Josh's Recent Activity
Chowhound Post
List of Shops in San Diego to buy cooking ingredients
Trader Joe's is OK for some things, it's kind of hit or miss. My favorite place for produce in San Diego is People's Co-Op in Ocean Beach. I think they easily have the best produce in town, nearly all of it organic. They tend to stock seasonally, though, so keep that in mind.
Trader Joe's is better for things like snack foods, IMO. Their selection is too limited to serve as a grocery store replacement.
Chowhound Post
lager or pilsner as smooth as boddingtons
They offer it because there's a demand for it. If a pub has a regular cask night, you want to make sure your beers make it in that rotation. Also, it's not really a loss of hop flavor, it's a diminished perception of the hop flavor. Obviously the context is key - if you're having a casual conversation with a brewer, I don't know that this would come up. If you mentioned that you noticed that the hop flavors aren't as bright (Sculpin to me is a good example of this), then they might mention it.
Nelson, to me, is a good example of a beer that suffers from cask vs. keg. The bright flavors of the Nelson hops are very muted without the normal CO2 carbonation.
IPAs on nitrogen I have seen at O'Brien's, the old Mission Beach Liars' Club, and Toronado. It's a very different experience, for sure. Toronado had an IPA from Hollister served that way, and it was really good - just not as hoppy as it would have been on CO2.
Chowhound Post
List of Shops in San Diego to buy cooking ingredients
Whole Foods in Hillcrest is pretty close to downtown, and would have the highest concentration of quality ingredients for a New Year's dinner. Downtown doesn't really have any good one-stop shops for that kind of thing.
Chowhound Post
Hole in the wall Joints- San Diego
It's a carnitas place. I only ate there once, and had a pork tongue carnitas taco. It was very rich, but the onion/habanero salsa cut through the richness very nicely. They have all parts of the pig available.
Chowhound Post
What is the hands down best restaurant in San Diego?
I just read through their menus, wow. And think about that price - you could easily spend more here and get much less.
Chowhound Post
lager or pilsner as smooth as boddingtons
I hear you, I just don't agree. :-)
While I like cask-conditioning for many styles of beer, I do find that for IPAs it does diminish some of the brighter citrusy notes, and, at least here in SD, brewers of IPAs typically are very choosy about the hops they use because they are going for a really specific flavor profile. Some of the flavors apparent in the local IPAs are startling - pineapple, peaches, mint - but those flavors are muted considerably from inadequate CO2.
I wasn't trying to suggest that Russian River or Brooklyn represented the pinnacle of brewing arts, I was merely pointing out that carbonated, hop-forward beers are made by some of the best brewers out there, without having the kinds of rank flavors seen in poorly-made hoppy beers.
Brewpubs are typically a lousy place to get a beer, I agree. My experience with them is typically poor, though there are always exceptions. Pizza Port Carlsbad, for example, produces almost uniformly superior beer.
Chowhound Post
What is the hands down best restaurant in San Diego?
Go to Kaito. You'll be happy, promise. (And you can bring beer, if you like good beer w/ your sushi)
Chowhound Post
lager or pilsner as smooth as boddingtons
You may prefer the taste of IPA on nitrogen, but that doesn't mean it's what the brewer intended. The brewers I know, to a man, always lament the loss of perceived hoppiness that occurs in cask conditioned and nitrogen-carbonated IPAs and APAs.
It's also important not to conflate this very real phenomenon with the audience that craves extreme beers. There are well-made IPAs with pronounced hop flavor where the hops aren't masking anything. It's an easy thing to say that some brewers do this, but brewers of the caliber of Vinnie Cilurzo and Garrett Oliver don't need to hide behind abundant hops. Pliny the Elder is an incredibly well-made beer, and yes, it is a DIPA. But a big part of that beer's appeal would be lost served on nitrogen, and the brewer is producing it with the expectation it's going to be pushed with CO2.
Lastly, I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "green" hop character - there are breweries making beers with fresh hops (literally pulled off the vine and added to the wort) that are world-class brews. I don't know where in the US you live, but if you're encountering a lot of craft beer that tastes unpleasantly grassy and soapy, then that's more a reflection of the quality of your local brewers than hoppy beers per se.
You can read more about this here:
http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques...
Chowhound Post
Italian-style Pizza in San Diego?
During SD Beer Week I ate pizza at Blind Lady a couple of nights, and was really pleasantly surprised by how close it came to what I had in Italy - certainly far closer than a place like Luigi. It wasn't exactly correct - the crust was a little too chewy, and not blistered enough around the perimeter, but the flavors of the sauce and toppings was good. I'm anxious to try Bruno, and Calabria whenever they get that going, but Blind Lady is a pretty decent approximation of pizza in Italy, IMO.
Chowhound Post
lager or pilsner as smooth as boddingtons
CO2 is a natural by-product of fermentation, and is what you get in bottle- and cask-conditioned beer. American beer bars may need to reduce the amount of carbonation they use for kegs, but using nitrogen instead doesn't really make sense, and brewers aren't brewing their beer with the expectation that they'll be served with nitrogen.
Nitrogen does provide a creamier texture, but it also diminishes hop bitterness. Nitrogen carbonated IPA (or cask-conditioned, for that matter) tastes insipid, with the hop flavor so diminished that you might as well be drinking another beer.
I guarantee you that the bars that the OP drank these lagers and pilsners in were using CO2 to carbonate that beer.
Chowhound Post
ISO yummy breakfast in SD area
Huevos Oaxaqueno at Super Cocina. Their chilaquiles are also great.
Chowhound Post
San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival
There is a lot of good wine and food to be had. Take a cab or a bicycle.
Chowhound Post
San Diego Closed restaurants from the Down Economy
I don't get why people rave about Waterfront. Commodity meat on commodity bread - what's the fuss all about? You can get that burger a million places - the only thing unique about it is the atmosphere of the venue.
Burger Lounge is a good-tasting burger, but what makes it special to me is that they use much better ingredients than your typical burger joint. So even if the burger itself isn't unique, the fact that it's made from good stuff is what makes it worth eating.
Chowhound Post
beer glass as a gift
Usually for serious beer geeks what you want is a glass that has something like a tulip shape - a narrower opening at the top as opposed to wider, and a place to hold the glass where the heat from one's hand won't transfer easily to the beer. The half-yard style is really more like a novelty that bars use to give frat guys the idea that they can get look manly by guzzling a large amount of low-quality macro swill.
The glasses the OP found on Amazon are kind of a textbook example of a good beer tasting glass.
Chowhound Post
SD: Small Bar
Great beer, cocktail, and whiskey/bourbon selection. I haven't eaten many meals there, but I have had their Tallgrass burgers and enjoyed them.
Chowhound Post
beer glass as a gift
The set of glasses you found on Amazon are nicer than the freebies you get in gift packages.
Chowhound Post
Pizzeria Bruno Napoletano -- San Diego
Are they open for lunch?
Chowhound Post
San Diego Gaslamp- Where to Eat/Drink
This will probably get deleted by the mods, but here goes anyway...
Once upon a time, downtown San Diego was essentially a no-man's land of tattoo parlors and adult-video booth places. It was pretty seedy, and was nowhere anyone wanted to go to spend time. Then in 1985, some serious renovation efforts began, culminating in the present-day "Historic Gaslamp Quarter". It's ersatz historic, though, a completely engineered creation of local developers and the tourism board, designed to provide conventioneers a place to spend lots of money on mediocre food and drink, and local young people a place to feel like they live in a bona-fide city with active nightlife.
Of course, I'm also a pretty cynical person. ;-)
If you're staying downtown, then it's not a terrible place to be or anything - it's just not that interesting, IMO. I think there are other neighborhoods in our city that offer a more rewarding experience if you're a tourist - Downtown La Jolla, for example, which offers some legitimately good dining spots, beautiful views and parks, and art galleries with real art in them.
If you're determined to hang out in the Gaslamp, a good place for food and a glass of wine is Cafe Chloe on 9th and G (which is technically the East VIllage, and not the Gaslamp). In general, I think the restaurants down there are best avoided (with the aforementioned Cafe Chloe an exception) - they're expensive, and offer mediocre food at best.
Not trying to be negative, just giving one local perspective that a number of people here hold.
Chowhound Post
San Diego Gaslamp- Where to Eat/Drink
Somewhere other than the Gaslamp.
:-)
Chowhound Post
Framani Pancetta SD COSTCO - moved from California board
Guanciale is for amatriciana, pancetta is for carbonara. At least, that's what I saw on all the menus when I was in Italy.
Chowhound Post
Framani Pancetta SD COSTCO - moved from California board
Wow, that's a fantastic deal. Just paid 2x that at Whole Foods.
How large are the packages?
Chowhound Post
Mid-week, moderately priced dinner for 10 scientists in San Diego/Gaslamp
Yeah, it's never been very busy that I can tell. Miraculous to me that he's survived all this time.
Chowhound Post
Mid-week, moderately priced dinner for 10 scientists in San Diego/Gaslamp
$20/head at Chopahn is doable. It's vegetarian-friendly, too, and is reasonably quiet.
Chowhound Post
Mid-week, moderately priced dinner for 10 scientists in San Diego/Gaslamp
I've been to Chopahn and liked it. Not everything is stellar, but it's reasonably priced Afghan food and some of the dishes are really delicious.
Chowhound Post
Mid-week, moderately priced dinner for 10 scientists in San Diego/Gaslamp
Chopahn would definitely be my pick out of that list.
Chowhound Post
Best Mexican Vegetarian in San Diego
Mama Testa and Ranchos are good choices. Pokez is best avoided, IMO.
Super Cocina is also good - they will make anything vegetarian.
Chowhound Post
NYC Hound in San Diego
You'll want a car for Mexican food, the best of it is not near downtown.
Places to check out:
Super Cocina on University Ave. - homestyle Mexican cooking, very authentic. Dishes from all over Mexico's varied regions. Not a taco shop.
Mariscos German truck on University Ave. - Mexican seafood, stellar. Try the smoked marlin taco.
Aqui Es Texcoco in Chula Vista - Mexican lamb preparations.
