dining out San Diego-style 2

Saturday night and the place is jumping! That night we went to Blue Ginger. For the longest time, we could not find the restaurant. In hindsight, I wish we hadn't found it. We were excited at eating there as we thought that this was somehow affiliated with Ming Tsai's restaurant in Boston. It's not. When we got there, the hostess told us we had to wait at the bar and it will be a 15 minute wait. Strange as there were empty tables inside. We found out later the kitchen was catching their breath since it was quite hectic early on. The bar had a loungy feel with matching Asian lounge music - a pseudo-Buddha Bar at a much smaller scale.

And now the restaurant experience. I ordered a bottle of Zin in the red wine section of the list. As is customary in other restaurants, the waiter normally presents the bottle before opening. This did not happen. I saw the waiter open the bottle at their station. When he came over and was about to pour I said, "NO!". Horrors of horrors, it was white zin. I had to choose a different wine and then he almost opened it again without presenting it. It was a good thing he caught himself. For appetizers, we ordered barbecued pork and some combination appetizer. That was the driest, toughest barbecued pork I've ever had. I don't recall anything special about the other appetizer, it was just okay. We were laughing (what else can we do) at how bad both the service and food were. And then we get to our main course: Kung Pao chicken and shrimp and crispy duck with veggies. Presentation was zero. It looked like the kitchen finished cooking our meal and plopped it on a plate. The duck was undescribably gross. There was nothing crispy nor tender about it. It was covered with gloppy sauce that was overly thickened with cornstarch. The Kung Pao dish, though not outstanding, was at least edible. The white rice that came with our meal was okay. I would not go back even if someone paid me. Emmanuel and I usually like to re-hash our meals whether at home or out, but this time we wanted to completely forget the bad, over-priced Chinese food.