A brief report on a couple of good dishes we had in San Diego...
I had the rough task of attending a conference in San Diego last week. Left Tucson on Thursday morning and it was 19 degrees. Got to San Diego and it was absolutely beautiful the whole time. Cherie joined me on late in the day Thursday and we hit two really good restaurants the two nights we were there.
The first was called Island Prime and was near the airport on Harbor Island Drive. It was the perfect mix of steak and seafood and kept us both happy.
http://www.cohnrestaurants.com/restaurants/islandprime/
We had an Crab and Cheese Stuffed Artichoke stuffed with a Fontina, Parmesan and a little cream cheese (I surmise) along with lump crab and topped with bread crumbs. Stay tuned for a future blog where we will knock this one out. It was good but needed more spice and I would add a bit of lemon zest to give it some backbone as well. The turnovers at this place were fantastic. Cherie had the crab cakes and I had the Steak Au Poivre which was a bone in NY with a scrumptious red wine demi-glaze that our waitress revealed had a bit of bone marrow as the secret ingredient. It was really good. What a great idea to add what I assume was the marrow of a slow roasted beef bone and I will definitely try this in a future dish.
Great cooking is the accumulation of great eating, great observing, good questions and sincere listening. Foodies know one another almost instantly. If I ask the waitress a well placed question about how the dish was prepared and find out her ex is a chef and she loves great wine and food, I know I am on the right track and may press a bit to get keener insights into a dish. She sensed me yearning for the taste I couldn't identify and gave it up instantly.
The second night we went to Osetra in downtown. Upscale, a little noisy, very cool wine tower like the one they have in Mandalay bay. We started at the bar and Cherie had a "Watermelon Vodka Spritzer" and it was super good. The vodka came out of one of those big glass urns with spout at the bottom and it was filled with layers of fresh watermelon. The able bodied bar keep muddled a bit of fresh mint in the bottom of the glass, added the watermelon vodka and some soda water and voila...killer cocktail that drank like Vitamin Water but packed a punch.
We had a Seafood Napolean for appetizer; it is a molded roll type of thing with layers of lump crab, spicy tuna and guacamole topped with caviar and drizzled with wasabi oil...are you kidding me? This thing was so good I could have eaten four more and skipped dinner.
None the less, I had the scallops which were sweet, succulent and were pan seared and served over polenta with lobster chunks and tobiko caviar in a pomegranate reduction sauce. Good thing I didn't follow through on the four appetizer idea...
Waiter, Brian was great, we had the white wine version of the 2007 Duckhorn Decoy and I think this might be my new favorite wine with seafood. Crisp, well balanced with enough dryness and a little fruit. Mind you, I am not a wine snob, but I actually thought I smelled and tasted the honeysuckle. Perhaps it was the after affects of the watermelon vodka...not sure but the scallops with polenta were fantastic with the wine. I would go back to this place in a heartbeat and work my way through the menu on a quest for finding their best dish.
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