Bernard'O

It isn’t much of a drive to get to Rancho Bernardo for us, but we don’t that often. Had a Friday night dinner at Bernard’O (where is it? Rancho Bernardo of course!) where the old folks live and dine. No disrespect of course, the area just seems to have the highest concentration of gray hairs. Again no disrespect! (I’m digging a hole here, aren’t I?)

Of course the 15 was moving sluggishly – so a detour on Pomerado seemed necessary. Not problem, they are right at Rancho Bernardo Road and Pomerado.

The place is a little budget busting if you go all out (we went half way with entrées, wine and a dessert for each of us.) My lovely wife (is that better than Mrs. Firefly?) had the Ahi Tuna – she loved the sauce that was drizzled over it and I had the pork chop – your pick the starch and sauce from a list of five each. Even in this blasted heat they had the fireplace burning away just in case you felt a chill coming in from windows – ah atmosphere! Overall a pretty nice place – comfortable room, although pretty open. They weren’t just too busy for a Friday night – but I see they do live music (?) a couple of nights a week.

Of course we saved plenty of room for dessert by skipping salad or an appetizer. (Plus we decide we eat enough frickin’ salads for lunch during the week!) Normally we might share a dessert but we saw two interesting selections: a chocolate pecan tart and a molten lava type chocolate cake. Both were good. But overall nothing quite overwhelmed us. Solidly a 12/20 as GAYOT suggests.

There is a French Market Grille nearby that I’ve heard a good thing or two about and might even be a little better - plus I think, open for lunch on weekends.

Blogstuffs
For a brief time (like 5 minutes) I tried the TicTac Blue (but it seems so familiar) template before settling on this one. I almost want to change to the plain old Minima but I see San Diego’s very own Alice Q. said this one wasn’t too hideous (I forget the exact comment.)

Meet the new blog, same as the old blog!

I thought I might wait until the blog (yes, My Very Own Blog, the very one you are reading now) was a year old (it’s coming up, believe it or not!) before I rolled-out a makeover but I decided that the old colors must go now.

So tada, welcome one and all to My Very Own Blog 2.0. Well, maybe version 1.1, it’s just a simple selection of a new template. Refreshing and new to me. Yay. But still vaguely familiar – I may be duplicating another blog I read? I might have to change it again. I had given some slight thought to introducing a photo banner but that will have to wait. I really liked doing my April Fools post so I think I’ll try to do a few of those this year yet – you’ll never really know if I’m being serious or not, but I’ll try to drop some subtle hints.

Upcoming eats
This blog seems quite incomplete since I haven’t been to some very well-loved San Diego restaurants. What am I missing out on? Bronx Pizza? Phil’s? Ba Ren? (sorry, or is it Ben Ra – I know it is Kirk’s absolute fav – I’m going to get there soon!). Also on the list to try just because are The Linkery (can you roll out the red carpet for me, Jay?), Spread (just because), Porkyland and maybe one more I can’t think of right now.

A recent eat
I didn’t bring my camera again, but I wrote about Miami Grille in Poway a few months back – I remembered liking enough so I’d suggest it every once in a while – so a recent extremely warm Saturday seemed like a good time to go back. It was nearing 10:00 p.m. before we decided we were hungry and didn’t feel like making anything at home… Enter the Miami Grille! Open until midnight on weekends!

Last time we went on a fairly cool evening (a Southern CA winter evening) and they were quite busy – to the point that there was a half hour wait. This time, at a later hour, they were mostly empty with just a few tables of people (some finishing up and a few more showed up while we were there.) And as a special bonus, in order to fully emulate the Miami experience they shut off the air conditioning for the weekend and set up fans. Or maybe the chiller broke down. Otherwise the space is real comfortable and inviting plus overlooks lovely Poway Road.

They have a variety of rum based drinks that looked tempting (and pretty attractively priced) but I got a Red Stripe beer. Delicious enough. We started off with a shrimp cake appetizer – it was served up with a couple of dipping sauces (wasabi mayonnaise and a soy/citrus sauce.)

The menu is really affordable (I think anyhow – maybe my price tolerance is out of whack – but I don’t think so) with most items around 10 bucks. They did have an extra menu of specials that had a couple of $18 salmon entrees – I saw one served to another table and it looked pants poopage inducingly huge. (You might be sensing on ongoing theme – and you are right!) I got a Cuban sandwich (under $8) which came with a mix of regular fries and sweet potato fries while Mrs. Firefly (ugh, I shouldn’t refer to her as that, huh?) got the Katsu Chicken ($10). I really liked the sandwich, the fries were fresh from the fryer and the chicken was a nice portion (but nothing like Da Kitchen serves up) and tasty.

They have UTC location opening soon or maybe it just opened so you don’t have to drive halfway to Ramona to eat there.

"Hot enough fer ya?"

You need some F words and S words to describe the heat this weekend. No other way to say it. Fantastically splendid? Nope, lets just try pants shittingly hot. Does that make sense? No, I guess not. But it is funny to write.

And like grandpa always said, it’s not so much the heat but the humidity! Damn muggy!

Picnic time
105 degrees on Saturday. Wow. One-hundred and flippin’ five damn degrees. And this is before noon. Ahh, luckily we had a company picnic set up in Mission Bay Park where is was a (relatively) refreshing 88 degrees. It was lovingly catered by Abbey’s Real Texas BBQ. Ribs were pretty good – not exactly fall of the bone stuff, but meaty and tasty anyhow. Add in chicken and all the sides (potato salad, slaw and beans) and you’ve got a pretty good summer time picnic. Yet, the sides were merely average.

Blogs
I’m really impressed how San Diego area bloggers keep it going with new posts. Lots of good foodie talk out there. Me? I’ve got bottom of the barrel scrapings. Yes, I might even say that the Bottom Of Barrel Dangerously Overscraped. Anyhow, a week or two ago I noticed that traffic to my site, yes, my very own blog had nearly doubled. Well, that got me to sit up and take notice. Do I want 12 daily readers? I’m stuck between, well, it would be nice if someone read this and oh, don’t read this crap.

So, I noticed something called the FoodBlogBlog had linked to me. And low and behold, it was run by our very own Tyler and Amanda Inc at What We’re Eating. Again, I say wow. Tons and ton of food blogs to work through. Thanks guys. I’m going to say this is the definitive list of all things blogging eats.

Weiners on the Grill

Well, not weiners but that great all-time American favorite, the brat. I kind of think of it as a Wisconsin favorite, but I think Johnsonville pretty much took it national years ago.


I grilled these beauties up over the long 4th of July weekend. No doubt these are a "once in a while" type of food, because of the high fat content and other junk. A lot of the fat drips out to get the fire going a little extra. I also tossed some boneless chicken breasts on the grill, the combo of the brat smoke gave the chicken a little special favor (mmm, carcinogens!)

Otherwise the 4th of July weekend didn't quite go as planned - so we didn't eat out as expected. Oh sure, there is always time for Punjabi Tandoor. And it's the lazy time of summer - it will probably be a couple weeks before I get another post out.

Of interest to those that don't read Chowhound, posters have a listing of local favorites in the What's On Your Rotation? thread.