Wilmar "not WILMER not OMAR" D.'s Profile

The Taco Fiesta California burrito was the most effective alcohol sponge for my inebriated insides after a fun-filled night at the neighboring JT's bar.

I've only tried this place once, but it was one of the most enjoyable San Diego burritos I've had in quite a while.  Go here now.

31 bucks buys you admission to all the shabu you care to shabu.  Not too shabu...

They start you off asking which broth you want.  In our party of four, one side of the table chose the spicy miso while my side went with the chicken ginger broth.  It smelled super chickeny, but in all honesty the flavor didn't get through the food all that much and it was effectively similar to water-based hot pot.  I don't mind, though.

Next they give you a fancy spread of napa cabbage, baby carrots, spinach, enoki mushrooms, one shiitake mushroom, a handful of udon noodles, and a little bit of firm tofu.  My favorite aspects of this were the udon noodles and the enoki mushrooms.  They basically took about 10 seconds to cook.

The main reason for doing shabu shabu, however, is the meats.  I started off with a tray of beef, then a tray of pork, then a tray of lamb, then a tray of beef.  My plan of action is to cook each slice individually then bring it back to my bowl.  After cooking as many slices as my little bowl would accomodate, I would take a break from cooking and start eating by dunking each slice in the provided sauce which I had added some hot chili oil.  A very straightforward and delicious operation, and I went through three trays without any hitch.

At first my capacity to eat as much food as possible was limited by my lack of chopstick dexterity.  I was getting hand cramps from all the cooking.  Whether or not it was a reflection of their service, the sometimes-lengthy breaks between new trays of food were welcome breaks for resting my hand.  However, looking back, I wonder if the time while not eating had contributed to my getting full faster.

My goal was to eat six trays - beef, pork, lamb, beef, pork, beef - but sadly I fell just short of completing four.  I may have to return for a rematch.

Oh yeah.  The red bean ice cream at the was a nice finisher.

Other things: nice place, friendly staff, easy parking, and they were showing the Manny fight on TV.

Lure, in its essence, is a cleaner, non-chain, better-tasting Red Lobster.  That's not an insult, i hope you understand.  It's just to help you get a good sense of the kind of place that Lure is.

Dinner is served with a basket of fresh sourdough rolls that come out super hot, crusty, and fluffy.  Delicious.

Our starter was the calamari, which came with two dipping sauces.  I just ate mine with a squeeze of lemon over it.  The batter was light, the calamari was properly cooked (i.e. not raw and not overcooked and rubbery), and the salt level was appropriate for a fried item.  Solid pick.

My course was the shrimp and fish combo, which comes with three fried Alaskan cod filets and two jumbo fried prawns.  The batter was the beer batter type and, like the calamari, was cooked correctly and salted appropriately.  The cod was super flaky and went well with their tartar sauce, which had lots of fresh dill mixed in it (awesome).  The winner, however, was the shrimp.  They were enormous and delicious, probably marinated in something that I couldn't quite pick out.  I wish the combo came with more than just two pieces, but I guess I'm being greedy.  I think that if I were to return to Lure, I'd get just the shrimp.

Overall this place is legit and it's probably a great place to take your significant other out for a nice dinner.  I wasn't impressed with their side dishes (sauteed vegetables tasted a little burnt and the coleslaw was underwhelming), but besides that, they've got a great selection of seafood and there's bound to be something on the menu that you'd be able to appreciate.  Cheers.

I went here a few months ago, so my memory is kind of starting to slip, but here's what I do remember:

1.) They sell sandwiches, and they taste amazing.

2.) Dutch crunch.

So I've been here about 5 times now.  Always been a good time.  Sure, every time has involved several bottles of Hite and Chamisul Fresh, but that's not taking away from the other aspects of Manna BBQ that make it a solid dinner choice.

First off, the A2 selection is what we go for, which runs at $19.95 a person.  That's a couple bucks more than that Jeong Won place up the street, but Manna is nicer looking, less congested, and you get served rather than having to walk your fat butt to the meat station.

Speaking of service, I never expect to find five-star attention at a Korean BBQ, but Manna does a good enough job getting us our banchan refills, grill replacements, and meat rounds whenever we need them.  And if it takes longer than our liking, we just click that button on the wall and they get to us faster.

I give this place a solid rating because their A2 offerings are exactly just what I need. I need a good chadolbaegi (brisket), some simple samgyeopsal (pork belly), and of course bulgogi and kalbi, all of which were seasoned appropriately.  The banchan is good enough (I wish they had those fish cakes though), and one specific side dish - the steamed egg - is something that one of my friends looks forward to the most when we plan to go to Manna.

As of right now, this is our go-to AYCE KBBQ for San Diego.  I'll update you if anything changes, but if you ask me, you can do much worse than choosing this place for your meat fix.

Having forgot to sign up for the shindig, I was lucky enough to have the lovely Sarah M. make me her +1.  And also almost missing it simply because it slipped our minds, we were double lucky to remember last minute and head down to East Vilage.

Having not been the model Yelp Elite these past few months due to my lack of activity whether on the threads, writing reviews, or even just perusing the website, our visit to Bootlegger was a nice reassurance that Yelp is still legit, the people are cool, and free food and booze is stupid to pass up.

We showed up past 7 PM so we missed out on some early mingling, so we had to play catch up and make quick rounds to say wussup to all of our friends we haven't seen since, well, the last time we went to an event. And at that point in the night a good percentage of our people was decently liquored up.  We tried to play catch up a little with that too, as I knocked back leftover 40's of Miller High Life (the champagne of beers) chilled in ice buckets.

My favorite freebie was the High Life champagne glass. We were allowed to take those, right?

The appetizers that went around were mostly legit too.  A crab hush puppy that was offered was more crab-cakey than hush puppy-y, which, if I had to make it myself and choose a direction to lean, would probably go that way too.  Basically crab cakes in hush puppy form.  Additionally, their shrimp appetizer was fantastic, as was their "Sloppy Giuseppe," which was meat sauce, cheese, and caramelized onion on what tasted like a King's Hawaiian roll. Bomb.

Great event, and I really should try and get out more often.  These things are fun, I remember.

I'm not a member of Crossfit so I have no place in my review to talk about how the workouts and how the community is here.  This is primarily about the facility and the weightlifting coach, Veronica Aguila.

The facility (I think they're called Crossfit "boxes") is large, spacious, and full of places to do pullups, jump roping, gymnastics, kettlebell swings, ball shots, and ring work.  This is all in addition of course to their Olympic platforms and racks for doing your cleans, jerks, snatches, squats, etc.   I also noticed nice clean bathrooms, 91X-style music on the radio, a drinking fountain that produced ice cold water, a couple of chalk stations with good old magnesium carbonate chalk for your grip needs, and very good ventilation with open doors and fans all over the place.  

There's also a sign on the wall that says "Drink the Kool-Aid."

Anyways, Coach Veronica is pretty cool.  She's been weightlifting for 6 years, and prior to that she did powerlifting for 8 years.  During my one-hour session, we were able to address my issues on the snatch, which were primarily staying tight at the start, keeping the bar close at the second pull, and dropping fast.  Most of the workout was snatch work, and I learned the muscle snatch exercise which was used to help me solidify that hip extension and keeping the bar path close as the bar comes up.   We worked a little bit on my split jerk, but I was so winded after doing snatch triples that we really couldn't go all that heavy with the clean & jerks.  But even at 50% weight, she caught some issues with my split and she fixed it.  

But speaking of being winded, this session was the sweatiest I've ever been doing just Olympic lifts.  I almost puked after one of my sets.  I felt bad for being so poorly conditioned, and I suggest to you all to work on your conditioning so that you can get your money's worth during your workouts.  Working with a coach is a new experience for me, and it's a great change of pace to work through the fatigue and have someone push you to the limit of your abilities.  That's what I took away from this coaching session the most.

I wasn't a complete beginner before meeting with Veronica (I've been independently practicing the lifts for about 6 months), so it's not my place to say that she'll get you to snatch 100 kilos with absolutely no experience, but if you're a person who has a foundational and working knowledge of weightlifting technique and just want to hone in on some issues, Veronica's a great aide.  Crossfit SoCal's also a pretty nice place to get your training in, as they have a crap ton of decent bars, lots of bumper plates (both in pounds and in kilos), and a weightlifting coach with the tools to help you add 10 kilos to your snatch.

The one thing I'll remember forever about this place is their burnt cream.  Who knew that topping a standard creme brulee with some banana slices would change everything?  I didn't.  Not until I had it.  Vanilla bean custard, banana, sugar, flame, done.  Cracking that hard banana-sugar shell with my spoon was the start of something magical.  Oh man I'm drooling...

I even had a conversation with our bartender about how he could eat a big cereal-sized bowl of it.  I suggested that they should make a food eating challenge with their burnt cream.  I'd definitely win.

Sure, guys, their lunch and dinner entrees are pretty solid.  The bar area is spacious and would make great happy hour get togethers.  And their calamari appetizer is probably one of the better calamari I've tried (and guys, it's simple - keep it light and season appropriately).  Yeah yeah yeah get past all that.  It's dandy, sure, but it's all about their banana dessert.

Okay, I could go on and on, but I'd only be keeping you from trying it yourself.  This is worth the trip.  This banana dessert is one of the best things I've evar had.  EvAR.

I had wanted to come here for years, so when I finally made a trip out here I had a level of expectation that I was somewhat worried wouldn't be met.  Luckily, a steamy bowl of Kohryu ramen, a large Asahi beer, and a side of geso karaage eased my worries.

Let's start with the soup.   The broth was full of meat flavor, and the floating green onions (both fresh and deep fried) played well with it.  In fact, the inclusion of the fried onions contributed a somewhat toasty flavor to the broth that was unique among my other experiences with ramen from other restaurants.  Nice work.

The noodles were common stock and cooked appropriately.  Nice and chewy, a successful familiar texture.

The egg, which both halves were supplied in the soup (win), was the star here.  Perfectly cooked to have that soft-yet-not-entirely-runny reddish orange yolk that you expect in those marinated eggs you see in ramen.  If someone hooked me up with a dozen of these in front of me, I'd inhale all of them in no time flat (and probably take a beastly nap from the calories).

The geso karaage (deep fried squid tentacles) tasted appropriately seasoned, not overcooked, and overall satisfactory.  Nothing super exciting, but it's okay.  They paired well with my beer.

In short, Kohryu's a solid place for ramen.  Among Orange County ramen it's up against other big names but it definitely holds its own.  One of my most enjoyable ramen experiences.   A for egg, A- for broth, and B+ for noodles.  B+ for geso, B for service (they took a little too long to get our bill).

Since Wendy's had left Mira Mesa Boulevard to make way for Santanas/MXN (DAMN YOU), AND had been removed from UCSD's Price Center (DAMN YOU x2), this has been the most "convenient" location for me, a poor entry-level Mira Mesa living college grad.  Yeah it's not super far from home, but it's enough to be "not convenient."

Maybe I take it back... the drive is not that convenient, but my wallet appreciates it.  A couple bucks can satisfy even my infinite appetite, with options like the Classic Double-Stack and Spicy Chicken Nuggets on their value menu.   If you wanna talk about VALUE, those items together will award you 33 grams of protein and cost you two bucks, which is probably better than McDonald's, Burger King, or Jack in the Box can do for you.

I wish this Wendy's would be open longer.  There's been a couple of instances where I'd drive my butt over the freeway for a late-night Double Stack dinner, only to be left empty-handed and empty-belly.