San Diego Bay Wine Festival 2007 (Part 2/2)

Dick's Last Resort. Pasta... I remember sampling this dish and asking Dennis "Is this only pasta?" His reply was that he had eaten the one tiny piece of meat that they had served on our sampling tray. As for the part that I did taste, the pasta was not that special.

The Wild Thyme Co. Miso Honey Martinis, H20 melon gazpacho shots and poke bites. This was one of the restaurants entered under the "raw food" category. We weren't particularly fond of any of these dishes. I couldn't stomach the strange pink gazpacho shot and thought the sauce surrounding the ahi was quite salty!

Baleen Restaurant (left). Pineapple and Thai chile glazed pork with buckwheat, bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, pineapple and mushrooms. Atoll Restaurant (right). Hawaiian braised beef short ribs. For a dish that was served in asian take-out boxes, this one was surprisingly quite delicious! This made our favorites list instantly as we dug into the tender pork, pulled out long strands of noodles, and nibbled the complimenting vegetables! As for the short ribs, there wasn't as much flavor in the meat as I would have preferred.

Brandt Beef (left). Indian spice rubbed beef carpaccio. Molly's Restaurant (right). House dry aged leg of lamb loin carpaccio, pine nut, sultanas, preserved lemon, local organic spinach. Neither Dennis nor I have really eaten carpaccio before but it definitely wasn't to our taste. What we did notice was that the beef from Brandt Beef was a bit icy, as if they forgot to let it thaw a little more before serving. We can't really comment on the food anymore with our unfamiliarity of this type of food.

Morton's The Steakhouse. BBQ beef burger with mayo...? Are you kidding me?! With all the fancier dishes out there, this one did not seem to be a good representation of a STEAKHOUSE. We took one bite of the sandwich and well... it just tasted like some kind of boring meat wrapped in bread, with only mayo to season it!

Jake's Del Mar (left). braised short ribs on a tiger shrimp couscous with a pomegranate reduction. Oceanaire (right). Seafood sausage. (three types of seafood) I've eaten at Jake's before and the food is generally tasty but the sample didn't turn out as well for me. Dennis and I, as well as many other guests we spoke to, loved the seafood sausage from Oceanaire though! It felt like a healthier yet still yummy version of sausage to me! Not to mention, it was wonderful that the chef and the servers were dressed from the 40's era!

Flemming's (left). Sirloin carpaccio fillet tenderloin with pickled sweet onion, mixed greens, striped beets, pumpkin oil and arugula oil. Esquire's (right). Chicken gumbo. I don't remember this one too much but now that I know what carpaccio is, I'm guessing that we didn't like it too much either. As for the gumbo-like soup, I felt like I would have rather had the jambalaya from the Taste of San Diego. This one was a bit lacking and I hardly wanted to eat it.

Gringos Cantina (left). Fillet mignon with a chipotle glaze. Clay's La Jolla (right). Tiger Prawn skewers with bok choy pine nuts red cabbage onions and a honey creole mustard. The beef from Gringos tasted tough and did not have much flavor in it, other than the sauce around it. In fact, the picture looks similar to a brownie or something! The tiger prawn skewers were definitely one of our favorites of the day. We absolutely loved the robust flavor of the bacon penetrating into the shrimp. The shrimp sauce was a little too sweet for my taste though.

California Cuisine (left). Tea sandwich with a sweet potato brios fougra taurine apple compote arugula candy kumquats. Sally's Restaurant (right). Something with Salmon. The tea sandwich was definitely something new that we had never tasted before and was quite on our 'dislike' side of foods. It tasted too sweet and fell all over the place as we ate it. As for the salmon dish, this one must have been decent because I remember helping to clean off the plate.

Chive (left). Szechwan peppercorn dusted duroc pork tenderloin with Japanese cabbage cake fuji apple compote black bean preserve. Moondoggies (right). Shrimp ceviche and chips. We were thrilled with the shrimp ceviche here! It were fantastic!

Bondi. Australian lamb cutlet with apple mandate chutney and rose beet and green bean salad with goat cheese dressing. This one was easily among our favorites. Lamb, in our experience, seems easy to mess up but this one turned out splendid! We nibbled every tasty morsel off the bone.

Beach City Market. Backed mussels with cavier and crab meat. I don't eat mussels too often but the overall taste was decent to me.

Beach City Market (left). Smoked mussel with salsa fresca and Maui onion. Mediterranean Bar and Grill (right). Salmon roulade, has goat cheese smoked salmon capers mayer lemon and micro arugula. I wasn't as much of a fan for the smoked mussel dish. We also ate food from Buster's Beach House, but forgot to take a photo of it. It looks like the food from last year's festival. Dennis remembers the coconut rice the most.

Quarter Kitchen. Caviar taco. We somehow missed the caviar taco booth the first time around but when we arrived a bit after 3pm, the food was already out! The chef did pull out a hidden sample in an ornate holder from under some napkins but he didn't let us have a taste! We'll just have to imagine that it was wonderful and that we would be able to sample them next year.