Ruth’s Chris Steak House (San Diego – Del Mar)

For this year’s wedding anniversary, I suggested Ruth’s Chris Steak House. We’ve always enjoyed our past meals here and this one didn’t disappoint either.

When we arrived, we were led to a large booth that seats 6 people. I requested a booth when I made the reservation but I didn’t expect this! The host that walked us to the table sprinkled a handful of rose petals on the white linen table before he sat us down. I thought that was a nice touch. He wished us a happy anniversary and gave us our menus.

After placing our order for drinks, our server went over the menu with us since it has been a few years since our last visit. Not too much has changed with the exception of the specials menu.

The Mister decided to start off with the Tomato and Onion salad. Very nice start.

I had meat on my mind (that’s what she said) and since they had filet carpaccio as a special appetizer that night, I knew exactly what I wanted. The Mister and I actually have this deal that if we were dining out and carpaccio was on the menu, we would always order it.  Deal fulfilled.

I don’t know what the deal was with all those long cheese croutons, overkill if you ask me but they were tasty. I only ate one of them. The carpaccio was awesome. I like the little side greens and generous amount of shave parm.

Apologies for the quality of the remaining pictures. I was losing natural light and the flash made much of the dishes washed out.

For sides, we usually each pick one. I chose shoestring fries as my side. (eegad, that picture is awful) This was really good! Enough to share.

The Mister chose cream spinach. This was really good! A side of ketchup for the fries.

The Mister got his usual, New York strip, cooked to a perfect medium-rare, with the blue cheese topping.

I was craving a t-bone steak. Medium-rare please!

Uh, yeah. That t-bone was huge! I only ate about a third of it.

They usually have a set dessert that they give for free for anniversaries and birthdays but our server was really nice and let us choose whatever dessert we wanted. The Mister chose the Caramalized Banana Cream Pie.

This was just okay but the Mister was in the mood for some kind of banana dessert since we were talking about banana fosters. The bananas and cream were decent but the crust bowl that holds everything together was meh.

Nonetheless we really enjoyed our meal and made a vow to come back for another visit soon.

Ruth’s Chris Steak House
11582 El Camino Real
San Diego, CA 92130
(858) 755-1454

Lunch
Friday  11:30am-2pm

Dinner
Monday-Thursday  5pm-10pm
Friday  5pm-10:30pm
Saturday  4pm-10:30pm
Sunday  4pm-9:30pm

Triple C Luncheon

A couple of weeks back, I met up with Canine Cologne of Pink Candles at Ridgemont High and Cathy of mmm-yoso for some lunch and dessert. This is what I like to call the Triple C luncheon (me, Cathy, CC, get it?) Hmm, wait, maybe that really should be the quadruple C since Canine Cologne is really 2 C’s but Triple C rolls off the tongue better. Anyway…

We headed out to Miramar Fish Market (in Chula Vista) for lunch.  CC’s already posted a nice write-up (read it here) so I’m just going to let the pictures do most of the talking here. Here’s the menu board as you walk into the restaurant. The seafood case is to the right in case you rather take some home and cook them yourself.

Some crappy shots of the menu. You can see a better version here.

Compliments of the house: seafood consume (delicious!), chips and a variety of salsas and condiments

Seafood coctel (delicious! and what I was craving for).

And the main dishes (left to right): Culichis (shrimp in cheese and poblano sauce) and Filete Relleno de Mariscos (stuffed fillet).

Here’s a shot of the whole meal.

I really enjoyed all of the dishes with the stuffed fillet being my favorite. It kind of reminded me a bit of the frozen stuffed sole I used to get from Omaha Steaks. But this is way better than that. I was completely stuffed after this but it didn’t stop me from getting some dessert at Sweet Sisters Bakery and drinks at D’Volada.  I seemed to have misplaced the pictures I took but not to worry, CC has is covered in her post here. I was also able to get my chamango fix, hehe.  I wish I knew of a place north of 52 that had chamango. Or perhaps it’s a good thing I don’t know of one considering my obsession with them.

As always, I love my luncheons with my gal peeps. Always a good time, good friends and good eats. Dang, I’m craving those seafood dishes now.

Some Revisits

I’ve made a couple of trips to Chula Vista in the past month for some revisits. On one visit, I went back to Maye’s Dessert & Bistro (see the first visit here). This time, I got quite a few empanadas to serve as hors d’oeuvres with the in-laws for New Year’s Eve. Maye’s offers 1 free empanada with a purchase of 5.

Each empanada is carefully wrapped in its individual wrapper.

Looks all the same? No problem. They each have their own stickers too.

For savory ones, I got 2 each of Pizza, Carne Asada and Cheesesteak (yum!).  For sweet, I got one each of Mazana (apple), Banana Cream and Coconut Cream. The sweet ones were okay and we really didn’t care for the banana cream filling. Tasted a bit artificial.  I think the pastry for the empanadas is more suited for savory fillings.

Maye’s Desserts & Bistro
4240-A Bonita Rd.
Bonita, CA 91902

While in Chula Vista, one must visit Hogetsu, right? Here’s the standard box for a dozen.

This time I stocked up on the ones I like. I’m not sure why I got two of the mochi with the kinako (soybean flour) since that wasn’t a favorite but oh well. There are some lemons, oranges, standard pink and white. About half were white bean filling (my favorite), rest were red bean.

This time they had some new varieties that I tried. The bottom three are not like the other mochi but rather more like a red bean bun. They were cute but were just so-so.

And on the last quick trip down to CV, I had to stop by Mariscos El Pascador again because it was lunch time and I was starving! I got there before the lunch crowd hit so the wait was minimal. I had to get a gobernador, which I ate in the car (oo, hot hot hot!). I love this.

I also got a couple of fish tacos, which I didn’t eat until I got home. I really should have ate these in my car but I was in a bit of a rush. They were still good but I’m sure it would have been way better hot. Gives me a reason to go back, right?

Mariscos El Pescador
(In the parking lot of Toys R Us, across from the trolley tracks on Industrial Blvd and L Street)
1008 Industrial Blvd
Chula Vista, CA 91911

I’m so glad it’s Friday! Hope everyone has a terrific weekend. It’s going to be beautiful in SD!

Fish Boutique

 

Since Canine Cologne is always faster at posting our lunches than I am, I will let the picture do most of the talking for our visit to Fish Boutique. You can read her post here. Some pics from the outside.

Swanky!

And more swank.

Even the fish store side has swank.

As did our food. The fried calamari was really good. The “ragu” (I think that’s what the waiter called it) was different and pretty good.

Fish and chips done very well with three dipping options: ketchup (mostly for the fries), tartar sauce (I think it looks made in-house), and cocktail sauce.

Grilled tiger prawns with confetti rice (I can’t remember the exact name of this). Thank goodness CC and TC helped me finish this. Those prawns were huge and that’s a whole lotta rice.

We thought about getting dessert there but decided that we would save ourselves for our next stop.

Fish Boutique
9844 Hibert Street Ste G-10
San Diego California 92131

Brigantine – Coronado

A few months back, I had some free time and decided to drive down to Coronado to meet the Mister for lunch. Our first restaurant of choice was closed for lunch. The Mister didn’t realize they were open for lunch only on weekends. Our second choice was packed (it was still tourist season) and we didn’t want to wait. I was starting to get really hungry and threatened to chew off the Mister’s arm if he didn’t pick another place and soon. We settled on Brigantine since I didn’t feel like driving around too much. The Mister has been to this location a few times but a first for me. We’ve been to the one in Poway and Del Mar. This location had similar dark decor but the booths seemed a bit tighter than the other locations.

Our very nice waitress took our drink order and went over the menu with us. We perused the lunch menu a bit even though my stomach had started to protest loudly. Typically I would have ordered the fish and chips but decided to go with the fried catfish and oysters. I was mostly interested in the catfish but I should have just stuck with my first choice. I chose the rice pilaf and the bacon blue cheese potato salad as my sides. I really enjoyed the tender catfish, even though the fried batter was a bit thick and on the oily side. The fried oysters, however, was a huge disappointment. The batter was also thick and oily, but in this case making the fishiness of the oysters all the more pungent. I’ve come to realize that I prefer my oysters raw although I do enjoy an occasional smoked oysters on crackers. The rice pilaf was nothing exciting and lacked flavor. The potato salad was almost inedible for me. The blue cheese was too overpowering and the flavors just wasn’t working.

The Mister had better luck with his meal. He ordered a blackened mahi mahi that came with rice pilaf and veggies. The mahi mahi was fresh although a bit overcooked for my taste but he liked it. I liked the seasoning on it.

This experience is typical of our visits to Brigantine. The Mister usually enjoys his meal more than I. Never my first choice for a sit-down meal and I much prefer to sit in the bar and order appetizers. But I still go when the Mister wants to.

Brigantine Coronado (with other locations thru-out San Diego)
1333 Orange Avenue
Coronado, CA 92118
619-435-4166
LUNCH Mon-Sat 11:30am-2:30pm
DINNER  Sun 4:30–9pm, Mon–Thurs 5–9pm, Fri-Sat 5–9:30pm