of vinegar based (rather than mayo based) coleslaw that contained various types of Napa cabbage, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, grilled chicken, fried wonton slivers for crunch and a bit of BBQ sauce to add a kick and keep it interesting to the last bite. Fresh, local, healthy, mainly raw ingredients - it’s not often my cardiologist and I agree on what I should be having for lunch but this was definitely an all round winner. Our server even recommended having their home brewed Red Trolley Ale with it rather than another IPA...and do you know what, they were right. Food heaven, beer heaven and weather heaven...and all at a cost of about $20 each. If only the homes in La Jolla weren’t $5m a piece...
Next up was a night-time affair in The Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego where our walk along 5th Ave quickly turned from a sightseeing stroll to into an urgent food search. Luckily there’s no end of choice although there does seem to be more
Italian options than we have found in other American cities and that is in addition to the Little Italy area that lies just north of downtown...but more of that later. Not being in an Italian mood (well, Kate’s always in an Italian mood but that’s a whole different story) we took a joint shine to The Marble Room which throws out modern American food, tapas style and had a $52 prix fixe for two people that seemed a steal. You might notice that I’m mentioning money more than usual these days and I noticed the same thing happening when I wasn’t working in Singapore for a while - after about 6 month I get a bit twitchy about constantly spending yet earning nothing. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not on the door of poverty but having said that, if anyone wants to sponsor us then we’ll happily paint your name up the side of Bridget for all of America to see. The next stage is that I limit Kate to just 5 magazines a day and that will calm me down for another month or two. Back to the food. The prix fixe entitled us to one appetiser (veal sliders with caramelized onions and a garlic aioli), one salad (shrimp, spinach and parmesan), two entrees (beef sirloin, grilled beans, burst tomatoes topped with blue cheese and a blue cheese sauce for me and a chicken marsala dish for Kate that came smothered in onions, mushrooms and tomatoes with a mushroom infused sauce) and two sides (garlic grilled bok-choy and shallot and rosemary fries). I’m trying to look back and pick my favourite out of everything we had but it’s tough because it was all so good. Juicy sliders, a beautifully refreshing salad, perfectly cooked proteins for the mains with accompanying side dishes that had twists that ensured that they shined as stand alone dishes. And being tapas, the portions were manageable so, despite the ridiculously large list of food for just two people, it didn’t require the usual top button to be undone on the journey home. Another home run of a meal.
Our last night before moving hotels saw us taking one final food stroll around Little Italy. When you walk past a place half a dozen times and every time it has a line of people coming out of the door...well, you know that something special is happening inside. Such was the case with Filippi’s Pizza Grotto which has been a firm local favourite for the last 56 or 57 years,
depending on which waiter’s t-shirt you look at. We haven’t had a pizza for a month after the Pizza Hut Water Biscuit Debacle (as it will forever be referred to) in Taos so this seemed like a very safe way to ease our way back in. After standing in line for about 20 minutes which takes you past a veritable pantheon of Italian food porn (whole parmesan wheels, home-made sausages, various salt preserved fish etc), it was our turn to eat and it immediately became clear what was causing the smell that made me want to eat my own arm...vats and vats of bubbling marinara sauce. Now we could have continued with the original plan to get pizza but this would have meant getting just a thin layer of this mesmerizing elixir whilst the pasta dishes leaving the pass were drenched with a clear pint of the stuff. Decision made. Kate’s giant, home made beef ravioli came swimming in its own marinara lake and my mound of spaghetti came topped with a giant veal meat-ball (crazy tender and moister than an otter’s bathing suit), and a some-made sausage (not quite as keen but I’m not the biggest tarragon fan and this was tarragon heavy) and...you guessed it...more red sauce than the average Freddy Krueger movie. Both dishes eventually beat us (yes, you read that correctly...both plates still had food on them when they went back to the kitchen) but it was purely a volume issue as the quality was sky-high. The crowning glory is that both dishes cost around $10 each. With this quality and these prices, don’t expect the line of people outside to die down anytime soon.
I’m thinking of resuming running tomorrow but I’m afraid of cracking the pavement.
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