Friday, July 26, 2002
Drove to San Diego. We took the 92 bridge to 101 north to 580 east to 5 south to 210 east to 2 south to 5 south. We stopped for lunch at some Carl's Jr. along the way where a stranger gave us the tip to take 210 to avoid a bunch of traffic. We took his advice and the 210 was all clear just as he said. Traffic was heavy when we hit Los Angeles around 4:00 PM—two hours later than we had hoped so that we could avoid traffic. Still, we got to San Diego at 7:30 PM—about 10 hours total, and within our expectations, given that I don't do well on long drives and need to rest often. Along the way we saw a fire right next to the freeway—a long stretch of dried grass was burning and emitting a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into the air, visible from maybe 20 miles away. Police officers waved slow-moving cars single-file through the smoke while firefighters seemed to have the fire under control. For a few seconds we were completely engulfed by the smoke and could see whole pieces of ash floating dreamily across our view. We felt like we were in an apocalyptic film of some sort. Later, near San Diego, we saw 5 hot air balloons in the air—there must have been a festival or special event of some kind. They were mystic and beautiful hovering over the landscape, and we'd see occasional bursts of flame from their gas tank spigots, encouraging physics to keep them aloft awhile longer. We got to Corinna's without incident, and we met her boyfriend, who is also named Patrick. He seemed friendly, smart, attractive, self-assured. We approve. We dined at Kemo Sabe (3958 5th Av), an Asian fusion and Californian and Southwestern restaurant. The place was packed. We had a bottle of Russian River Valley pinot noir and started the meal with roasted fried brie. My Patrick had the barbeque range chicken. Corinna had the chicken stack. Her Patrick had the sirloin special. I had the Alaskan halibut. The thing we remember most about this place is that the servings are huge, then made to seem even huger by piling lots of curly shavings of beets and carrots on top. HUGE! Four coffees, one creme brulee, and one chocolate hazelnut napoleon later and our bill for 4 people came to US$154.62 before tip. The portion sizes were unbearably large, and correspondingly the plates were so stuffed with food that it was unmanageable, for example, when trying to disassemble a range chicken because there was no free space available. My advice to Deborah Scott: trim your entrees to one half of the current portion sizes, then charge half as much. If she did that, I'd return and probably have a much more pleasant dining experience. A single entree here could easily feed 3 people! The dining room was quite probably the noisiest we experienced on our trip, and service by our waitron Angela was not memorable. However, we had great company and enjoyed ourselves despite the racket.