Coming down from LA to celebrate my 40th bday and staying at the Pendry Hotel. What are some of the best dining experiences in the area?
Additionally, what’s the best steakhouse in SD these days?
TIA
Lionfish at the Pendry is pretty good, especially for oysters and some bar bites (like the pork belly BLT)
Gaslamp “Quarter”, or just the general area? I think you mean the latter.
If so, ipse’s suggestions are good ones, although I haven’t myself as yet been to Born & Raised or Cloak & Petal.
Reservations made for Cowboy Star.
Still looking for a non steakhouse dinner spot near the hotel. Biga closes too early and not looking for fake sushi.
Not far from that neighborhood is Kafe Sobaka for real Georgian food, which to my knowledge can’t be found in LA. I keep looking for an excuse to go to San Diego to get back there.
It is far, and really not convenient from Gaslamp/East Village.
Kafe Sobaka is in Golden Hill – a good 10-15 minutes by car, if not more.
The restaurants mentioned so far are easily accessible either by foot, or pedicabs.
Kafe Sobaka would require a car.
I would like to swim in the deep end of that pool. Kafe Sobaka sounds right up my alley.
El Jardin I believe is opening this week in Liberty station. I’m sorry I don’t know how far it is from the Gaslamp area. I have high hopes for this place as when she helmed Bracero, it was briefly very good.
Far.
I meant not far from Gaslamp as in a 10-15 minute Lyft ride.
It (and its semi-twin restaurant Pomegranate) are the only places I ate in San Diego that did something I couldn’t find a better version of in LA.
Wanted to report back. We hit up Cowboy Star for one dinner. We walked in to a full dining room and we may have been the only few guests under 60 years old. So definitely not a cool hip place if that’s what you’re looking for. Food is pretty standard steakhouse fare. Everyone in my party got the dry aged bone-in rib eye. It’s supposed to be dry aged for 35 days but none of us really tasted the funk of dry aged beef. Very good steak nonetheless. Also appreciated that the steaks came with mashed potatoes and asparagus. You don’t really see that anywhere from steakhouses of this level. Food was good but the service was sooooooooo slow, it was borderline painful. We skipped ordering dessert just because we didn’t want to be there for another 45 minutes just to have dessert.
Also managed to hit up Biga the next night for some neapolitan pizzas. Really solid pies they are slinging out here are very reasonable prices.
Thanks for the recs @ipsedixit!
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Cowboy Star was once a quite hip steak house with a young chef who was doing also a nice tasting menu at the same time. He left some time ago and worked at different restaurants in SD and his current job us actually heading the kitchen at Biga
Maybe there’s hope for the Gaslamp. A new spot, Huntress (very classy-looking gourmet steak house) at J & 5th, is set to open soon and it looks very promising. It’s across the street from Oceanaire, and just down the street from JSix, Water Grill, Blind Burro and Broken Yolk. There’s a concentration of worthy restaurants on or near J and 5th or 6th, that continues to grow. This sub-area in the “Gaslamp” is in the southern end and almost separate from the rest of the crowd on 5th.
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