Kearny Mesa Stories
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
Kearny Mesa Stories
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 ...
It took family in town for me to catch on to how big boba has gotten. I’ve been walking around under the impression the bubble tea trend peaked 25 years ago. That’s when I recall ...
When you walk into Simsim Outstanding Shawarma, it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the fast casual Mediterranean spot. From detailed interior design elements to the placement of aspirational slogans like, “stand ...
Aaargh! Second time I’ve tried. This time it’s even worse. I look at the screen beside the “sign in” sign. “Parties waiting: 68. Estimated wait time 03:27.” That’s 3 hours and 27 minutes? No way, ...
The name of the restaurant may include the word diner, but don’t go expecting to order a Denver omelet, or anything with a side of hash browns. Okan Diner serves Japanese food, and a fair ...
Another SRO is about to bite the dust. Short for single room occupancy hotels, these cheap hotels have been dropping like flies from 123 in 2012 to 37 in October 2018. It's hard not to ...
Convoy. I’m trying to find this danged eatery my friend Annie is all abuzz about. “It’s fabbo, darling! It’s a revolving restaurant. That is, the food revolves around you. Little food boats on these tracks. ...
When I ask the owner and chef why his fish and chips feature rockfish instead of cod, I appreciate the answer. It’s easy to get, locally. That would be Adrian, of Adrian’s Surf n’ Turf ...
When the table next to us were told they couldn’t order rice, they decided to leave. “What kind of Chinese restaurant doesn’t serve rice?” they muttered on the way out. The short answer is: duh, ...
On January 25, Jose Venegas finished painting a mural titled Alphabetic Evolution at the juvenile office of the district attorney, located at Meadow Lark Drive, northeast from 163 and Genesee. “This 15-foot painting represents the ...
The retail apocalypse has caught up with local cyclists. All of the Performance Bicycle shops in the United States are in the midst of store-closing sales. The San Diego region had six stores between Chula ...
On Oct. 9, 1975, the Reader published a story on driving shortcuts. It was written by then cabbie Ray Lilly and contained 14 San Diego shortcuts when gas went for about $.57 per gallon. In ...
It reads like the sort of thing you have to try at least once. A new Kearny Mesa spot called Brick Bowl dishes up a new way of eating meat, cheese, and bread. Rather than ...
"Jolar just let all the girls go and they are getting rid of the booths," reports a former employee of the longtime College Grove adult boutique where women have been performing private nude dance shows ...
On September 8, I shot some pool with the recently crowned 2018 American Poolplayers Association Team Captains Champions — at Pockets Billiards & Brew in Kearny Mesa. The name of their San Diego-based team is ...
The county board of supervisors has assigned their Planning & Development Services department to look to incorporated areas for housing development. County employees started the tour in August with a workshop at the county building ...
During our conversation about potholes (see “What It Takes to Fill a Pothole” on August 10), Misty Haskins expressed what struck me as an exaggerated worry about her safety on the buses she rides. She ...
The next sushi trend to conquer America could be something way simpler than we’re used to: the dedicated hand roll bar. To many, the sushi means sushi rolls, a.k.a. maki, wherein fish, rice, and sheets ...
Metropolitan Transit System or MTS has been hanging Choose Transit posters at bus stops around town. Plus they reached out to ask public opinion in April and May. Shorter commute times, more transit options, and ...
“What do you recommend?” I asked my server at Rice Noodle King, a small casual restaurant that opened a couple of months ago in Kearny Mesa. Given that every one of the seventeen entrées on ...
I love the name of this restaurant: "Steamy Piggy" is adorable and appalling. How dare they use an endearment such as “piggy” to describe the food I’m about to eat? On an instinctive, American level, ...
The city has 40 golden tickets, also known as permits, to hand out to those wanting to cultivate cannabis locally. There are currently 66 applicants vying for those permits. There are no limitations as to ...
On April 3 the San Diego Unified School Board granted the charter school petition of National University Academy 1001 STEAM, the first approval of a charter school new to the district in over four years. ...
The pale wood panels lining the weatherbeaten two-story storefront of China Max may not inspire a lot of confidence to the casual passerby, but during its fifteen years operating on Convoy Street, the Cantonese restaurant ...
Every Tuesday at 6 p.m. Brenda Nason met with about eight others to play Cribbage at Giovanni’s Restaurant on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard and Ruffin Road behind the Carl’s Jr. On Tuesday, March 13, the group ...
Longtime Carlsbad resident Jim Majeski thought he had it all worked out for when either he or his wife of 65 years passed on. Prepaid and preplanned cremation, he thought, would help ease the family’s ...
We'd gone to Clairemont Mesa looking for Vietnamese sandwiches, and wound up finding Thai burgers. We stopped first at K Sandwiches, which has reopened two years after being destroyed by fire. I'm not sure whether ...
Membership: 200 Pastor: Darrell M. Dunlap Age: 49 Born: Clifton, NJ Formation: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Chicago; Azusa Pacific University, Azusa Years Ordained: 18 San Diego Reader: What’s your favorite ...
On Wednesday (December 13th), after a long day at work, “John” returned to his truck — which he had parked on Frontage Road, by the W. Washington Street trolley station — to find his gas ...
When David and I agreed to join our friends Katie and Jordan for dinner at Village Kitchen, I was mildly apprehensive. This Chinese restaurant in Clairemont is known for its Hunan-style cuisine, and I wasn’t ...
There have been changes brewing around Convoy Street. The Kearny Mesa strip is best known as a restaurant row specific to Asian eateries, and even as new businesses have started taking over some of the ...
The storefront for Global Tile & Marble, a Kearny Mesa tile-and-marble contractor specializing in home renovations, had a major fire on February 13. The structure suffered extensive damage and, afterward, was basically “just a black ...
I once read a piece written by an economist about how he looks at a restaurant menu. There was lots of good advice, but one thing that stuck out was his recommendation about weird-sounding items: ...