Kearny Mesa Stories

“Chubby, round, and very pretty.” That’s how Google translates gordita redondita y bien bonita, the Spanish words written in pink neon on the wall of Barrio Donas. The shop’s name itself translates to “neighborhood donuts,” ...

The Marina District is one of San Diego’s more prestigious addresses. Once consisting mostly of warehouses and vacant lots, the 343-acre area on the west side of Downtown is now a cluster of apartments, high-rise ...

The table next to us is large and round, with a lazy susan built into its center. As it rotates, we get a clear view of terrific-looking dishes we might have ordered instead: whole steamed ...

A plan to bring Kearny Mesa's aging Montgomery Gibbs airport into the 21st century misses the mark on one count. The airport, one of the nation’s busiest, still uses avgas (aviation gas), the only remaining ...

To follow through on their plan to open a brewery, Daren Rudy and Alex Kim were prepared to move to Reno, Nevada. “It’s a growing population, annually,” explains Kim, “and also a growing craft beer ...

After ten minutes waiting for the line in front of me to grow shorter, it occurs to me there are two distinct types of patient people. The first kind has what it takes to show ...

What I learned this week is that soup dumplings will get me out of the house. For months, I’ve been eating mostly at home, opting for take-out and a little bit of outdoor dining. But, ...

Back in the fall of 2019, O’Brien’s Pub co-owner and general manager Tyson Blake was manning the bar, catching up with a regular customer. O’Brien’s is well known as one of the city’s oldest and ...

I have this noodle idea in my noodle. Korean noodles. I was up here on Convoy looking for the kind of “glass noodles” that my friend Clive, who was stationed in Korea, says are i) ...

I’m always on the lookout for a new kind of soup to try, and yet for some reason I’m always surprised when I find one. What’s not surprising is that most of the unfamiliar soup ...

Maybe it was because the purple tier was coming. Maybe we just wanted tabletop Korean BBQ. Whichever it was, we showed up at Dae Jang Keum, a.k.a. DJK Korean BBQ, feeling adventurous. Dae Jang Keum ...

Open seven days a week, the Kearny Mesa tasting room of Societe Brewing Company has been a bustling hub of San Diego beer for most of its eight-plus years in business. Bolstered by a reputation ...

Oktoberfest is canceled in 2020 — that is, the massive, more than two-week-long Munich beer drinking festival that’s taken place since 1810. The spirit of the event has survived the pandemic, however, and a number ...

“What does that mean?” I mumble to myself. I’d noticed it when I came out from Ma’s Place, the Muslim Chinese eatery (see last week’s column). This sign across the parking lot: The Golf Bar. ...

“OK. What else?” “OK. What else?” “OK. What else?” The gal’s taking a food order at max speed over the phone. She reads all the items back. “OK. Xié xié (thank you)!” She clacks her ...

I hadn’t eaten inside a restaurant since June, more than two months. And to be honest, I wasn’t exactly itching to. But, the county decided dining rooms could re-open at 25 percent capacity, and I ...

Indoor dining has resumed in San Diego, though at a limited (25 percent) capacity, it won’t be enough to keep most restaurants afloat, so outdoor dining and take-out remain crucial to their success. That includes ...

The updated community plan for Kearny Mesa includes more than 40 miles of bikeways and numerous paths for pedestrians – but rezoning for the sake of selling cars? Not this time around. As a 30-year ...

This is usually the time of year to spotlight San Diego’s best outdoor brewery venues. However, in the summer of 2020, that could be just about anywhere. Thanks to some late May regulatory relief by ...

Summer is officially here, and even if the experience is going to be a bit different this year, it won’t be for a lack of frozen desserts. I went with a young family to try ...

Ice cream is a sauce. I’m not going to refer you to Webster’s or any such thing, just so I can hear you protest that sauces are, by definition, fluid. First, because I stopped trusting ...

Giovanni's leaves cribbage fans homeless I used to come to Giovanni’s at the turn of the century when they were located at Balboa Avenue about a mile west from the I-805 freeway. I remember playing ...

This restaurant-rich patch around Convoy and Balboa is one of my favorite areas in our fair city. So I’m glad to see business up here still looks just fine. Now, at 5 pm on March ...

Back in June 2018, a small startup started offering local restaurants a chance to pour their own house beers, using custom-branded, 3-D printed tap handles. In this way, Hopnonymous Brewing Company began as a specialty ...

If Clairemont is San Diego’s first bedroom community, then Kearny Mesa, all 4400 acres of it, could be described as its utility room. Bounded by Interstate 805 to the west, Interstate 15 to the east, ...

There’s a snazzy looking new sushi restaurant in Kearny Mesa, one that employs early 20th century technology to serve its customers. Mikami Revolving Sushi serves kaiten sushi, better known in the U.S as conveyor belt ...

Milk tea — I’m one of its biggest fans. Any night of the week, you have a good chance at finding me fulfilling a craving at a tea spot on Convoy. On one such night, ...

‘I’m from the Northwest,” says Lu Hong. She means Northwest China. “In Xinjiang, people like their food spicy and hot. Same like Szechuan. But this food here is from South-East China. More like Shanghai, where ...

To access Forbidden Cove, you’ll need a carved wooden idol that unlocks a secret doorway leading into a narrow hallway where your own mirror reflection echoes before and behind you into infinity. It’s a simple ...

A lot of different cultural cuisines offer curry. Countries on the Indian subcontinent alone are responsible for dozens of different types of curry. Southeast Asia developed a whole other curry lineage, led by Thailand, with ...

When the Chinese government announced last month that they no longer want to buy mega-tons of America’s recycling waste, it may have been the final blow to a collapsing recycling industry, forcing the closing of ...

“Okay, so that will be a red velvet puffle Sun Moon and Stars with a sprinkle of rose sugar?” I look over my shoulder. Nope, no one standing behind me, she must be talking about ...

“We’ll take you to our favorite Chinese spot,” a couple of friends told me, “but only if you won’t write about it.” “Let’s go!” I said, careful not to make any promises. I’ve only experienced ...

The last weekend of July, Societe Brewing Company will mark its 7th anniversary with a pair of parties at its Kearny Mesa brewery. While the ales and lagers served will meet the same exacting standards ...

Third time’s the charm? I’m hoping so. I’ve come early, around 5:30 pm, to put my name on the iPad outside the front window. It comes right back at me, “Guest #371: Welcome to Kura ...

We can argue all day whether the American carnival classic corn dog was worth riffing on, but a Korean reinterpretation of hot dog on a stick has already arrived in Kearny Mesa with a world ...

This was the day Annie and I went mad. She popped by, offering me half the breakfast sandwich she’d just bought. This was like four in the afternoon. I said. “Why don’t we go have ...

If you’ve grown complacent with tonkotsu ramen, but still want bone broth in your life, check out the latest place adding to the bounty of Korean restaurants in Kearny Mesa. Called Woomiok, its main thing ...