I don't think they've had ramen on the menu for a while now (it never made sense to me, either). The current menu on their website focuses only on tacos and a few plates (aguachile, cezar, etc) and is one of the best I've seen in a long time.

I would also add that a large part of BLAH's success has to do with its deep community roots. To implement your 5+ suggestion, BLAH would essentially turn its back on the community (i.e. families, groups of friends/neighbors).

Two questions:

1. How would you enforce that "house rule" of 5 or less?
2. What is your opinion of Pizza Port?

Use of the term "Micro Brews" constitutes automatic disqualification ;-)

+1

+1

They are no longer using Homegrown Meats. As I was told today by the owner, "[they] just won't bring the price down enough for me." They're currently using grain-finished beef, but I don't recall the source. O'Brothers should probably update their website.

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O'Brothers
188 Horton Plaza, San Diego, CA

I like that every comment is available in RSS, but I would love the ability to know who is speaking. Can you add the name of the author to the content of the RSS item, so it creates a bit more context?

Thanks!

Might also try a San Diego IPA for 4th, since many use hops that have tropical (pineapple/passion fruit/guava) and citrus (grapefruit/lemon/orange) zest flavors and aromas. Hop bitterness tends to accentuate spicy heat in food, which could create an interesting pairing with the habanero. Probably best to not choose a heavy, resiny IPA like GF West Coast IPA. Perhaps something like AleSmith IPA or Alpine Nelson. Might even work with AleSmith X.

As a sidenote:

Nitrogenated beer exists only to replicate the texture of cask-conditioned ale; it is not a natural process. The technique of pressurizing/serving beer with nitrogen was developed by Guinness in the 1950s/60s as an attempt to maintain the texture and appearance of "real ale" in beer that has been pasteurized for distribution in order to make it less susceptible to spoilage.

The major downside to this is that many flavor components are lost through the filtration/pasteurization process. You'll hear many ale enthusiasts in the UK wish they could go back in time to 1964 and try real Guinness.

Personally, I think cask-conditioning mutes both hop aroma and bitterness. I find that it lends itself better to beers with larger body, e.g. Russian imperial stout. Alpine Nelson is one of my absolute favorite IPAs on draft and in bottle, but on cask it loses its bright, sauvignon blanc-like aromatics and crisp bitterness that make it so delicious. Cask-conditioning sweeps its legs right out from under it.

That being said, I've had amazing imperial IPAs on cask, usually dry-hopped. Another absolutely delicious hoppy cask was 2008 AleSmith Evil Dead Red. But once again, that is a dry-hopped beer with substantial body.

Henry's seems to be the place. I picked some up from the Park Blvd. location.

I'll check Henry's. I've not seen it in any WF. I've also seen KA in Ralph's, but never the blue label bread flour.

Yes, but that's a pain in the arse.

Living in the Golden Hill / South Park area, I've found it remarkably difficult to locate quality bread flour. Anyone know of somewhere to get the good stuff, like King Arthur? Gold Medal just doesn't cut it.

Mobile Chow (m.chow.com) is effectively useless when coming from Google search results, since no standard Chow URLs are mapped and redirected to their appropriate place. All requests to chow.com from a mobile device are redirected to the homepage of m.chow.com. Very annoying. It effectively breaks the site when coming from any permanent link anywhere.

Chow should devote a little development time and make standard URLs (the ones crawled by Google) work. I end up just viewing Google's cached page, rather than following the link to Chow, since they're effectively all dead ends.

Remember, cool URIs don't change: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

:)

I'm currently looking for a new set of knives for my kitchen; Shun Classic are my strong preference. However, I am left-handed and my fiancee is right-handed, which creates a bit of a problem given that Shun Classic knives have a D-shaped handle that doesn't swing both ways.

No matter how much I love the Shun Classic, shelling out for two sets of knives just isn't within my budget. Does anyone know of a similar knife to the Shun Classic, with regards to balance, handfeel and quality?