Best of 2000: Best Place To Pick Up Scuttlebutt In San Diego

The Turf Supper Club
1116 25th Street, Golden Hill
(619) 234-6363

Up on Golden Hill, this curious, eclectic, cell phone­and­cocktail­and­steak place attracts graphic artists, dot-com dreamers, loft artists, teachers, ponytailed accountants, coulda-been stage stars, and entry-level Qualcomm types. They meet, mix, and cheerfully exchange the most malicious gossip in town while they down their Chernobyls and slice into their steak. (The Chernobyl Cocktail: Stolichnaya, Kahlua, Tuaca, and Metaxa shaken and served up, with a twist of lemon. "Prepare for a complete meltdown," $5.25.) If it's down and dirty and delicious, you'll hear it here first. This is a reborn bar in a green building near the cross of 25th and C that first opened in 1950. At night, from the outside, it looks like one of those places you saw in foggy '40s New York movies. Places you went to meet your mistress, where nobody knew you. The cook-your-own open grill ("Surf & Turf," steak and seafood kabob, $6.75) generates great gossip, behind the protective hissing of your steak or next to the jukebox playing #2116: Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys singing "Juiced."