Tuesday, January 22, 2008

yakitori story

Yes, it was very warm in San Diego. Basically t-shirt weather. Pretty nice. The first morning we were there we headed straight to Costa Mesa (about 40 miles from downtown SD) to the Lost Abbey Brewery to get our special release Red Poppy brew and I thought I was going to get a sunburn at 10 am. I bought two bottles, drank one, and I might be a jerk and sell the other one on ebay. There are a couple up there already.Here's the barrel room at Lost Abbey. After that we headed to dim sum at Jasmine Seafood in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood. It was good, about on par with New Canton but with a bit less variety.
This is an ugly, blurry picture, but this was one of my favorite things. A huge platter of deep fried squid tentacles crusted with the spicy salt and interspersed with green onion and jalapeno. Very addictive. Another interesting thing we got was a "soup" of plain soft tofu in a honey ginger broth.
The room was GIANT, although once again my crappy photography does not capture that fact. Then we went to Torrey pines state park. It was pretty, but once you've seen Big Sur it's hard to get impressed. Nor Cal rules!
More stunning photography. I'm like the Ansel Adams of our age.
Whenever I see a fern grotto I snap it for MH.
Here's the real impressive view. SD is like heaven for beer lovers! Most exciting for me they have every kind of Cantillon. Packing all the beer we bought was quite an undertaking. My suitcase weighed in at 48 pounds, so I just squeaked under the limit.

My favorite place that we went to eat was a yakitori place in Hillcrest (a fun neighborhood to walk around). It is open every night until 1 am and is set up to get you pretty wasted, although unfortunately I drove so I couldn't go for the full experience. They had a pretty funny list ranking the favorites of the Japanese patrons vs. Americans, you can click on it for detail.My two favorites were the chicken liver and the pork rolled w/shiso, which was unbelievably rich and delicious.
We got the takoyaki, which was pretty good. That's a big lump of mayo.
This sign was in the bathroom, but I didn't see it until after I was done eating so I didn't try the chicken skin. Consequently, I do not have baby soft skin.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The beer picture is killing me from jealousy! We had the beer buyer at Whole Foods order us a few special bottles, but as for Cantillon he can't get anything but the one you bought there and a couple of others. He can't get the cuvee, which is one I'd like to try. Which others would you recommend?

Anonymous said...

The Cuvee in that picture (and I bet the one Becks recommended) is a Lindemann's, not a Cantillon & it might be worth trying to have them order it since Whole Foods gets the fruitier (and pretty soda-like) Lindemann's lambics so they can probably get that one. It's called Cuvee Rene. It's really great for when you want something sour & classic but not too insane. My favorite Cantillon I've tried is the Vignerrone but they're all fantastic.

This isn't even all the brew we brought back! We filled 3 suitcases. And man, the Whole Foods there had the HUGEST beer selection. It made me so frustrated knowing that they could probably get that stuff at the WF here but don't. It would be harder to sell that stuff here than it would in SD but it could be done if they had the right beer guy working there.

miller

Anonymous said...

How about drinking Vigneron IN a fern grotto!??!! Now that's what I'm talking about.

-MH

mt.st.mtn. said...

hey smills, just give us a list of what you want and i'll have the beer buyer at whole-paycheck order it. the las vegas wf had tons of belgians (unlike ours, which mostly has belgian "styles" from canada and the u.s. - the dude was really open to whatever, he brought out the distributors list and ordered everything we pointed to. wf had way better prices on westmalle and orval singles than bev mo too.

Anonymous said...

Is he making you buy cases? I ordered some De Ranke from Richard at Taylor's & I had to get a case (6 750 ml bottles). That's fine but obviously not ideal. That would be great to see a list of what they can potentially get. I'm obviously pretty stocked at the moment though! Right now I'd like to get my hands on more Jolly Pumpkin beers - a Belgian influencd brewery from Michigan. If they have anything from them, I defintiely want it.

miller

Anonymous said...

The buyer did not require that we order a large quanitity ourselves - he was ordering the beers for the store on our recommendation and will call us when they arrive. You also can order for yourself specifically though.

Unknown said...

WTF I want in man...

Im paying 20 Plus bucks for shipping for bottles.

Whole food where? Is this like a hook up thing? Sorry Im so spastic, im just thirsty!

I got 3 bottles being sent from connecticut right now and had to pay 48 bucks with 20 of that shipping.

Anonymous said...

Ansel Adams? I was thinking like, Anson Williams.

gyarharhar kiddin i wuv ya