The Incredible Cheesecake Company &The Cravory

Stressed spelled backwards is desserts.

The Incredible Cheesecake Company (San Diego):

In San Diego, the are plenty of choices to go for desserts, you have Extraordinary Desserts, Heavenly Sent Desserts, The Cheesecake Factory, etc. If cheesecake is what you asked for, the above three do serve it; however, if The Cheesecake Factory might be you first choice because of its reputation in cheesecake in many cities, then you are mistaken.
 

Drinks

In San Diego, we have another fabulous place that also serves cheesecakes called The Incredible Cheesecake Company. The only way to live up to its name is to offer something incredible, which is why it serves only two things, coffee and cheesecakes. Some people may think cheesecakes are too sweet to eat by itself, which is why the owner decides to offer a variety of coffee to make sure you will have enough caffeine and sugar for the day. They have 34 drinks on their menu, only 4 aren't coffee.

Cheesecakes

Now, onto cheesecakes, they have 15 different kinds of cheesecakes on their daily menu, and an unknown amount of minimum of 20 flavors on special order. In my opinion, this place tops everywhere else that serve cheesecakes. The only downfall I can think of about this place is it doesn't serve anything else, like sandwiches or other "before dessert" food.

Price: $3.25 or $3.50 per slice, a pretty decent price tag for such extraordinary cheesecake.

Location: The neighborhood is kind of ghetto, and this place locates at a corner right after a bridge, which can be easily missed if you are traveling faster than 35mph. Parking is scarce because they are street parking, and most are already occupied by the local residents.

Within the restaurant: There are only 2 tables and 4 chairs in it, which means it is best to assume that you need to take your food home.

Address: 3161 Adams Ave
San Diego, CA 92116
Phone #: (619) 563-9722

The Cravory (San Diego):

Ultimate Chocolate Chip

If you decided to have a snack in between work or study, The Cravory may be your answer. The Cravory serves only one thing, cookies. These are anything but ordinary, the dullest cookie they have is a chocolate chip cookie. They called it the Ultimate Chocolate Chip, but even that is exceptionally good because it has "ludicrously large always-hand-chopped chunks of Guittard Gourmet Bittersweet Chocolate. To bring it one step further, milk and semi-sweet chocolates are added to seal the deal."


The rest of the menu is a bit hard to describe, so I will leave it to you to explore.

 Price: It is a little pricey; $2 per piece exactly, but you can mix and match and get half a dozen for $11, and a full dozen for $20.

Location: La Jolla Farmers Market (every Sunday 9:00am to 1:00pm) Hillcrest Framers Market (every Sunday (9:00am to 2:00pm)

KalbiQ (San Diego)

Regents-Nobel

Intro: Tired of having plain Mexican food, then it's time for you to try a fusion of Mexican and Korean food. KalbiQ is food truck that runs in La Jolla on weekdays and serves one of the best fast-food around. It uses Korean style marinated meat and blends them into traditional Mexican food, like carne asada fries, taco, and burritos. As a result, you get: bulgogi fries, short-rib burritos, and spicy-pork tacos. They also have kimchi burgers, and chimichangas, which is a deep fried burrito.

Location: It varies its location during mornings, and afternoons. It will usually be at East Gate Mall in the mornings, and starting at 4pm it will be at Regents-Nobel. The only way to make sure the opening time and current location is to follow them on twitter or facebook. Since they don't have a permanent schedule and location, so they will post their status prior they open. Because of the nature of food trucks, you will either bring it home or just eat it at the side of road, and be mindful of parking because it is nearly impossible to find a parking spot on the side of Regents' residential area.

Bulgogi Fries

Food: It's a very good experience if you are trying it for the first time because they added another spin to what you used to have at any commercial Mexican restaurants. Most of their food comes in a pretty big portion, so a single order would do just fine for one person. Unfortunately, they've stopped serving rice bowls and chicken, but nothing much is lost because the rest are as good. One other thing that's special about their burritos is they put fries instead of chucks of potatoes in them, and now with a purchase over $5, you will get a free taco.


Methods of payments: Paper or plastic is good here, so you don't need to worry about going to the ATM getting cash and coming back here.

Studio Diner & At Last Cafe

This week I will introduce 2 restaurants.

Studio Diner (San Diego):
This is actually one of those unless you have the intention to search for it or found out by someone; otherwise, this isn't a regular restaurant that you would spot very easily. First of all, this stands alone on the side of the street, and the size of its parking lot can only park 10 cars. The theme of the place is Studio, but you will only notice the theme due to the spot lights by the table, which they don't turn on..., but the food is amazing. We ordered a lobster roll, which contains 6oz of lobster meat in a small roll, a grilled portobello sandwich, and a Samson's Steak Sandwich with sweet potato fries, which is similar to a philly cheese steak sandwich taken to another dimension!

Lobster Roll

Samson's Steak Sandwich

Menu: Studio Diner has a unusual way in naming their menu. For example, breakfast is called First Shot the Day, salad is called Mom said, "Eat Your Greens," and wine is called Stuff You Drink But Not Drive With.
Price: It is a little pricy because the samson's steak sandwich costs $11.95, but it truely is a great experience in taste.
Hours: 24hours!!!!!
Location: 4701 Ruffin Road
San Diego, CA 92123
Phone #: 858-715-6400

At Last Cafe (Long Beach):

Bread Pudding

Brick Chicken

Interior

This is one of the MUST try restaurants in California. I was on my way up to LA last weekend due to Chinese New Year, and I remembered one of the restaurants Guy Fieri introduced on his show Diners Drive-ins and Dives, At Last Cafe is over at Long Beach, so I decided to stop by to have lunch. This is somewhat a ghetto area, and this is even harder to find than Studio Diner because this is smaller than the average size of McDonald's, but the food definitely doesn't match its appearance. Since its size roughly holds 30 people and most tables are 2 seaters, so this is a place for less than a party of four. I ordered a lamb shoulder, a brick chicken, and a bread pudding for dessert.

Lamb Shoulder

Price: moderate to high, depends on what you order the entree ranges $10 to $22, but considering this is one of the restaurants introduced by Guy Fieri, and the food have lived to its expectation, so I guess this will be a worthwhile experience for you too.

Awards & Newspaper cutouts over the year

Hours: Tues~Sat 11:30am~8:00pm
Location:

204 Orange Ave
Long Beach, CA 90802

Phone#: (562) 437-4837

Bibby's Crepe Cafe

CREPE(noun) - a thin light pancake

Infor: If you think you there is nothing good on UCSD's campus that's good to eat, then being on the campus on Tuesday's will definitely change your mind because we have a decent farmers' market next to Price Center every Tuesday. However, if you haven't been to the farmers' market, and you have no idea what to eat, you should aim for the longest line. There are 2 big giants at the farmers' market, one is Lemon Grass, the other is the almighty Bibby's Crepe. Whenever I go to farmers' market, Bibby's is my only consideration; however, sometimes it is very hard to be patient to wait for another Tuesday to come, so I decided not to wait for another Tuesday and head to its restaurant by the beaches.

Location: It's a nice area to go to because you have the beaches so close to you, but you decide to go on a weekend, you may be looking at a good 20 minutes around-the-block looking for parking.

Friendly Reminder: To find this place, it's better the Google Map this location rather than relying on your GPS before you decide to head out because this place doesn't stick out much and you get a lot of narrow streets and usually with busy traffics around this area.

Food: Savory and sweet crepe, they are both good, but depends on your mood. Some people only prefer eating sweet crepe, but personally when you are here, you can't go wrong with either.

On the left: Savory crepe with spinach, egg, and swiss cheese. On the right: pan fried bananas with rum, whipped cream, and a scope of vanilla ice cream.

Price: a bit pricey for a light lunch, I paid a total of $24 including tips at the end for two crepes. Comparing to the school's Bibby's, eating at the restaurants costs a lot because the savory crepes only cost $9, and the sweets cost $8. Furthermore, tips are "optional" since it's farmers' market, and the portion is twice as big, so it really is unnecessary to go to the restaurant. However, if you think your choices are limited, then going to the restaurant will triple your choices in both savory and sweet crepes.

Bottom Line: If you are a UCSD student who spends a decent amount of time on campus on Tuesdays', going to Bibby's should become a habit of yours



Address:723 Pearl St

La Jolla, CA 92037

(858) 459-0558

Pastalini

This week's restaurant is a not-so-far-away (5 miles) from UCSD, Pastalini.
As you would all guessed, it's a place for pasta and pizza. Pastalini is able to differentiate itself by having your pasta in a matter of minutes. It's a perfect place for lunch when you only have less than 45 minutes to spare, or may be even dinner, but you gotta be hurry because it closes early.

The other main reason you want to try it out is because you can customize your own pasta or pizza, a very similar environment to Subway. You first go up to th e line and pick the type of pasta you want then sauce, meat, and 2 vegetables.At last, they will cook it right in front of you at the end, and since the pastas are already cooked, they just need to cook the rest of the ingredients and add in the pasta and heat them up at the end, and all of these take less than 10 minutes.All of these are just $5.95, which is slightly more than what you pay for a foot-long at Subway.

However, if you feel like having a pizza for lunch, feel free to build your own. Same price if you order a small, but you the same great taste as you would for pasta. The only offset is to have to wait a a bit longer than the pastas since the pizzas are all freshly made you might to need wait up to 15 minutes.

Overall, I think this is an excellent place to have lunch on weekdays, but if you are thinking to go on weekends and hoping for any places to go right after around that area, the closest place you can find is the UTC Westfield. As for UCSD students, I would highly recommend this place if you get tired of dorm food, and don't mind to drive for 10 minutes to have an nice plate of pasta.




ADDRESS: 7190 Miramar Rd. Suite Ste 109 San Diego, CA 92121
PHONE NUMBER:  (858) 695-9779

First Entry

Whichwich? (San Diego)
Ever since two months ago, my girlfriend and I decided to try at least one new restaurant per week in San Diego. How do we pick the places? I would go to Yelp to look for any particular type of food we would like to eat and just try it out. This week I happened to have a craving for bread pudding, so Yelp led me to a place called Bread & Cie over at Hillcrest. However, when we get there, I begin to feel disappointed because first of all, they don't have bread pudding, and second, the environment just doesn't fit the food it serves, so we decided to take a walk around the block to look for other places.
After 30 minutes of walking around the block, we have come to a place called Whichwich?.

Overall this is just another type Subway, but with significant minor details.
First, which I found very interesting was the way of how you would order and customize your sandwich. You would pick out a paper bag with your choice of meat or vegan in one of these boxes, and then you would work your way down marking the type of bread, white or wheat, whether you wanted it toasted or not, and the ingredients such as cheese, topping, dressing and vegetables. At the very bottom you get to write your name

Second, you will find yourself stress free and you can take all the time you need before handing the bag to the register and pay for it, unlike Subway you usually have a line of people behind you waiting for you to complete your customization.
<----After you paid, they would clip your bag on this wire

Third, the interior is pretty interesting.

<----a 20-feet wall of paper bags with people's drawings.----->




Unfortunately, I didn't take any picture of the sandwich I got because we were to hungry, but this will also give you a reason to go down there and see for yourself. =D