San Diego is where fish tacos first got popular in this country; the city and its surroundings remain a treasure trove of fish taco shacks and restaurants. It’s a great city for breakfast, in the grand old coffee shop called Hob Nob Hill or the breezy LaJolla cafe called The Cottage, where the granola is legendary and freshly-baked pastries perfume the tables. This city’s burgers are notable for being beautifully dressed; they are especially big down in Ocean Beach at Hodad’s, where they come heaped with a salad’s worth of garnishes and are served with milk shakes thick enough to defy any straw. Being just a short drive from Baja California (where fish tacos came from), San Diego boasts great Mexican food, including magnificent tacos at La Fachada and mighty California burritos at Papas & Tacos Mexican Food.
In the kitchen of RUBIO'S BAJA GRILL in La Jolla Village Square, north of San Diego, Ralph Rubio lifts a soft, steaming corn tortilla off the griddle. "Look how...
Embroidered bywords on a sampler on the wall of Hob Nos Hill offer this assurance: "Pleasures In Life Are Few, One of Ours Is Serving You." There isn't a...
Pacific Beach, San Diego, California, Thursday, 11:05 A.M.: Customers cluster at the door of Ichiban P.B. on Garnet Avenue, waiting for the eatery to open. (Ichiban is Japanese for...
Road trip from San Diego to Los Angeles The trip from San Diego up to Los Angeles County is only 115 miles or so, but with treacherous Southern California gridlock, the drive could...
Starting with refreshing smoothies in Laguna Beach, this Coast Highway drive leads to surfer burgers supreme, tacos by the highway, breakfast of the gods and the quintessential SoCal coffee...
Unique Regional Dishes After 40 years and 5 million miles spent on the road looking for America's best regional food, we've assembled a list of the quintessential, must-eat food in...
Southern California is especially well-endowed with significant coffee shops -- restaurants that are more polite than a diner but less formal than a linen-napkin restaurant. San Diego has some...
As breathtaking as a western sunset is, western breakfast can be every bit as beautiful. Sunrise never tasted better than it does at any one of these dozen breakfast...
Taco Take Over When we started hunting Roadfood many years ago, good tacos were hard to find anywhere other than the southwest borderlands and southern California. Today, great tacos are...
Airport Food Food in airports is better than it used to be, but when we arrive by plane, we can't get out of the terminal fast enough. By rental car,...
A Day in San Diego San Diego is where fish tacos first got popular in this country, and there are none better than at The Cottage up in La Jolla,...
Why is brunch so wonderful? One, it almost always includes adult beverages. Two, it's far more bountiful than either breakfast or lunch. Three, there's no hurry to eat it:...
Every diner, town cafe, and truck stop sells a hot turkey sandwich. A precious few are memorable and as delicious as the best Thanksgiving leftovers. They include plenty of...
Huevos Rancheros, which means ranch-style eggs, once was an exotic dish that U.S. travelers found only in the southern border-state cafes. With the burgeoning popularity of Mexican food --...
Granola first was invented in the 1860s (not the 1960s) and eaten by health nuts of the day. It was a severe dish made from nothing but double-baked sheets...
