Best of San Diego?

Last night handsome and I went to the Best of San Diego Party in Point Loma. Best of San Diego? More like Mediocre of San Diego. I know we can be a little snobbish about food - it's hard paying money for meals that are so-so when we could pay half the price and do it twice as good at home. But we decided to go, have a date night out on the town, and hoped we would find some food that was good enough to want to go to the restaurant.

It seemed like everyone was offering gazpacho. Sure gazpacho is a nice meal in a warm area like San Diego in the summer, but a plain tomato gazpacho, no matter how much you dress it up, always just tastes like cold spaghetti sauce. (My friend, Heather, makes a watermelon gazpacho - now THAT I want to try.)

French Gourmet was passing out crepes with chocolate and an orange custard filling. I thought it was delicious! Handsome wasn't very impressed ("It's just a crepe," he said) but I thought it was worth checking out the restaurant at a later date.

Roppongi was one of the restaurants that was offering what I thought was the best thing there. They had a corn crisp topped with a spicy sauce and a layer of tuna. DELICIOUS.

The Cravery had cookies that were pretty great too. They had rosemary cookies with olive oil that were savory and sweet, and had red velvet cookies with cream cheese chips. YUM.


Nobu was one of the restaurants I was most interested in trying - they have a reputation and I wanted to know if it was worth paying the $$$ to go. Well last night I got my answer. They had a white fish glazed with a miso jalapeno sauce inside butter lettuce. Good? Yes. Worth paying the $$$ that I know it costs to go to Nobu? No. 


The strangest thing I tried was a piece of chocolate from Chuao Chocolatier. They had chocolate with pop rocks on the inside! Sure, it may seem like an interesting idea, but I was unexpectedly popping for 10 minutes. I like most fusion food but pop rocks in chocolate? That takes the fusion thing a little overboard.

The biggest problem with events like this and Restaurant Week are a lot of times the things that are offered are not normally offered on their menu, but made special for the event. That's fine - but when they offer the best of the best for these things, normal everyday dining at these restaurants just leaves you disappointed.  

We ended up leaving the event a little early. Waiting in 15 minute lines for 1 oz. pours of wine and mediocre food was getting exhausting. Handsome was lucky they music was bad because I would have made him dance the night away.

We finished up the evening at Starlite with friends. I love the bar - it's funky and mod and has a really relaxed atmosphere. The drinks and food are above average - nothing AMAZING but always worth the trip.