This restaurant is located in a "tourist destination." For both tourists and locals (like us) this means: BE VERY CAREFUL!
Your experience on a weekend or holiday week might be seriously different from your "otherwise" experience. Cinco de Mayo? Totally fuggedaboutit! The entire world seems to need to be in Old Town for that celebration.
Except for the dish we regularly, explicitly return for, this restaurant's food MIGHT be rated 3 stars. The bar area is almost always noisy and crowded, especially on game days when all the TV's are working just fine, thank you, and the fans are cheering-on their teams.
The wait staff is what one would expect in such a busy-festive-crazy atmosphere. The well-managed place (I say that because it has survived the San Diego tourist explosion) serves run-of-the-mill American-style Mexican food in plentiful quantities.
We regularly return, though, for the Chicken Chile Verde Enchilada with sour cream. Served with beans, unless you are there to eat light.
It's a simple, subtly-tasteful, satisfying meal. The faux-Mexican-food flavors meld so well that the last bite, as scrumptious as the first, still has my total attention.
If we are just passing through to satisfy a between-meal hunger attack, we order the guacamole to eat with the chips. AND a light Corona with lime.
The dip is too bland for my taste, though, so I always add half a ramekin of house salsa. Stir and taste. Then, what the heck, I add the other half of the salsa ramekin. A pinch or three of salt is last. Stir and attack! Yum!
Sinful, Sloppy, Tasty Rocky's-Crown-Point burger this is not
Aug 30, 2008
Yesterday, as we drove south on 8th toward PETCO Park, we passed one of the attractive, newly-inhabited downtown low-rises, this one with a restaurant on the corner of 8th and G that advertised "Burgers, Beer and Wine."
I checked and the food reviews were mostly positive. With high hopes and hunger pangs, we decided to see if our new, best burger place was right in our own back yard.
I was surprised to see the extensive menu, but I purposely ignored the other offerings because I was there FOR A BURGER!
There were 3 "Designer" Burgers on the menu, which means someone, palate unknown to me, had designed the burger I would eat...and had used ingredients foreign to any I'd ever seen on that American "culinary" mainstay.
One design featured beef, spinach greens, cheese.
A second design featured beef, arugula greens, grilled onions, cheese.
The third and last design featured beef, mushrooms in marsala wine, cheese.
I asked the waitress if I could order a simple burger with fresh tomatoes, onions and cheese and she said, "No, only the burgers on the menu."
I started to feel a little hunger-pressure, so I ordered the "Arugula Burger" (their name was "Neighborhood Burger") and asked for mustard on the side. I figured there would be a wonderful, often-used, gourmet mustard available in the kitchen. After all, there was a kraut hot dog on the menu!
The waitress told me, "Sorry, we don't have any mustard!" I suppose my facial expression would have best been described as incredulous: Does a "kitchen sans mustard" exist in America?
When the burger was presented to me, it looked quite dry and I asked for some mayonnaise. Another waitress said, "Sorry. We don't have any condiments here that are usually used on burgers."
I said, "It looks very dry."
She said, "Try it. If you don't like it, we'll find some sauce in the kitchen to put on it." Some Sauce in the Kitchen? Mygoodnessme, what a clever solution!
Being the intrepid gadaboutdiner, I ventured a first bite. The beef tasted as if it had been freshly ground. Very nice. Incompletely seasoned, though. Seriously incompletely seasoned. I did a quick check and noticed not one table had salt and pepper shakers. Very interesting!
(I'm thinking: What we have here is a food designer with serious control issues running a burger-and-beer place.)
The upscale "bun" was lightly grilled and had a strong sourdough taste. Quality bread. But it needed an equally strong, complimentary flavor to make it work.
On the Arugula Burger I ordered, that flavor was...you guessed it...ARUGULA. If you tune your brain to your "tastebud channel," you will realize arugula and sourdough are not complimentary flavors. Kind of like sour cream and peanut butter are not complimentary flavors.
(Please, don't assume I have no appreciation for arugula. Its distinctive, bitter-but-nutty flavor is especially wonderful mixed with other, milder greens in salads made with a sweet, fresh fruit component and a sharply flavored cheese. Yuuummmm!)
My gadabout companion, who had ordered the Marsala Mushroom Burger, said, "Well, another restaurant we can cross off our list" while he skillfully separated the beef and mushrooms from the dry bun and munched.
I brought half of my designer burger home. I DO HAVE mayonnaise, mustard and dill pickles in my refrigerator, and I think I'll do a re-design on my $10 burger and have a snack tomorrow!
I don't eat sushi. Tell me I'm crazy, but I love this place!
Aug 17, 2008
We reserved a front booth for the second meal we had at this sweet little PB nest secreted in a nondescipt-but-incredibly-busy strip mall. We returned, of course, because our first visit was so seriously swell.
Listening to the sounds of the welcoming interplay between the sushi chefs and the incoming patrons was calming compared to the stomach-disabling music we hear bleated and blared so often at other San Diego restaurants.
Every menu choice seems to sing out "Try me! You'll Like Me!" And you will. Especially the baked scallop dish! Or the baked sea bass! Or the "house salad!" (Which is an American menu-name for something totally unlike this "house salad"). The greens were the usual salad greens. The dressing, though, was delicately delicious, flavored with fresh ginger that appeared to have been pressed into ultra fine bits in a tool similar to a garlic press. And the ginger heat had somehow been calmed.
What I really love about Sushi Ota is: I could spend an afternoon here reading a captivating book. Every once in awhile, some activity might gently draw my attention away from my book.
And that would not annoy me!
Sushi Ota makes its own lyrical music every day. And plays it for its very lucky patrons.
I have a new RESTAURANT RULE #1: If, at the end of a meal, patrons return their plates to the kitchen with half or more of their contents intact AND the management does not question the reason, I won't be back. Because, obviously, no one cares about patron satisfaction!
I unwittingly made a serious error when I ordered the luncheon special, sea bass sauteed with mushrooms. It gave new meaning to the term "smothered in mushrooms" because the 2 generous pieces of fish were totally invisible beneath them.
The broccoli-summer squash vegetables were mushy, soggy, tasteless. And, for the very first time, I was served mashed potatoes in an Italian restaurant. They looked and tasted like instant mashed potatoes. I did not, however, see the box, so I may be very wrong! My better half says: "Don't count on it!"
The sea bass cum mushroom presentation curiously included a good heaping tablespoonful of fresh rosemary in 1 inch lengths. When I saw that, I assumed the fish was not fresh and someone was trying to fool me with the overwhelming and culinarily incongruous scent and taste of rosemary.
That was not the case, though. Fish okay! Everything else not okay! After five minutes of picking out the inedible rosemary, I noticed my fish was STILL swimming: in the generous amount of liquid given up by the soggy vegetables and the mushrooms.
I'm sure there are "specialty items" in which the kitchen excels! There must be because half of the tables were occupied and there was a pleasantly soft hum of conversation surrounding us.
We were not, however, aware of the "specialty items."
The charmingly-outfitted restaurant is in a residential/commercial area where repeat business would be crucial. (Chopahn, the wonderful afghani restaurant now in The Gaslamp, was previously in this space.)
My better half loves linguine with clams. He never leaves a morsel behind. This time, though, he ate only half his modest portion. I ate much less than half. No one questioned that.
