Restaurants
Pacific Coast Grill, nearly ten years old, is a restaurant that, until now, I've passed dozens of times without feeling the urge to eat there. Maybe what kept me away was the sense I had …
“They say people are harder back there, but once you’re their friends, you are friends for life.”
The growing glamour of Little Italy is echoed in the changing incarnations of the site of Voyage. It started a century ago as a tool and die shop, then became a grocery. More recent old-timers …
“There’s something about it. The old feel, not dressed up, real. Neighborly. Could be back in Queens.”
A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I'm damned if I see how the helican. -- …
“I was a waiter, Peter was a sales rep. This was a big leap. But it took off, from day one.”
Tesoro (teh-SOH-row), Spanish for "treasure," is a family operation run by the brother-and-sister team of Rosie and Ricardo Vera, with help from their parents and siblings. Open since November, it quickly gained a reputation as …
“We called it quits about 18 months ago. Reopened as this pub…with a serious attitude toward beers.”
After a couple of days at Harrah's in Valley Center, my partner and I grew bored with casino clamor and casino fare. At Fiore's, the hotel's top restaurant, our food-savvy waitress was a Valley Center …
“Pete’s created a good feeling here. Employee of the year gets to go skydiving with him. Right, Pete?”
“Colonel Manuel Ferrar built it and named it after his wife Rosario. She was the niece of Pio Pico.”
In America, everybody is Irish one day a year. Planning for St. Patrick's Day, I headed for what I thought was a new Irish pub. Well, bother and begorrah, I was wrong on both counts. …
"What d'ya call people from Guam?" asked my old friend, actor-singer-songwriter George Gerdes, in his coffeehouse performances years ago. His audience would shout out tongue-twisting wild guesses. Then George would shake his head, lean into …