Food, Booze & Beds Archive

San Diego is awash with new and exciting restaurants. In Hillcrest, Café W is the creation of Chris Walsh, best known for his more than 15 years as executive chef at California Cuisine Uptown. Not only is Walsh a co-owner — his partner is Nicholas Meade — and chef, but he also is responsible for the interior design and artwork.
Café W features an affordable menu consisting entirely of small plates that may be mixed and matched as diners build a personalized meal. The cuisine is International with flavors and influences from around the globe, including Asia, Morocco and the Americas.

Walsh has long wanted to open his own place. “I think that when you’re a chef it’s something that you think about and dream of all your career,” he says. “I just started casually looking for a location and told myself that when the right one came along I would do it.”

Café W is located at 3680 Sixth Ave. in the free-standing space formerly known as The Lily Pad. The restaurant seats 65 inside and has additional covered patio seating.

California Cuisine fans should not fret a bit about Walsh’s departure. He left the restaurant in very capable hands. Michael Briley, who spent two years under Walsh as executive sous chef, is now heading up the kitchen. Briley, a young gun at 25, has created and added many new dishes to the menu and is enthusiastic about his new job. Give him a try.

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Also newly opened is Savor on Fifth, located at 3681 Fifth Ave. The wedding chapel-cum-restaurant is owned and operated by two Coronado natives, Drew McPartlin and John Paul Canton. After attending the Culinary Institute of America, the two went their separate ways for a few years, with McPartlin working in France, and Canton in Napa. Most recently, McPartlin was in the Seattle area working at the well-known Café Nola located on exclusive Bainbridge Island and Canton was working in Los Angeles at Café des Artistes.

The two met up back in San Diego a year ago and opened a catering company called Savor. Then they decided they needed a little restaurant to go along with their booming catering service.

McPartlin describes his fare as “wine country cuisine,” a melting pot of flavors using seasonal products and local ingredients. Savor has a beer and wine list with more than 100 choices. Food prices range between $14 and $30.

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Excuse me for being an early skeptic, but it looks like I was wrong about the Killer Shrimp concept. The third restaurant in the Killer Shrimp operation has opened in the Gaslamp Quarter at 653 Fifth Ave. The first debuted in 1988 in Studio City and the second in 1993 in Marina Del Rey.

The restaurant has only one offering, Killer Shrimp, or at least that’s what the menu says of its three dishes: shrimp in a spicy sauce over white rice, shrimp in a spicy sauce over angel hair pasta and shrimp in that same spicy sauce served in a bowl with a big hunk of sourdough bread for dipping. Killer Shrimp serves just one chardonnay, one white zinfandel and one merlot by the glass or bottle. It does offer three beers: Corona, Bud and Bud Light.

The owners are Los Angelenos Lee Michaels and Ricky Jasper. Although I haven’t tried the fare, I walked by and can report that the space is minimalist cool, seats 68 and has patio seating right in the middle of all the Gaslamp action.

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Up in the Golden Triangle, Harry’s Bar and American Grill is the new kid on the block. Located at 4370 La Jolla Village Drive (formerly Triangles), Harry’s serves authentic Northern Italian specialties such as grilled beef and fowl, fresh pastas and seafood. The bar serves classic Italian cocktails popularized by Harry’s Bar in Italy: the Negroni, the Bellini, the Tiziano, the Rafaello and the Ruggero. The first Harry’s Bar and American Grill opened in Los Angeles in 1972. The original Harry was Harry Pickering, who with friend, Giuseppe Cipriani, opened a bar in Venice, Italy, in 1931 called Harry’s Bar. Harry’s Bar and American Grill is operated by Spectrum Foods (Prego, Tutto Mare).

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Believe it or not, late last month Indigo Grill, the new Cohn Restaurant Group/Deborah Scott venture, finally opened. I attended a mock service night where people are invited to be test-food dummies. If everything has been going at least that well since, they should be off to a rockin’ start. Indigo Grill is located at 1536 India St. in Little Italy and serves dinner nightly. Lemme know what you think.

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Gaslamp fun and food fanciers should check out The Latin Room, expected to open this month. This 3,000-square-foot restaurant and nightclub in lower Gaslamp offers Mexican cuisine and Latin pop music. The Latin Room took over the final retail space available in the Royal Pie Building and is located next to Chive on Fourth Avenue. Ceasar Cortez, proprietor, describes the cuisine as Oaxaca and Puebla influenced, featuring steaks, seafood platters and a ceviche bar. Executive Chef Jorge Fernandez joins Cortes in this endeavor; you may know him from Cien Años in Tijuana. Look for authentic exotic real-Mexico menu items such as “Agave Worms” and “Chapulines,” which are fried crickets in a special sauce.

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Karl Strauss Breweries has hired Louie Frances Jocson as culinary director. Jocson is a graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and was one of the youngest chefs to be honored as one of the “Great Chefs of Orange County.” Prior to joining Karl Strauss, he was both operations and culinary director for the Newport Restaurant Group in Newport Beach.

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Last month The Wine Sellar and Brasserie was once again awarded the Wine Spectator’s Grand Award. The Wine Spectator recognizes fewer than 100 restaurants worldwide for having spectacular wine lists. This is the seventh consecutive year the Brasserie has earned the big honor. It probably had something to do with the more than 2,400 selections on the wine list, including many rare bottles. Although he had to cut short a guided tour he was hosting in France, owner Gary Parker was on hand at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York to receive the prestigious award in late October. Life’s a pretty good gig for you, huh Gary?

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It seems that every month I report something about Bernard Guillas, The Marine Room’s executive chef — this guy is everywhere. Last month he was cooking for Martha Stewart while she was in town on a press junket. Then I opened my October issue of Food and Wine Magazine, and what do I see but an advertisement for a Lincoln truck with a photo of Guillas posing with some kind of auto-shop tool and a stainless steel mixing bowl. The ads, which also have run in Gourmet magazine, feature Guillas, along with chef Danielle Custer of 727 Pine in Seattle and chef Tim Goodell of Aubergine in Newport Beach. In the photo, all three are in their toques, standing in front of a new truck holding auto-related apparatus in their hands. The headline reads, “Is it the ingredients, or the way they put it together?” I think that I can safely declare that Bernard is becoming our “pretty boy” chef, oh yeah. Now I’m going to start scouring my Food Arts magazine watching for Bernard in one of those “famous naked chefs with their blenders” ads where the only thing between the chef and the reader is a strategically placed Vita-Prep blender.

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On to hotel news. On Nov. 16, the La Costa Resort and Spa was purchased by the KSL Recreation Corp. The legendary spa and golf course is known worldwide for its hosting of such events as the Virginia Slims tennis tournament (which is now the Acura Classic) and its many professional golf tournaments over the years. The new v.p. and g.m. is Ted Axe. He most recently worked in Berkeley as v.p. and g.m. of the Claremont Resort and Spa. No stranger to this hotel, Axe worked as La Costa’s director of operations from 1996 to 1998.

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The Hotel del Coronado was voted one of the top 20 family resorts in America by readers of Travel and Leisure Family Magazine.

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The Hotel Parisi was rated No. 13 in the Conde Nast Readers’ Choice Awards for small U.S. hotels. More kudos for owner and developer Sami Ladeki.

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The Hilton San Diego Mission Valley has promoted John Parker to director of sales and marketing. Parker joined the Hilton staff in May 2000 as associate director of sales. Previously he spent seven years at the U.S. Grant in food and beverage and three years at the Hanalei Hotel in group sales.

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Finally Chris Cramer, president of the San Diego chapter of the California Restaurant Association, has asked me to encourage readers to “Give the Gift of San Diego” this holiday season. Help support local restaurants that have suffered great losses since the events of Sept. 11 by purchasing gift certificates from your favorite restaurants for your holiday gift giving.

Terryl Gavre spends her entire day thinking about what she is going to eat for dinner. She believes the world would be a better place if everyone worked once as a foodserver. She is owner of Café 222, Downtown, and can be reached at food@san.rr.com.