I haven't been for some time but Nazca Grill had pollo a la Brasa which was not bad

We went there yesterday for the first time and the setting is really nice and it was a perfect day to sit outside. Somehow we ended up both ordering the burger which had good grass-fed meat and a pretzel bun but the addition of brie and tomato jam wasn't so good. The small side if salad was very fresh as were the (sweet) fries. The housemade passionfruit-chili lemonade was excellent. I wouldn't pick the burger again but some of the pannini and salads looked good and we will try them in the future. Overall much better than the current Green Acre place in the Campus Point Building (which is much closer to work)

Wholefoods has only a low turnover with their chickens and they sit around too long. They are quite good when very fresh. Their freshly smoked chickens (as some of their other in-house smoked stuff) are surprisingly good.

The difference is that fat and nitrates are known and "normal" ingredients of bacon everybody is aware of (without those you can't produce bacon). On the other side "ingredients" like sodium phosphate are not naturally part of any chicken but just added to increase the profits. In addition sodium phosphate is known to cause renal diseases and there are correlations between increased phosphate intake as food additives and higher mortalities

https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archiv...

Not much "natural" stuff left - sodium phosphate is normally used as a binder when a chicken is injected with so much saline (up 20% of its weight) that there a problems to retain all fluids and give the meat some structure. In addition they have to add spices to it to give it at least some flavor as there is not much left. This is some of the worst chicken you can buy.

If the basement grunge place has better food to go with the Artisanal Craft Beer I couldn't care less about the view.

I guess I have a different approach to new restaurants or restaurants with new chefs to give them the benefit of doubt and believe that they are good at what they are doing and I will enjoy the meal. Since I have seen many restaurants where the appetizers are great and the entrees are just mediocre and the other way around it is hard to predict with a new restaurant what is the best way to go and so it is my prefered way to order drinks, appetizers and entrees to fully get the whole "experience" to make a judgement if I want to revisit the any restaurant instead of making the decision on just an appetizer.

How is it possible to know yet that the drinks and apps are good and entrees not if the restaurant hasn't opened yet and has a new chef ?

part of the discussion was removed but my point was that a good view doesn't mean there will be any good food or drinks and a good view can't make lousy food better

Why should it be a good place for drinks and apps ?

Thanks everybody for a lot of interesting and helpful suggestions

If you go for the fish taco you should go for one of the Marisco trucks and order some of their tacos, e.g. smoked marlin, gobernador

There are multiple parking garages on 6th so that it is rarely difficult to park in the Gaslamp (even on weekends)

The overlap between excellent food and ESPN will be small or non existent. If the Kings have higher priority you will have to go for average (or below average) food

Not so much cookbooks but if you are interested in any aspect of food in general a few interesting books were published (and immediately bought):

Salt, Sugar, Fat (Moss)
Pandora's Lunchbox (Warner)
Cooked (Pollan)

But I also had to add two cookbooks to the list:

The Great Meat Cookbook (Aidells)
Sous Vide (Tzschirner, Vilgis) - This is a German book about Sous Vide which is the perfect compromise between Modernist Cuisine (very good theory but very complex recipes) and the Baldwin book (decent theory but underwhelming recipes). The German book has a good theory part but also very interesting but not too complex recipes. If the publisher would translate it into English it would be the best sous vide book currently available

Thanks for the reply. Days will be Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and I look at places most likely around 7-8pm. Steeps hills are not so much an issue and I would consider at least one mile easily within walking distance. It is a little bit hard to evaluate from Google maps if for example Cotogna is within walking distance and more importantly how likely is it to get a table on these days without reservation. So i was hoping people would give especially advice on some good restaurants where the chance of getting a table is good without reservations.

Anybody ?

I will be at a conference next month at the Fairmont Hotel. Since it is hard to make reservations when you can't really predict when the last conference session will end I am looking for recommendations for restaurants within walking distance where you have a good chance as a solo diner to get a table without reservation. I am open to any kind of cuisine from tasting menus to small ethnic places.
In addition I am also looking for good cocktail bars within walking distance

As long as you don't go to some taco shops You will mainly see variations on chicken liver at different restaurants, e.g. Cucina Urbana, Farmhouse Cafe etc. otherwise it is only sweetbreads, e.g. Cowboy Star, Urban Solace, Piatti. Everything else are often specials, e.g. recently duck gizzard at Cafe Chloe

As discussed in many threads on CH before (and also by many chefs if you talk with them and there is a reason why for example Cooks Confab is hardly doing anything anymore) ultimately the problem for any culinary development in SD is of course the limited culinary horizon of the overwhelming majority of dining customers. And I disagree that there is nothing wrong with chefs or restaurants ( and again many chefs say the same) - everything is fine as long as the majority of the menu covers well known ground, e.g. burgers, short ribs, flatbread, steak - the moment you step outside of these SD dishes a lot of things are wrong for chefs and restaurants in SD. And in this case it is like in every other business/profession some people are working in jobs because their main point is to earn money, some people are in their jobs because they have a vision/aspiration and want to have an "impact" - chefs with an own culinary vision tend to leave SD rather quickly beside very few exception

San Diego has access to great ingredients like nearly no other city in the US. San Diego county has the highest number of organic and non-organic farms of any county in the US but there are hardly any restaurants in SD who use this abundance of ingredients beyond your standard salad, (steamed) vegetable side dish, braised short ribs etc. There is an overlap of the items on the menu on most restaurants in SD I haven't seen in any city of reasonable similar size (including DC). The quality of a city regarding restaurants/food is for me defined by the breadth of different "types" of restaurants offering good to very good dishes which is less and less given in SD. And yes, good chefs come and go to restaurants in different cities but it is normally an equilibrium, in SD over the last few years it is just a brain drain (interestingly SD life science industry is experiencing a similar brain drain currently which started around the same time). Excellent, well known chefs are critical for the development of a "food city" as they are "allowed" by the customers to do more unusual, creative cooking without losing customers which then allows other chefs to do similar things. Those chefs help to "educate" customers about many aspects of different cuisines. ( You can see a similar (not chef driven) effect with Napolitean style pizza in SD - once one restaurant (Pizzeria Bruno) started it, educated customers and was successful many restaurants are doing the same style of pizza all over SD). There was a time about 8-10 years ago when the culinary scene in SD started to get some really interesting momentum and started to develop but unfortunately it didn't lasted lomg enough to be sustainable for various reasons. And you mention th interesting nooks and crannies, like ethnic cuisines but there are very few which are worth mentioning like Vietnamese, some aspects of Mexican and Japanese but again surprising little compared to many other cities of similar size. And yes, we should enjoy what we have but (and that is the point you are missing as you haven't been living for longer time in SD) the choices of interesting restaurants are getting significantly less and less over the last 2-3 years

Pizzicato has quite good pizza, they have delivery and gift certificates

Haven't been for quite some time but depending on the barista the espresso/cappuccino at E Street Cafe in Enciitas was quite good

The fish boutique in Mira Mesa (same mall as TJ) has closed. Sign says closed temporarily for renovation but for the last 4 weeks nobody is doing anything

The back patio of Jayne's gastropub is really nice. It's not the most romantic place close to a street but on nice days we also sometimes sit outside of Cafe Chloe.

"The problem is that our food culture in San Diego could shortly go to the opposite extreme where the burgers and brew joints will be a dime a dozen" - Shortly ? I would love to hear some your "pleothora of choices". Not that there aren't any but you can count them on two hands

"He didn't touch on anything new - burger angst, beer angst, chef angst, diner angst, crappy seafood, etc" - It might be nothing new for people participating on CH but Cur8eur has a different customer group where it might be news

"The good places will survive, the meh places will not." - I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions about restaurants in SD. Much more often the meh places are surviving because money is only willing to support absoutely "safe" proposals any longer which leads to just one main restaurant concept in SD.

Costa Brava makes tapas-like dishes but if you look for something similar as you have eaten in Spain better lower your expectations very significantly. Unfortunately it is still your best option in SD for Spanish food.

I guess we disagree, he sums up many similar discussions on CH - In theory SD has a lot of potential for a great food city with some of the best ingredients you can find anywhere but every talented chef who is coming to SD will give up after sometime and move somewhere else since there is no customer base in SD for any reasonable interesting cooking. The only way to survive in this city with a restaurant is by having the generic SD gastropub menu (burger, shortribs etc) with craft beer you seem to find in 99% of all non-ethnic restaurants.