Restaurants
Old-time San Diegans remember when the Gaslamp Quarter was getting over its “Hey, sailor” sleaze-phase and Horton Plaza was new. Italian restaurants serving affordable food suddenly peppered the neighborhood — but once the rising entertainment …
Up here near the 94 College exit, a blue 1966 Valiant sits parked between a Frazee’s and a Weight Watchers place. Only one man in this town has a sky-blue ’66 Valiant: my buddy Rod, …
As the economic climate has turned even the well employed into the “working worried,” people accustomed to eating most dinners out are cooking at home — despite the long hours and killer commutes that initially …
I can’t believe it. Here I am on deepest Revolución, when I spot that black hat, that gray-red beard, that loping walk. It can only be one person. “Willy?” I say. Willy Clauson has stuck …
Clunk! Man. Umberto Falcone’s kinda surprised I’ve tossed the bocce ball anywhere close to the jack. Call it beginner’s luck. Luck: Guess that’s how this whole sea-urchin thing started too. Though now that I think …
“Sometimes life is so good,” I sighed, sipping my dirt-cheap caipirinha. Sam and I watched the ferry pull into the Coronado pier, disgorging commuters marching landward in their varied gaits and garbs. A white-sailed catamaran …
“Slow down, you move too fast. You’ve got to make the morning last...” Can’t help humming that Simon and Garfunkel ditty. Life’s pouring through my veins again. How not? It’s one of those crisp, sunny …
When the new Gio took over the space of the old Village Garden, the charming neighborhood of La Mesa Village acquired something like a “downtown-y” restaurant, a sophisticated but family-friendly indoor-outdoor bistro and wine bar. …
Can’t believe it. Here I am in North Park, yapping away with Albert Einstein’s cousin! Evelyn, who runs this eatery with her husband Jeff, casually drops it that her grandpa and Albert were first cousins. …
“There may be trouble ahead/ But while there’s moonlight and music/ And love and romance/ Let’s face the music and dance.” Irving Berlin wrote that at the height of the Depression, and Fred and Ginger …
“Be nice or go away,” says the sign above the bar. Hmm...none too welcoming. But, hey, I’ll be nice, ’cause what a bar, and what a backboard! Huge, with baroque carving, big mirrors. Victorian, I …
Happiness is an ice-cold strawberry Bellini at Bite, made with the first berries of spring, and a $20 four-course dinner from a chef who can really cook. Bite is one of several good restaurants now …
History’s in the air. Talk about hidden jewels. Turns out that here in National City they have the only original transcontinental railroad terminus in the United States still standing. Since 1882, the depot has been …
I still can’t believe it. My buddy Frankie. He’s gone. Checked out. Died. Had half his life to live, still. And my hands aren’t clean. All those Delicado Ovalado cigarettes I always got for him …
It’s odd to think of a glitzy, Angeleno Wolfgang Puck restaurant on a bucolic, wooded college campus, but Jai (pronounced “jay,” like the bird) is no college dining hall. (The press release says the name …