Twiggs has a Mexican chocolate cake that everyone was drooling over when I brought it for a party.

b/c we go to Vegas on a regular basis via SWA. And hit up the other good Taiwanese, Shaanxi, Hunan, Cantonese and dim sum places while we're there. :-)

China Max is Cantonese. Dumpling Inn is Northern style food, hence the jiaoxie.

Szechuan---Joo Goo in Vegas, near UNLV, is excellent.

FYI: it is not just "south LA traffic." There is an another whole county between SD and LA, called Orange County. It will take an hr from La Jolla to get to the southern part of OC (Laguna Beach/Costa Mesa/Irvine) without traffic and then another 45" into the LAX/West LA area. Add on traffic in all 3 counties and you're talking a 2.5-3 hr one way trip, easily. Unless you're into driving and sitting in traffic as part of your vacation, I'd recommend staying overnight in LA.

I hope you aren't planning day trips from La Jolla into LA and back. That is easily a 2 hr one-way trip, in traffic.

For Chinese, skip anything in SD and go to the San Gabriel Valley in LA. WAAAY bigger selection AND WAAAY better food.

If you're on your way to/from LA, the city of Artesia in Orange County is kind of like Little India. Better Indian and bigger selection of food than SD. We have maybe 2 that are decent and that's about it.

Do a search for "Mexican" on the board and trust Dining Diva's recs. A search for "BBQ" will also give you answers.

We have several good Japanese places on Convoy, in the Kearny Mesa area. They go beyond the "sushi" and "tonkatsu" type of fare. Do a search and you'll turn up the usual culprits. or go to mmm-yoso.typepad.com. KirkK knows his Asian in SD.

Since you have a kitchenette, the best and priciest place for produce is Chino Farms in Rancho Santa Fe. Cash only and bring lots of it. However, totally worth it.

Went there for dinner. Ok food but nothing to write home about, except that roasted beets and wasabi dip do not go together. Wasabi completely overwhelms the beets. All I could hear in my head was Tom Colicchio saying, "these don't go together."

Flatbread w/ roasted veggies and feta was what one would expect, no "wow" or "interesting" factor.

For their price point and style of food, I'd rather go to Tender Greens, which is cheaper.

Encinitas didn't appear to be frozen.

I am no takoyaki expert, but Yu Me Ya's are very light, with a good proportion of diced octopus. Definitely not frozen.

Payard at Caesar's for breakfast. They have a sit down and take out section. The sit down menu has really, really good food. If you're in a hurry, you can get their pastries, coffee, sandwiches and fruit cups at the take out counter.

glad you enjoyed Shaanxi Gourmet too! The Cantonese place next door is fairly decent as well. Congrats on your jackpot!

Thanks melee and Fake Name! I think we'll head over to Avenue 5. The menu looks like what we're looking for too!

Am considering going here for a casual business dinner and need to know how loud it is. Anything as loud as Fleming's or Urban Solace is too loud. I need to be able to hear my dining partners w/o asking "what?" a million times. Anything in the ball park of Spread, Mister A's, Tender Greens, Donovan's or Wine Vault (can deal w/ the echoes) is fine.

TIA

We have not. However, we have commissioned the local troops to check it out. It sounds really good. We had really good nieu ro mein in Lanzhou. The hard part was that they served us a full, traditional dinner first, then the huge bowl of noodles at the end. Made it harder to really enjoy!

I don't know and didn't think to ask. I was too busy enjoying all the food on the table. They have a lot of noodle dishes on the menu, which I am looking forward to trying on our next trip out.

I am glad we came here for dinner. We were very pleased with our meal and it looks like they've made some changes to the menu since they opened.

Pros: Menus are in English and Chinese now. Food came straight out of the wok (seared my tongue on a hot piece of eggplant) but all the dishes came out at the same time, so it was hard to enjoy them one at a time. It looks like the full menu is up and in full swing. We came w/ the locals who ate here within the 1st week of opening and they changed their minds about the food to a positive opinion. Place is clean, well-lit with an open kitchen.

Cons: They didn’t translate the explanations of the pita bread lamb soup or the lamb “sandwich” on the menu, which would have been interesting to read. All the food coming out within minutes of each other.

The usual: English misspellings on the displays on the wall (“steaed” whole wheat noodles)

Beef and ox tongue in chili sauce (appetizer)—was a combo of tongue and tripe. Nice chili heat with a dark, vinegary depth.

Cucumber salad (appetizer)—nice, garlicky and acidic. Cucumbers were crispy and fresh.

Seaweed salad (appetiter)—ended up getting this b/c they ran out of celery w/ dry tofu skin. Fresh, nice toothiness to the seaweed but lacked flavor in comparison to the tongue/tripe and cucumbers.

“Pita” bread in supreme lamb soup—word to the wise—this is a large, filling bowl and either share it with a lot of people or if you’re only 1-2 people, then don’t order too many other dishes b/c the pita soaks up the broth as it sits and won’t hold well as a leftover. Broth was subtly mutton-y in a good, soothing way (think of the Korean rice dumpling soups). There were little bits of tofu, cloud ear mushroom and scrambled egg in the bowl. Definitely add the hot chili paste and cilantro to it b/c they add a brightness and clarity to the dish that balances it out.

Shaanxi style handmade noodles--1.5-2” wide, fresh made rice noodles mixed with a dark, vinegary chili sauce, dotted w/ salted picked vegetables. They provide a pair of scissors to cut up the noodles, which helps serving it from the bowl to your plate. I am a sucker for fresh noodles and really enjoyed this. One of my dining companions got too much of the salted vegetable in one bite and said it was overly salty. However, I didn’t find this to be consistent throughout the entire dish and noticed that some bites were mostly chili sauce and others had the “hit” of salt and vinegar.

Stir fried cumin lamb—wonderfully cumin and onion-y, with slivers of green bell pepper to break up the deeper flavor of lamb and cumin. I recall a remark on Top Chef where they say bell pepper is hard to work with. In this case, it enhanced the dish and brought it a nice, bright bite to the lamb and cumin. I would be happy with this and a bowl of rice or a fresh piece of naan.

Fried potato, green and red bell peppers and eggplant—is not a spicy dish, which was fine, given the heat from the other dishes. Sauce was a brown sauce, caramel-y and savory. Came straight of the wok, piping hot and I proceeded to sear my tongue on a wonderful piece of eggplant. Potatoes were cooked all the way through. Only negative was that it was a tad on the oily side, but I only noticed this when we were putting it in the take out container.

Cilantro fish fillet soup—a very clear, simple broth, which highlighted the citrusy fragrance of the cilantro. Not many pieces of fish, which was fine, given how much food we already had. A couple of slivers of 1000 year old egg were thrown in there. For those who are into the Cantonese style of more complex soups, this would be a disappointment. However, I found it a pleasing palate cleanser and welcomed contrast to the heavier, spicier dishes of the meal.

Beijing yogurt—I’m guessing this is their version of lassi. I was hoping it would be similar to the wonderful, tangy “drinking” yogurt on the Silk Road trip we did in the past. Texture was somewhere between Yoplait and a thick lassi. I would have preferred it to be slightly thinner. Flavor was mildly pleasant but lacked the acidic tang of Middle Eastern yogurt.

Overall, a solid B+. We’ll be definitely coming here again!

+3 on Elizabethan. I don't like cloying sweet pies either and hers are the right balance of tart and sweet.

thanks! I'll report back if we manage to make it there.

+ 1. It's step above Panda Express and more expensive. When they first opened, I thought it was decent for Americanized Chinese. Then I went again and the flavors were very unbalanced and/or eh and quite frankly, I think Panda Express does a better job.

by any chance, will the waitstaff help w/ translation?

good to know the cold table was good. some locals I know deemed it "horrible" but could not articulate why they thought it was so bad, other than "what Chinese restaurant doesn't serve rice," forgetting that this is Northern/Western Chinese cuisine, so noodles and bread/naan/Chinese pita would be the carb, not necessarily rice.

has anyone been here yet?

honestly, there is no really good Chinese in SD. Rendevous is very Americanized. If you want da bien lo, Little Sheep is good enough.

Head north to the San Gabriel Valley (90" w/o traffic) for the best selection in S. CA.

KirkK's blog, already mentioned, is pretty accurate w/ reviews on anything Asian.

If you still need something good in the Asian category, there are lots of really good Japanese places around.

Jaleo at Cosmopolitan. Even better if you can get into e.
Le Mansion or L'Atelier at Joel Robuchon for an equally excellent, but different kind of dinner.

ok, I know exactly where it is.

I'd say this area has become a food destination. Taiwan Deli, aka Champion Noodle House, is across the street.

can you verfy that it is on Jones Blvd and not 3447 Red Rock St (which is what Yelp lists)?

TIA

thanks for the tip! I think we'll be checking this out in a few weeks!

will check it out, thanks!

No, not more upscale from Bouchon or Payard. Upscale from the Peppermill or Original Pancake House type fare. I'll check out the Verandah and The Bar.

hey, nice to see you over here!
been to Peppermill--I think we're going for a more "upscale" experience. :-)

Alright, where would you go for a great breakfast in Vegas or Henderson? We really, really love Payard and have memorized the menu by now but want to expand our horizons. We went to MOzen last year and were disappointed with the food. Scrambled eggs came out tepid, flavors were not developed, although the view of City Center and the decor were very, very nice.

Toying around with Bouchon or Bread and Butter but haven't seen any detailed reviews of the latter. Any other suggestions?

TIA