Closed – Page 90

Pho Thanh Restaurant

March 21, 2007 mmm-yoso Pho, Vietnamese Restaurants

*** Pho Tay Do has closed, this location is now Pho DaKao and Grill

*** This location of Pho Thanh is now Pho Tay Do.

Waaaaay back in November, "NancyP" recommended the just opened Pho Thanh (it used to be Phuong Trang II), so it's about time I did a post. Sorry for taking so long, Nancy! And it might have been a bit longer if not for a conversation I had with the nice lady at the Dry Cleaners…yeah, I guess I'll talk to anybody about food.

The Dry Cleaner Lady recommended a few dishes at Pho Thanh, as well as the Pho. Both recommendations mentioned the very clean, and somewhat "stylish"(I'm quoting here) interior.

First thing we noticed were that the prices were a bit higher than what I'm used to, but on both visits the service was very nice…….

The Missus was in the mood for Banh Mi Bo Kho(Beef Stew – $5.95):

In fact, the Missus had the Beef Stew on both of our visits to Pho Thanh…which illustrated a very important point when it comes to these type of restaurants, the inconsistency, not in a bad way…but in a "life is like a box of chocolates" kind of way. On the first visit, the beef stew was full of very tender lean beef, which made the Missus quite happy, in spite of the rather mild(in a Bo Kho way) broth. On the second visit, there was a very large quantity of fat, gristle, and what made me happy, tendon! But of course this was the Missus's dish, and it seemed that the stew was on the thin side and very mild in flavor, lacking the flavor of the herbs and seasonings that we have become used to with Bo Kho. This stew was also lighter in oil content, and the portion size was on the large. To high lite both the serving size and the service, we were asked if we wanted, and got extra Banh Mi(baguette) with our stew. At no charge!

And, in what was a bite of a change(for Bo Kho), we were given a plate of "garnish" with every bowl. Overall, not the best Bo Kho we've had flavor-wise, but it sure had a lot of meat…….

The DCL (Dry Cleaners Lady) said her friend enjoys the Bun Mang Vit here, so that's what I ordered on my first visit(Bamboo and Duck Noodle Soup – $6.50):

First off, I enjoyed the way the duck meat was served, sliced and separate from the soup, covering a large pile of shredded cabbage, peanuts, and cilantro, along with a little bowl garlic nuoc mam cham. The duck was moist, and had good flavor. That is not to say that there was no duck flavor in the soup:

The neck and bony parts of the duck could be found in the broth. Also, unlike many bowls of Bun Mang Vit, the bamboo had been rehydrated, and was very tender. Still, I thought the broth to be on the weak side, and the portion of bamboo to be on the skimpy side. Still, I think it's my second favorite bowl of Bun Mang Vit so far…I still enjoy the more "rustic" version at Chinese Kitchen more. If you don't enjoy the strong flavor of bamboo, you may like this version of Bun Mang Vit.

Of course, I had to do Nancy justice and try the Pho. So on our second visit, I had the Pho Dac Biet(House Special – $6), quaintly called the "Super Bowl":

The bowl that arrived was quite large, and the garnishes had the largest amount of bean sprouts that I could recall. So let's get down to business here…. I thought the rare steak was cut too thick making it tough, and there was a severe lack of meat, other than a few meat balls, and one or two pieces of flank,(and no tripe!!!) in comparison to the huge amount of noodles in the soup.

The broth was very neutral, with no anise, cinnamon, clove or other seasoning standing out. In spite of the large amount of green onions, cilantro, and onions in the broth it was still fairly mild. If you enjoy a huge bowl of neutral, low oil broth, and a ton of noodles, this is your bowl. In fact, if you like to add "stuff" to your Pho, this is the place. On both visits we noticed groups of young people having Pho, and we watched them pour the Hoisin, Sriracha, and other "stuff" into their Pho like it was going out of style! One guy must've dumped half a squeeze bottle of Hoisin into his bowl of Pho…

And in case you think that there wasn't supposed to be any tripe in this bowl of Pho:

I will say that we had some really nice, efficient, and friendly service. Everyone was so very nice. If you're looking to have a bowl of Pho, or Bun Mang Vit, or HieuTieu, in a nice clean restaurant with friendly service, this might be your place…. maybe……

Pho Thanh
5296 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92105

Thanks for the recommendation Nancy! Sorry for taking so long!

Quoc Te 2 International Restaurant

March 18, 2007 mmm-yoso Vietnamese Restaurants

*** Quoc Te 2 has closed

You know, I haven't had anything for my "One Trick Pony's" category in a while…but then again, I hadn't been back to Quoc Te in a while.

Over the years, I've been to Quoc Te more than a few times, and have tried more than a few items on the menu. In what became a disturbing trend, I've found that the food has gotten steadily worse over the years, to the point that the Missus has given up on eating here. I'm not sure that I'm the only one who notices this. But then again, check out the cavernous dining room at 12 noon on a recent Thursday.

There is basically only one item I order here(though I've been told the fried rice is pretty good):

I order the Banh Cuon Dac Biet($5.95), which is quite a lot of food for the price.

On a bed of steamed rice flour rolls(think Cheong Fun, but more delicate) and bean sprouts, resides shredded pork(always on the dry side), Gio Lua(lean pork sausage), two slices of a sour sausage, four slices of a mung bean and shrimp cake(also usually very dry), topped with fried shallots.

It is a good amount of food….after all the Dac Biet(special) contains a little bit of everything that the other Banh Cuon dishes have.

There are up to six(I've had a few as 4, and as many as 6 – don't ask me why) rice flour rolls, on this day there were 3 types(I've had some different versions on occasion), one type with cloud ear fungus and ground pork, another with shredded pork, and the last with shredded dried shrimp.

I just realized this has sort of read like an inventory of sorts…but it's kind of how I approach this dish whenever I order it…."hmmmm, let's see what we got today…."

I pour Nuoc Mam Cham(Fish sauce based dipping sauce) all of it and devour the whole thing. It doesn't strike me as anything amazing or out of this world, but is very filling and refreshing on a hot day. Come to think of it, I've never had Banh Cuon that has knocked my socks off, but maybe "Friends of mmm-yoso" Beach or Billy can recommend somewhere, or even my good Blogger Buddy Wandering Chopsticks.

Until then, I'll just drop by Quoc Te whenever I want some Banh Cuon. Quoc Te has two locations, here's Annie's post on the University Avenue location, from Her Blog Green Beans in Writing. To the right is a photo of the listed "specials" in Vietnamese, I'm including a photo of the Chinese version below.

Quoc Te 2 International Restaurant
4344 Convoy St
San Diego, CA 92111

Time Change Brunch – European Bistro

March 11, 2007 mmm-yoso Buffets, European Restaurants

*** European Bistro has since closed. Chef Axel currently does catering only.

As is our "tradition" we had our "time change" Sunday Brunch. Only thing, this year we’re going to Daylight savings a month early, which not only caused a wave of panic within the various technology sectors, but totally discombobulated our scheduling. And so we were left at noon today, without brunch reservations. In cases like this Jim’s San Diego Sunday Brunchmaster site is a godsend. The Missus was in mood for something a bit "different", so she finally came up with European Bistro in La Mesa. And we were off.

European Bistro is in kind of a strange setting, a "store-front" strip mall, and you can park literally 3 yards from the front the door of the restaurant! Since we’d arrived late and with no reservations, the little bistro was humming, and it seemed like everyone was a "regular". Lucky for us, we didn’t feel like champagne, and so were able to sit outside, on the little table on the sidewalk. We kind of enjoyed sitting there, since it was such a warm and beautiful day…the only thing a bit disconcerting was the proximity of pedestrians walking by on the sidewalk(luckily there weren’t very many)….they could have bent over and grabbed a spoonful of spaetzle if they so desired. But let me tell you, the service was very warm and friendly, Helen and Chef Axel kept dropping by to see how we were enjoying ourselves.

The buffet itself is rather small with a dozen cooked items, a salad, a selection of sausages, cold cuts, breads. and cheeses, a soup, and several desserts. I also understand that the kitchen will whip up an omelet on request. Still, we enjoyed the selection….

For a typical listing and more info on the brunch, I’ll refer you again to Jim’s posting on His website. There were several items we enjoyed….

We both enjoyed the prosciutto, cold sausages, German potato salad, "home fries", and the green beans! Man, those home fries were really good, with onions that have been perfectly fried and caramelized. I thought the Frikadellen(ground meat patties) were very moist, but kind of low on flavor. The Missus enjoyed the Hungarian Goulash, but I thought it bland, and not full of the spice, onions, and other flavors I’m used too….. Still the meat was very tender and moist.

The Missus absolutely adored the green salad, especially the Raspberry Vinaigrette, to the extent of eating three plates of it.

As you can tell, we enjoyed the appetizers and side dishes, much more than most of the cooked main courses…but that doesn’t mean you won’t. Other main courses offered today was a tilapia, penne carbonara, and of course schnitzel(on the dry side).

The Missus also had 3 desserts, a slice of cheesecake.

And two slices of the Chocolate Cake(looked like a bundt to me), with Cherries Jubilee on it…..

As busy as they were, Helen always had time to stop and chat, and answer any questions. There is also a small "deli" case with sausages and various meats for sale.

Now here’s the "kicker", so this a champagne brunch, and you can get mimosas and the like, along with the standard orange juice and coffee(which the Missus liked)……for $15.95! Which we think is an excellent price. The restaurant is small, but very clean, and has a neighborhood bistro feel. And did I mention Helen was wonderful!

Now at that price for Champagne Brunch, combined with excellent service, can you really go wrong?

European Bistro
7097 University Ave
La Mesa, CA 91941

And don’t forget to check out the Sunday Brunchmaster!

Thanh Son Tofu – San Diego

March 1, 2007 mmm-yoso Desserts, Markets & Grocers, Vietnamese Restaurants

**** Thanh Son Tofu moved, then closed

We'd been trying to get to Thanh Son Tofu on El Cajon Boulevard for a while. First off, they are located a bit off the street with one of those psycho-free-for-all parking lots where people seem to define their own parking stalls and rules. In addition Thanh Son seems to close rather early, so I've missed the boat a few times, before we finally made it at about 1pm on a recent weekend afternoon.

We entered the large almost empty shop, and no one was around, and not much food either. There were many, many signs though!

Wow, so Thanh Son does Banh Mi? But I really didn't understand much else.

In the meantime, the Missus had struck up a conversation with a nice young man, who told us that they were out of tofu. In fact, they usually run out of fresh tofu before noon. Bummer. Meanwhile the Missus's short attention span had gotten ahold of Her and She had moved on, and was checking this stuff out.

A large variety of Che, otherwise known as "sweet soup", those very refreshing dessert drinks of which there must be hundreds of variations. These were $2.50 a piece which I thought was on the high side until I noticed a sign over the cash register.

Basically buy 2 get one free! Baaargain city….. So, the Missus hit the jackpot and selected Her Che. I'm not a dessert person, but the one She enjoyed the most had taro and slices of ginger in coconut milk, which I thought was pretty good. Unfortunately, there's no photo since it never made it home. Here are photos of the other two cups of Che the Missus had.

Come to think of it, these were 12oz cups…and were pretty large.

We also got some of the fried tofu we saw(10 pieces for $1.25):

After the Missus talked the young man into giving Her some samples(She is very useful sometimes…) we got the version on the left, it had onion, bean thread, and black fungus in it. Crunchy exterior, nice flavor, with just a touch of salt. The version on the right was a lemongrass tofu which we didn't think had as much flavor, nor the great texture. We were still a bit disappointed that we missed out on the tofu….

At this point, getting some tofu from Thanh Son had become a mission. My mantra became, "I'm going to get me some tofu…or die trying!" I got up at 630am on a recent Sunday, and made my way to Thanh Son. If there is one benefit to arriving at 7am, it's that I had my choice of parking spaces without having to worry about being blocked in. I walked into the shop and noticed three people hard at work making spring rolls and other items. Luckily the same young man who served us the other day was there; the other two people only spoke Vietnamese. I ordered two block of tofu($1.25/ea), and also an order of the noodles that looked really good.

The large container of the noodles cost $3.50, and was okay, just a bit under flavored for us.

Oh yes, and finally the tofu! Now due to communication problems, I'm not sure if Thanh Son sells a variety of Tofu. I was given two large blocks of firm tofu.

The tofu was quite dense, but short on the strong "soy bean" flavor I was expecting. The tofu is well suited for deep frying or various stir fries. I'll probably be back to see if other tofu products are sold. Till then, if you're in the mood for some fresh tofu, you know where you can get it.

Thanh Son Tofu
4616 El Cajon Blvd Ste 15
San Diego, CA 92115

Another not great meal-Japanese in East County-Tokyo

February 26, 2007 Cathy Japanese Restaurants, What Cathy Eats!

mmm-yoso is not on vacation. Cathy is blogging while Kirk is resting…or digesting…whatever.

Fortunately, Tokyo has closed.

Hi, I am back yet again, blogging about the good, the bad and the ugly. ..and yes, again, The Mister and I have had a lousy meal. But, lets be positive and start with the good. The hot tea is free. They have chopsticks on the table and don't ask you if you want a fork, even if you are Caucasian. Oh, and they have specials poster on the wall when you walk in, so you save $1 on some of the food.

There, that's over with. We used to come here a lot. Its in the same parking lot as the ATM of my Credit Union, and for being in San Diego's East County, well, its kind of 'exotic'. Its Japanese…sort of. Maybe we could call it 'working man's Japanese', if we were being polite.

I have apparently become a Japanese food snob…and I swear I used to really *like* this place.

Here are photos of the menu, if you think you might want to venture in .

We decided to try the Vegetable tempura appetizer ($3.95). Seemed like a good,safe choice, and not expensive. Wrong. Look. You can click and enlarge the photo. I just stopped using flash…I somehow knew this would be yet another not great meal. More of a pancake batter, not too light…but a good variety of vegetables: sweet potato, mushrooms, carrot, broccoli. Not great, not overly greasy…the batter was kind of heavy tasting/thick. It was cooked all the way through.

Then The Mister said we should try the Sushi Trio- a set of 18 rolls -9 for each of us ($7.95) three each of spicy tuna (no tuna flavor), cucumber (generic) and California rolls (made with the fake krab stuff). Pretty much a waste of calories. I am glad they gave us a big ole pile of freshly re-hydrated wasabi, anyhow…and, the rice was good.

We got one of each of the specials listed on the front board.
The Teriyaki chicken box with a piece of fried fish and the hibachi chicken bento box with egg roll. ($6.25 each, usually $7.25)…um…well, the chicken was…dark meat, boneless…that was good. The teriyaki was not sweet, not salty. It was…um… dark in color. The sides of rice, salad, pickled veggies were OK. The fried fish was mackerel, which I liked primarily because it was fried and crispy. The fish itself was ..um…not a great grade of mackerel and would not have been good as sushi in any way, shape or form. I ate the fried tail. I eat fried shrimp tails, too.

The hibachi grilled chicken was in a sort of maybe ginger garlic sauce…and, you know, just not good. The egg rolls however were more lumpia-ish and *quite* good, filled with chopped pork and crispy cabbage and veggies.

Oh, the food was not at all what I would call great…I do remember we got a curry here and liked it, last year or maybe the year before…and the soups and noodles used to be good. But basic chicken and rolls…they don't seem to be able to do very well. I don't know why they are still open. If you are in this area, just hop on the freeway and go up 125 and it'll turn into 52 to get to Convoy Street.

Tokyo Japanese 755 Arnele Avenue El Cajon 92021 M-F 11 a.m.-8p.m., Sat/Sun 4:30-8:00

Chopstix Too!

February 24, 2007 Vicky (SF Bay Area) Japanese Restaurants, What Vicky Eats

“Hi! This is Vicky posting about her latest meal. She is extremely honored to be invited by Kirk to blog on mmm-Yoso!”

I’ll do a quick short post since Kirk’s done a more in depth post on Chopstix Too already. My friends and I have always loved the ramen and crunchy roll at Chopstix. Ever since our days of being poor college freshmen at UCSD, we’d make our weekly trek out there to get the ever so elusive crunchy roll. In fact, my best friend J who moved back up north after we graduated, made a trip to visit me just for a meal at Chopstix. Most weeks, you’d find a bunch of us grubbing here after the gym. I love their combos that are still on “Grand Opening Special.” We stopped in earlier this week after running a couple miles at the gym.
I love the Crunch Roll/Salad/Edamame combo. I get to minimize my carbs and still get a really filling meal. H tried out their California/Crunch Rolls. In the past when we came with our friends A and H, they’ve ordered the Tonkotsu Ramen which is a bowl of ramen with the milky pork bone soup. That was also really good. The soup had depth and a lot of flavor.

Chopstix is out go to place for a bowl of ramen and Chopstix Too is where to go when you can’t decide what you want! Where else can you get chicken katsu AND crunchy roll for under $6!

Baby Back Jack’s Old Fashioned Broiler

February 20, 2007 mmm-yoso American/New American Restaurants, Burgers, Sandwiches, What Howie Eats - Where the Foodie from Foodieview Eats

*** Baby Back Jack's has closed

A few months back Howie, who does A Foodie's-Eye View of San Diego's Best Restaurants mentioned "Jack's Broiler" to me in an email, about a month after, Candice, who posts in Oh-So Yummy mentioned Jack's Broiler as well. So during a recent weekend, we drove on up to Hillcrest and dropped by Baby Back Jack's Old Fashioned Broiler(whew, that's a mouthful) for lunch.

If I remember correctly, this used to be a Yogurt shop. The interior of Jack's goes for a mild "retro-old fashioned" look.

And tunes like Earth Angel and Venus in Bluejeans flow throughout the restaurant.

The menu is small, but covers very familiar territory, with everything from Hot Dogs and Burgers, to Baby Back Ribs.

On this visit, the Missus went for the 1/2 of Jack's "Famous Wild Chicken"($7.95). Check out the "wild chicken"……

Basically, a roasted half chicken that is slathered with BBQ sauce and heated on the grill. The chicken comes with Coleslaw and one "side", in this case the Missus chose fries.

The Missus told me the coleslaw wasn't really that great, a bit on the sweet side for Her…but She did scarf it up. I loved the fries, which were the skin-on natural style fries, with a chili-garlic-paprika seasoning. The Missus thought the fries were a bit on the salty side…but I finished them all up. Never got a chance to use the Ranch-style dipping sauce that was provided.

The chicken was quite large, and the Missus couldn't finish it.

On the good side, the chicken was large, and the meat moist through and through. On the bad side, the interior of the chicken was still slightly cold. And though the dark meat had some flavor, the white meat was bland. The BBQ sauce didn't do it for me either, it had a bit of a neutral BBQ flavor, but had a weird aftertaste, and left a strange coating on my tongue. Overall, this was quite a bit of food.

I had the "World Famous Beef Dip"($7.95):

Just by looking at it, you know right away…this ain't no "Philippe's". First off the "roll" was on very dry side, and the meat looked kinda, well, "grey", and was dry and tough. I enjoyed the "jus", it was beefy, and not overly salty…I used up all the jus and the Horseradish sauce. I think this is a bit over-priced for $7.95.

On a side note…guess how much the soda pictured on the side is? It's $2, for one of those plastic 12oz cups. Luckily, refills are free, but if you're doing take-out, forget about the drinks. The two sodas I ordered put us over the $20 mark for lunch.

But still….I really enjoyed those fries…..

So I returned for lunch when I was in the area recently. And since you just can't order fries…I ordered my fries($1.95) with a side order of a Cheeseburger($5.50).

Thought the fries were not as heavily seasoned as on my last visit, they were still pretty good.

After ordering, I struck up a short conversation with the "cook", who asked me how I'd like my burger, and though I'd usually ask for it "medium", I just told him to make the way he thought was best.

The burger was delivered dressed with lettuce, tomato, and slices of red onions, cooked just a tad on the "well" side, but the meat was moist, juicy, and had a nice mildly beefy flavor. At first I thought there was too much bun for the burger, but the bread had a nice pillowy texture. I wish the cheese was melted a bit better. I'd forgotten to tell him to skip the "sauce", which was a Thousand Island style dressing, but at least it wasn't slathered on, and the sauce was very mild so it didn't interfere with the flavor of the burger. Still, I usually like my burger without dressing. Not a bad burger, it's not going to set the world on fire, but it's pretty good, not as good as some, but better than many. I'd have it again.

As I usually do for "What Howie Eats" posts, I emailed Howie for His input. Here's what he said; "My fries were my favorite thing about the meal. I had the ribs, and they were decent, esp for the price." So there you go….

Baby Back Jack's Old Fashioned Broiler
1290 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92105

Eat at Joe’s-if you dare!

February 19, 2007 Cathy Pizza, What Cathy Eats!

For very good reasons, Joe's has closed.

Hi. I seem to have just been having some awful days lately, along with some really bad meals. Here is a post about another one…

The Mister had a coupon thrust upon him at work for this place called Joe's Pizza. and the wording on the coupon is "Because life is too short to eat lousy pizza"…well that sounds like well, maybe they know they have some *really* good pizza…or they are arrogant.

Its the latter.
The coupon was for a meal of a large, one topping pizza, a rosemary chicken, a large salad and a 2 liter soda for $20. OK. Let's begin.

Well, you can't particularly mess up a salad. It was good, plentiful had chopped mushrooms in it, tomato and shredded mozzarella. It came with a good Thousand Island dressing.

The chicken. Small (that is a salad plate, not a dinner plate-see the box of salad next to the chicken?). COLD (as in, it was refrigerated cold). Tasty with rosemary, and with the salad made a nice SUMMERTIME meal. Too bad it was another night of quite cold temperatures, and was not hot with crispy skin I could munch on.

Then there was the pizza.

Looks OK, eh? Wrong. The one topping The Mister chose was sausage. It did not taste like sausage; it had no flavor, but it did have texture AND it was sliced sausage pieces, not crumbled like you usually get. The cheese was *sparse* and had no flavor. Oh and the crust…what can I say? Um…well, the texture was …chewy,cardboardy, thin, in a bad way, like the pre-made crusts you get from pizza in airports…AND it had no flavor…the sauce was without herbs and spices…not salty, not tomato-y…more empty calories…

This, combined with the COLD chicken (The Mister said he heard one worker tell another worker to make sure the chicken was hot when he was getting ready to take it for delivery) which was not supposed to be cold…oh this was so not worth it. You can try it, if you'd like, but I am pretty sure we won't go back.

Joe's Pizza 5583 Clairmont Mesa Blvd 92117 (858)268-0093
website

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Curry!

February 18, 2007 Vicky (SF Bay Area) Japanese Restaurants, What Vicky Eats

“Hi! This is Vicky posting about her latest meal. She is extremely honored to be invited by Kirk to blog on mmm-Yoso!

Hello readers! I’ve been a reader of mmm-Yoso for over a year now and it was probably due to this blog that I started doing Yelp.com last year. I found that maintaining a blog and doing posts took up an immense amount of time that I didn’t have if I were to continually update it. So after 300 some reviews on Yelp, I’m trying out my hand at this posting dealio. I’m still getting used to this so bear with me if my pictures aren’t coming out the best or if my meals don’t seem that interesting. So my little cousin is visiting from UCI, I drove up there to pick him up so I could feed a hungry poor college student for the weekend and we hit up all of our local favorite joints. Being that we’re both Curry lovers, we swung by Curry House tonight on Convoy Street (it’s in the same plaza as Nijiya and Shanghai City). It was our psuedo-Chinese New Year’s eve celebration.

A little background on Curry House; they are operated by the same corporation that makes the packaged cubed curry blocks that you can find at your friendly local Japanese supermarket, but somehow, the food here just tastes a bit better. I’m guessing it is due to the fact that they have an amazing deep fryer in the back and after all, they are called Curry House. I usually order some kind of katsu or fried shrimp… something about paring the crisp panko crumbs with the smooth curry sauce. Tonight, since there was three of us, I ordered a spaghetti dish so you wouldn’t get 3 different pictures of curry.

Cousin H ordered the Hamburger Curry over spaghetti, H had the menchi katsu curry (one of my favs!), and I decided to be adventurous and ordered the Tarako and Ika Spaghetti. Lunch at Curry House is usually around 2 dollars cheaper but the entrees don’t come with a side choice of salad or soup. So we all got the corn potage, which in essence is Cream of Corn soup, which was silky, creamy, yet spackled with the occasional chewy kernal to balance out the texture. It’s one of my favorite things on the menu, I think it goes back to my childhood when we would have corn potage on the cold nights.

One this visit, we did notice a that they added a new item to their menu – Stone Pot Curry, which in essence, is a dolsot-bimbimbap but with curry sauce. S said he would be adventurous and try it out next time. So after a short wait, our entrees came out. The hamburger in the hamburger curry was nice and moist, well flavored with the occasional onion in there. In essence, it was like a meatloaf patty sitting atop a bed of spaghetti noodles.

The noodles were al dente, which was a relief since I ordered a whole plate of it. I’ve found that asian places that offer Asian/Italian fusion tend to overcook their pasta. Thankfully the chefs back there knew what they were doing.

Here’s H’s menchi katsu curry over rice. The menchi katsu was the hamburger/meatloaf that was breaded with panko and fried. It was rich, moist and the panko texture was great against the curry sauce.

Lastly, my tarako and ika spaghetti arrived. Tarako is cod roe and ika is squid. It didn’t sound too appetizing on the menu but I figured since my favorite onigiri is the spicy cod roe flavor, cod roe over spaghetti couldn’t be too bad. I was pleasantly surprised. The ika was cooked well, tender and not too chewy and the cod roe added a nice salty texture to the overall dish. The spaghetti entrees are definately to be ordered with an open mind since they tend to have strong Japanese flavors. In

my opinion, this dish was a wonderful success, combining the cod roe with spaghetti. Service was pleasant, with the servers and busboys coming around to refill glasses and to check up on how we were holding up. With our bill we were given a frequent diner/vip card, which was 20% the entire bill for the next 4 visits. Nifty! 🙂

Curry House – Japanese Curry and Spaghetti
3860 Convoy Street #102
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 278-2454
Hours: M-T 11:30-14:30 Lunch
17:30-21:00 Dinner
F 11:30-14:30 Lunch
17:30-22:00 Dinner
Sat 11:30-22:00 (open all day)
Sun 11:30-21:00 (open all day)
Curry House Website

Ch Ch Chain/Franchise-Red Brick Pizza. Healthy and good.

February 15, 2007 Cathy Italian Restaurants, What Cathy Eats!

Red Brick Pizza has closed.

mmm-yoso is not on vacation. Cathy is back to blogging about what she eats.

Hi. You do know, I am merely researching everything in sight, for your sake. Sometimes The Mister and I go to Starbucks and get some beverage and sit and read for a while. There is a Red Brick Pizza in the same mall as one of numerous Starbucks on Clairmont Mesa Boulevard. This one is near the Registrar of Voters Office (one block east of it). I will admit we have been curious. There were coupons online, so…that clinched it for us. (click here for lots of coupons)

So, the concept is the old brick oven to cook pizza dough…and the Red Brick people have superheated the oven ( I would bet with ceramics) so that it will cook the dough at 1000° in 3 minutes… hmmmm…fascinating. I love the concept of superconductivity. We decided to try a medium Chopped Italian salad ($6.49), which included artichoke hearts as well as salami, mozzarella, olives, tomatoes, pepperocinis, Parmesan and croutons. The lettuce was mostly Romaine and stayed crispy. There was a lot of cheese and meat on the salad. Easily it is for two people and could be a meal in itself. The dressing was a very good Italian.

The Mister decided to try a Fhazani™…a creation of the Red Brick Pizza people. Its a Fire roasted gourmet Italian sandwich basically the fire roasted pizza dough, cooked with toppings and then stuffed with fresh lettuce, tomatoes and served with salad dressings (Italian and a Ranch) on the side…so you can top or dip. ($6.50)
As you can see, its cut in half and seems quite large. The Mister got just the basic cheese Fhazani™, so we could see how it was.
From this view of the open dough, you can see it was stuffed quite well. It was very different, the hot and cold and fresh dough. It was quite good. Unique and tasty.

The best part about Red Brick Pizza is…the Italian ode to dessert- Gelato. They have a selection of about 50 gelato flavors and make 12 different ones fresh a day. This is a one serving cup ($2.60) but with two flavors in it- coconut and green apple.
Both flavors were *so wonderfully* concentrated and rich. I know I will stop in here in the summer just got a cup, if nothing else.

They sell "Party Paccos ™- party packs: A Sides Pacco™ is $9 and has 28 bite size appetizers (Breadsticks, mozzarella breadsticks, and Fire Roast Toast™); The Pizza Pacco™ is five nine inch pizzas with any one topping cut into 20 slices and costs $30; The Salad Pacco™ is a choice of any two chopped medium size salads for $12; The Fhazani Pacco™ is a choice of five Fhazani™'s cut into 20 pieces and the Gelato Pacco™- $12 for fresh packed gelato. All of these Paccos™ serve 6 to 8 people

The "Italian party!" which includes the Sides Pacco, the Salad Pacco, your choice of Fhazani™ or Pizza Pacco and the Gelato Pacco for $60 seems like a great bargain (especially with the gelato)

Red Brick Pizza,website, numerous locations.