Just a couple of things for this "hump day".
Pho Nom Coming to Convoy:
I saw this when driving down Convoy, in the old Mr Moto Pizza location.
That drawing looked really familiar, so I asked one of my contacts, and sigh…yes, it's the Viet Nom – Formoosa – Steamy Piggy folks. I guess Convoy needs more over-priced, hipster-concept Vietnamese food, right?
I wonder if they're going to do that "get a free dessert for a Yelp review" which you have to show your Server before getting your freebie stuff?
4646 Convoy St. Suite 114
San Diego, CA 92111
Wooltari Premium K-Food Coming to Clairemont Mesa:
Now this one has me a bit interested. I saw this sign when I had to get some hard wood charcoal at Barbecues Galore for a recent revisit to June Lake (more on that later)
I know folks who do online ordering from this company. They do a lot of prepared, frozen, gourmet type Korean products. It'll be interesting to check out.
According to Google, they are set to open on October 3rd.
7420 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92111
And Sadly, Paragon Deli Closes:
Man, this one caught me off guard. Cathy sent me a text with this screenshot. This seems to have happened rather suddenly?
I know it was a favorite of Cathy's and while I only did one post on the shop, I had gone back a couple more times. I was meaning to return and get another Francesinha, but sadly that will not happen now.
Man, we recently lost Perry's; Tip Top is closing at the end of the month, and now this….. Quite sad.
2724 Shelter Island Drive
San Diego, CA 92106
This was interesting as in terms of flavor, it seemed to lack the sour vinegar tones. Though, I had to remind myself, when reading tomes like 
Anyway, in terms of the dish, the beef was really tough, and quite “metallic” in flavor. There wasn’t enough tomatoes to add a nice acidity to the dish. As for the papas fritas….well, I had to “dig” to find them. There were a few quite dry pieces of potato provided. In terms of flavor, this was slightly salty, lacking in the sour tones, with metallic tones. The rice was fine, though also on the dry side.
Well, for starters, the broth didn't have the "super clear" look of the previous two versions I'd had recently. There was some nice savory tones; slight pungency, it was a bit on the sweet-salty side. I was quite thirsty for the rest of the afternoon.
You can tell the broth wasn't overly thin as it did a decent job of coating the noodles.
I quickly set about tasting the different items. The soup was far from bland, but really had that "San Diego sweet" pho flavor. It was also high in msg as well.
One of the first thing that came to mind was the "Hu Tieu shenanigans". You know, the time I ordered the Hu Tieu Mi Kho and 
The Missus enjoyed the poi, it was nice and thick but not too sour. The lomi salmon was interesting; the Missus liked it, but I think it's because it was mostly tomatoes, there was hardly any salmon in this.
Not sure why a place of this caliber would be serving surimi in one of their dishes. But whatever. We enjoyed the crisp "scorza", but the filling was too sour and salty. We really couldn't make out much. So, I guess having fake crab in this really didn't matter, eh?
The exterior was nice and crisp, but the calamari was super tough, the glaze salty which over-powered the entire dish.
The A-5 Wagyu was fine, if a bit overcooked, quite beefy in flavor. And you know me, if there's foie gras on the menu…… The foie gras was also a bit overcooked, but at least it wasn't what we call "dog food". It was pleasantly livery and sweet. I'm thinking it could have been elevated even higher with a nice glaze.
As we figured, this wasn't an aguachile in conventional terms. It wasn't overly acidic, but quite mellow. Though I will say the seafood, especially the bay scallops were sweet and tender, so were the shrimp. Both of which weren't over-cooked and tough. The sweet and ripe avocado and the briny cucumber added another layer. But what clinched it all was the nicely toasted and salted sour dough, which was the perfect foil for the dish. Yes, it's not a conventional version of the dish, but we enjoyed it. We both wished that the octopus had that nicely toasted sour dough with it as well.
The highlight of the dish for us was the pillowy and warm pita. After that, well, everything was way too sour. Man, that chicken might have been ok, but the puckery-tartness overwhelmed things. Same with the green salad. Yikes, the sharp sourness just took over. Kind of a bummer.
Like before, the bowl was delivered with a huge portion of iceberg lettuce. The soup on the side looked like a bowl of water which had some slices of green onion fall into it. It was very salty and other than a hint of white pepper really lacked flavor.
First off; I quickly determined that the simple squirt of sate sauce over the beef was all that was provided. There was nothing at the bottom of the bowl of the bowl. This meant that it was difficult, nay impossible to coat the noodles and even all the lettuce evenly. The basil was nice and fresh; but still attached to the thick and basically inedible thick stems. Now, I can imagine having this on the side and then one would tear off the leaves as necessary. Heck, even at the top of the bowl like this is ok; but having that all to precious sauce squirted on it. The customer would have to reach in and tear off the leaves and get sauce on your hands?
Because of the lack of sauce; I ended up dumping the whole bowl of "soup" into the bowl to moisten the noodles; which kind of defeats the purpose of getting this with soup on the side? The noodles were decently cooked, nice and al dente, and the beef fairly tender, but the lack of the flavor producing items in the dish was it's downfall. 
Which arrived to my table steaming hot. The soup had a bit more savory tones this time around, but was again, other than being a bit heavy in msg was fairly plain. The noodles were on the crunchier side overall, but not bad. The char siu was lean, tough, and though it had some decent porky tones, lacking in the sweet-salty-savory profile of said pork dish.
From the funky, savory salted crab, to the deeply fermented savory tones, to the pretty hot chilies, this was very spicy and refreshing. Even better than versions we've had here in San Diego! To make things even more fun, this was served with pork rinds!