The small sign on the restaurant’s front door, displaying the charming logo of a clever-looking billy enjoying a pipe, is hard to spot when you’re driving by. You have to know where to look: the …

My friend Charlie Perry (now food writer for the L.A. Times and various food-scholar magazines) used to live about a mile from me in San Francisco. Both of us were ambitious, striving cooks (we eventually …

I had to think twice about trying Little Sheep, a Mongolian hot-pot restaurant, but I figured that if I hated it, I could title the review “Baah, humbug!” That’s because my prior experience with hot …

It’s summer-movie time, bringing all those boyish action flicks, indefatigable heroes with glam starlets breathing heavily all over them. This story, however, features a heroine, a dynamic brunette with more energy than Lara Cross, a …

I’ve passed Crown Bistro scores of times, always wondering about it: a little white building, well gardened and with an inviting front patio in front of a small white boutique hotel, it looks charming — …

Too much, too soon? Bencotto, a new Northern Italian restaurant in Little Italy, launched sometime this winter (the earliest Yelp raves I’ve spotted were posted in early February). The management didn’t tell me about the …

King’s Fish House’s announcement of its May–June Maine lobster event (ending July 4) set the gears spinning: I realized that my last review was eight years ago — pleasant memories, but high time for a …

Some nights, you don’t want to dress up for a restaurant or, worse yet, keep wearing that same stiff corporate outfit for 14 hours straight. But you don’t want to cook, either. You just want …

The ever-enchanting Mistral (née Azzura Point) has been remade again with a renovated dining room and new chefs. The executive chef for the whole resort property is Marc Ehrler, a hotshot direct from France. The …

This restaurant is closed. SOHO, which opened on Saint Patrick’s Day, instantly offered one of the most interesting, eccentric menus in San Diego, combining tastes from the South, the deeper South (Mexico and South America), …

This restaurant is closed. Still no alcohol license, still no menu on the website, but I finally gave in — whether it was ready or not, I had to try the Big Easy. The chef/co-owner …

Who’ll be the winner of Szechuan Idol? The two local finalists for the most authentic Szechuan food in San Diego are Ba Ren and Dede’s. After thoroughly enjoying Dede’s (reviewed 10/22/08), I was eager to …

About six months ago, “Tin Fork’s” Ed Bedford reviewed Indigo Café and liked it. He mentioned that half the dinner menu consisted of New Orleans classics but tried none of them, sticking to the real …

The menu calls Quality Social “a bar with food.” It’d be more accurate to say “a serious casual eating place with a bar.” You could call the menu “pub grub,” but that’d be like calling …

Cafe 2121 began as a quiet little breakfast/lunch place a few blocks west of Cafe 21 at 2121 Adams. The neighborhood adopted it warmly, so owners Leyla and Alex Javado moved to a more copasetic, …

An izakaya is the Japanese equivalent of a tapas bar or gastropub — a place where salarymen flock after work to snack on a variety of small dishes (or some big comforting ones) for a …

As my posse and I settled down and looked at the latest menu at Blanca, I sang out happily, “Thank God, it’s not the same old food again!” There’s a new gunfighter in town; he’s …

When chef Amiko Gubbins left her pioneering eclectic-fusion restaurant Parallel 33 to go cook for a rock star, local foodies gasped. She finally shut Parallel 33 down permanently after taking a gig with Specialty Produce …

Oh, so embarrassing! I’ve known for a long time that Soleil @ K had changed chefs (the opening chef moved on to another local restaurant), but it took an abominable snow job by Wolfgang Verkaaik …

“Oh, Oysters, come and walk with us!” the Walrus did beseech. “A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along the briny beach.” — Lewis Carroll Aagh, Valentine’s Day coming again — probably the worst night of …

Can you judge a chef’s palate by a single dish if that dish represents how he cooks when he’s showing off for his peers? Before moving to San Diego, ten years ago I came down …

Planning a trip to India years ago, I set my sights on the south of the country (Kerala and Tamil Nadhu). Why? To eat. I’d heard that the southern food was really spicy and really …

Last week’s search for great soups brought me to Dobson’s famed mussel bisque and thence to their website, where I discovered a well-kept secret, their 25th-anniversary special of a three-course prix fixe (weekdays, 3:00–7:00 p.m.) …

So, holidays are over, all the fun is gone. All the money’s gone. Sorry, Gate, but you got here late, all the jive is gone. What now? Drown your Visa bill in a nice hot …

Famous Chinese curse: “May you have an interesting life.” It’s been an interesting year, the financial weather a perpetual windstorm batting restaurants around along with the rest of the economy. Newspapers are flapping in that …

Bice (pronounced “BEE-chay”) had been open only five weeks when I ate there, because I didn’t have the patience to wait the standard, tactful three more weeks before trying it — not just because the …

Oh, boy, has Paris Hilton ever left the building! Khloe Kardashian (as they say in N’awlins, “Who dat?”) may or may not show up at the Ivy Hotel’s nightclub, Envy, but Quarter Kitchen’s celeb hangout …

Let’s have one more chorus of “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The hellish economy is kickin’ out the jams in the restaurant biz, especially in upscale hotel restaurants that locals tend to overlook, thinking they’re …

Word spread from foodblog to foodblog until it reached my friend Lynne, who reads loads of ’em. She emailed me: “This place sounds interesting.” The encomiums were for a newish Middle Eastern restaurant in La …

PRELUDE: FAMILY DINNERS A few months ago, my gardener (unaware of my ancestry) casually said, “Mexico City has too many Jews.” “What’s wrong with Jews?” I asked. “They’re all rich and stingy.” I thought of …

To Be Thankful Requires Humility — John Brizzolara This Year, We’re Staying Local — Pamela Hunt-Cloyd Eat What the Politicians Feed You — Don Bauder This Is How It’s Supposed to Be — Barbarella Thanksgiving: …

Why would a one-time Nepal trekker ever want to eat Nepalese food again? Is it masochism — or is it just that Nepal casts such a powerful spell? You just know there must be better …

It’s starting to become a new tradition: celebrating Thanksgiving with “dinner out” or with home dinners utilizing restaurant takeout. More and more restaurants have jumped on this cash, uh, turkey. The list below begins with …

Food can be a deeply political issue, but in this case it’s the merely skin-deep question of the restaurant’s name that’s bugging me. (Didn’t Shakespeare say, “A grill by any other name would smell as …

It’s weird that right on the border here, we’re so slow to catch up with the rest of the country on real Mexican cuisine. We’ve got lots of “Mexican” food but hardly any Mexican cuisine, …

The Lynnester has ways to make men talk. When Mark and I arrived to meet her at Iris, she was having a drink and pumping the charming manager, Edd Golden, younger brother of chef-owner Tommy …

The U.S. Grant Hotel, completed in October 1910, is one of the city’s grandest old hotels. Its signature restaurant, the Grant Grill, is equally historic. For its first 90-some years, it was a clubby, old-fashioned …

Trekking in Nepal involved 25 grueling vegan days of rice, lentils, mustard greens, noodles, barley stew, and boiled potatoes (and one glorious night of smoky yak steak and real mashed potatoes from the best darned …

Don’t cry for Laurel. It has gone to a far better place. Reincarnated as Cucina Urbana, you can now hang your hat (on the back of your chair) without a preprandial wardrobe change or bank-balance …

Alchemy doesn’t turn lead into gold, but its kitchen does turn good ingredients into palate-pleasers. Open seven months and well populated since Day One, it was bound to be a hit, given all the starving …

Looking at the $20 menus for upcoming Restaurant Week, the sole temptation was Apollonia — but clicking to the website menu, I realized I wanted a whole lot more than $20 would buy. Here, finally, …

Truluck’s is a Florida-based surf-and-turf house specializing in crabs — above all, Florida stone crabs, but also Maine Jonahs, Pacific Dungeness, never-frozen (they claim) Alaskan King, and even a bit of Maine Peekytoe and blue …

“Hotel restaurant” used to be shorthand for “What’s that slop you’re eating?” — back in the era of moldy “colonial” inns and all-one-mold “family” chains (remember Howard Johnson’s Motor Inns?). But not now, and certainly …

What a difference nine years makes, just 80,000 little hours. Over those years, Mille Fleurs has mellowed markedly, adapting to leaner times. This major mood change takes the restaurant out of the big-occasion realm of …

A few months ago, some guy from some burg like Dubuque emailed the paper, asking which restaurants he should try during a few days’ visit here, price no object. Bertrand at Mr. A’s was one …

Everything about Glass Door makes it a delightful, entertaining restaurant — except the food. On the fourth floor of a new hotel in Little Italy, it’s a long, narrow room with a bar on one …

La Valencia is a sheerly gorgeous hotel. Walking through that Spanish-Moorish tiled lobby en route to the Sky Room elevator, you want to sell your shack and move right in. A small, old-timey operator-run lift, …

Marine Room kicks off this summer’s unofficial series on “Rooms with a View — and Bargains, Too.” The small tradeoff that recession brings to visitors and staycationers alike is that some of San Diego’s most …

I’ve got stripes, stripes around my shoulders, I’ve got chains, chains around my legs…— Johnny Cash (based on Leadbelly’s “On a Monday”) For months I’ve been meaning to eat at Kitchen 1540, formerly the more …

Pasha drew my eye with an ad in this paper, including a coupon for a freebie appetizer platter. Hmm...a new bargain destination? Worth trying? I scurried to the website and found that the restaurant wasn’t …