Sunny seating, drab dinners at La Jolla bistro

The people who built the Shorehouse Kitchen did a fine job consolidating a handful of separate spaces into one, unified whole. Sitting probably a quarter of a mile from La Jolla shores, the dining room gets no shortage of sea breeze. The wide-open patio looks out on Avenida de la Playa (no doubt a better view during summer months, but still…), and even the high-ceilinged dining room, which echoes undesirably noisesome, puts a sunny view on every seat.

La Jolla’s restaurant scene doesn’t exactly teem with xyz urban-kitchen-type restaurants, and Shorehouse obviously means to fill the gap some during their Wednesday-Sunday dinner services with comfort foods, burgers, and (surprise, surprise) augmented Brussels sprouts filling a promising menu.

Delivery, however, proves wanting.

The meatloaf ($15) lacks inspiration, appearing tableside with ketchup-y sauce, limp broccolini, and underwhelming mashed potatoes.

Deviled eggs ($6) are very average, though good, because deviled eggs are always good, and doing an OK version of something that’s delicious by definition isn’t very impressive.

Steak frites and burgers both suffer due to inconsistent shoestring fries. Though the regular burgers justify their $12 price tags, the $16 LJ Burger doesn’t earn it’s extra four bones, even with bacon and fig jam.

In the end, though, we want to like this place because La Jolla could play a little catching-up in the trendy neighborhood bistro department. It’s apparent that Shorehouse’s strengths lie with sunny seating and lattes during AM coffeehouse hours; not so much with the dinner service. Lunch is a much better possibility, since the white chicken chili is pretty good, and really not a bad buy at $7.50, but even then it’s a tough sell.