Midweek Meanderings: Ready for Cowboy Beer Restaurant (????), Bun Bo Hue (aka Mien Trung) weather, and “Dirty Chip”

 Some odds and ends for "hump day"……

Cowboy Beer Restaurant?:

Driving on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard the other day, I turned on Diane Avenue, much like I did in 2003, and just like then, a sign caught my eye. However, I don't think this will turn out to be much like the restaurant wqe saw that day, which turned out to be Ba Ren. Instead, this place is becoming something called "Cowboy Beer Restaurant", really? Say it isn't so……

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Say those three words slowly, cowboy……beer….restaurant and try to make heads or tails of it.

After Ba Ren and before this, the place was a "Hunan" (please take into consideration the quotation marks) restaurant trying to disguise itself as a Sichuan shop.

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I actually visited…once. I tried to order some of the dishes on the menu, Steamed Preserved Meat and Suan Do Jiao Chao La, among others….no bueno….you gotta be kidding.

I ended up getting a mediocre rendition of La Rou Chao – the one classic Hunan dish they actually seemed to have.

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The preserved (smoked) pork – La Rou (waxy meat) was terrible. It had that slight camphor like flavor and the hard texture of something from a package. The stir fry technique was terrible, some of the vegetables were still raw…..it was also bland….very bland, which Hunan cooking is not!

Sad……

So now I'm sitting here wondering if a place called Cowboy Beer Restaurant will actually be an improvement……..

4957 Diane Ave
San Diego, CA 92117

Am I the only one glad the weather is kind of cool and gloomy right now?:

Except for the weekend after Thankgsgiving and one wet weekend, we seemed to have totally skipped winter. So I'm kind of glad the weather is cooler, with a chance of rain (which we really need). Much like the seasonal rain totals, my ramen totals are down this season.

I'm going to try to take advangtage of this….we started last night with some Bun Bo Hue.

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From you know where, right?

Mien Trung Restaurant
7530 Mesa College Dr
San Diego, CA 92111

Dirty Chip?:

So said the sign…….

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Man, this made me crack up. Two words….so many possibly implied meanings?

Hope you're having a great week!