So, Friday was the anniversary of my mom's passing away. So, my BFF was flying in around 12, so we picked her up at the airport and headed out to Costa Brava, one of our fav restaurants. It's a Spanish tapas restaurant in Pacific Beach.
First order of business was one pitcher of sangria. We ordered it, and some water. Guess what the waiter didn't bring....water. Once again, I'm made to suffer because of my body's lack of ability to properly keep hydrated. I pretty much always need a water at hand. Always. I feel like at night I should be hooking up an IV because I don't wake up to drink water until I am so parched that my throat is all tight and it's hard to drink.
So, one of the things about Costa Brava, is that all the waiters are like native Spaniards. They're like all models. And they are charming. But on this particular day, this guy was american! And he was kinda pissy, like we were an annoyance and everything we asked for was a hassle. I don't know why. There were just a few tables.
Anyway, the sangria wasn't as good as usual. It was like drinking punch. So, my BFF decided on a whisky instead. It took about 15 minutes to get it of course, and I think we had to order it twice. So, then the food started coming out. My BFF is vegetarian, so we had to get some vegetarian things.
So, we got the cheese plate. By the way, everything is red because we were sitting on the patio under a red awning, so it cast a red hue over everything.
So, it was like an aged manchego and a medium manchego, some other maybe cow or goat cheeses with similar texture, and some cabrales and olives. Nothing really exciting.
Boquerones.
Now these were delicious. Sardine fillets marinated in vinegar. I could eat these suckers every day. It sucks that they aren't more readily available here. I love these! With some bread, and a little aioli!
Tortilla espanola.
OMG. This was awful. It was so thin, and mostly egg and overcooked. Such a disappointment. For some reason, they don't seem to do potato dishes that great here all the time. I don't know why. It was so bad. It makes me want to make one right now to prove that it can be delicious.
Morcilla.
This is good. Blood sausage. With sauteed onions. If you've never had any kind of blood sausage, don't pooh-pooh it. It's so good. This stuff, and the morcilla at Tropical Star are both really good. The blood makes it sweet and firm. Now, one thing, you want to make sure it's cooked all the way, and you want it seared crispy on the outside. If it's raw in the middle, I wouldn't eat it.
Octopus.
Yes. This was perfectly cooked. Oh man, such a better dish than the octopus cocktail. So yummy. So spanish tasting. So tender and toothsome. Yum. I love octopus when properly done! With onion, tomato and olives. It was some good shit.
Garlic sauteed mushrooms.
Just like it sounded. Unfortunately, we didn't really get much food for my BFF to eat, but she doesn't really eat that much when she drinks though. At least the aioli was delicious....
I gotta say, this was the most disappointing visit to Costa Brava yet. The cheese plate could have had more variety, the sangria wasn't the best - although we ended up having 3 pitchers, and pitcher #2 and #3 got better. I mean, the 3 items were really amazing. It's just, we are used to almost everything being wonderful here! Oh well....
Afterwards, I dropped my sis and the FP off to Small Bar to meet our friend, while my BFF and I went to get tattoos at Avalon 2. This was an adventure in itself. Our artist was a smartass Italian guy. He tried to make our tattoos too pretty, and we had to explain to him what we wanted. Mine was much easier because I just wanted my mom's name on my arm - although it took about 7 times for him to place it properly.
And the BFF wanted an anchor. (I don't have a final picture of it) He wanted to make it pretty with daisies. She didn't want flowers, but she would settle for roses. He had drawn a rope around the anchor and she wanted a chain. He said that was not possible because it wouldn't look right or something. So they did kind of settle on something, but there was this banter the whole time. The whole 4 hours. He took a while to do the drawings, that was a lot of the time. And he took a while to prepare, but that was okay. I prefer someone taking their time to ink my body than to rush through it, right?
So, after, we went to our friend's apartment to deposit my BFF there. Our friend was graduating the next day - valedictorian - from law school, and BFF was going to the graduation and then flying out right after. It was a short but eventful visit!
Costa Brava
1653 Garnet Ave
San Diego, CA 92109
858-273-1218
open daily 11am - 12 am
First order of business was one pitcher of sangria. We ordered it, and some water. Guess what the waiter didn't bring....water. Once again, I'm made to suffer because of my body's lack of ability to properly keep hydrated. I pretty much always need a water at hand. Always. I feel like at night I should be hooking up an IV because I don't wake up to drink water until I am so parched that my throat is all tight and it's hard to drink.
So, one of the things about Costa Brava, is that all the waiters are like native Spaniards. They're like all models. And they are charming. But on this particular day, this guy was american! And he was kinda pissy, like we were an annoyance and everything we asked for was a hassle. I don't know why. There were just a few tables.
Anyway, the sangria wasn't as good as usual. It was like drinking punch. So, my BFF decided on a whisky instead. It took about 15 minutes to get it of course, and I think we had to order it twice. So, then the food started coming out. My BFF is vegetarian, so we had to get some vegetarian things.
So, we got the cheese plate. By the way, everything is red because we were sitting on the patio under a red awning, so it cast a red hue over everything.
So, it was like an aged manchego and a medium manchego, some other maybe cow or goat cheeses with similar texture, and some cabrales and olives. Nothing really exciting.
Boquerones.
Now these were delicious. Sardine fillets marinated in vinegar. I could eat these suckers every day. It sucks that they aren't more readily available here. I love these! With some bread, and a little aioli!
Tortilla espanola.
OMG. This was awful. It was so thin, and mostly egg and overcooked. Such a disappointment. For some reason, they don't seem to do potato dishes that great here all the time. I don't know why. It was so bad. It makes me want to make one right now to prove that it can be delicious.
Morcilla.
This is good. Blood sausage. With sauteed onions. If you've never had any kind of blood sausage, don't pooh-pooh it. It's so good. This stuff, and the morcilla at Tropical Star are both really good. The blood makes it sweet and firm. Now, one thing, you want to make sure it's cooked all the way, and you want it seared crispy on the outside. If it's raw in the middle, I wouldn't eat it.
Octopus.
Yes. This was perfectly cooked. Oh man, such a better dish than the octopus cocktail. So yummy. So spanish tasting. So tender and toothsome. Yum. I love octopus when properly done! With onion, tomato and olives. It was some good shit.
Garlic sauteed mushrooms.
Just like it sounded. Unfortunately, we didn't really get much food for my BFF to eat, but she doesn't really eat that much when she drinks though. At least the aioli was delicious....
I gotta say, this was the most disappointing visit to Costa Brava yet. The cheese plate could have had more variety, the sangria wasn't the best - although we ended up having 3 pitchers, and pitcher #2 and #3 got better. I mean, the 3 items were really amazing. It's just, we are used to almost everything being wonderful here! Oh well....
Afterwards, I dropped my sis and the FP off to Small Bar to meet our friend, while my BFF and I went to get tattoos at Avalon 2. This was an adventure in itself. Our artist was a smartass Italian guy. He tried to make our tattoos too pretty, and we had to explain to him what we wanted. Mine was much easier because I just wanted my mom's name on my arm - although it took about 7 times for him to place it properly.
And the BFF wanted an anchor. (I don't have a final picture of it) He wanted to make it pretty with daisies. She didn't want flowers, but she would settle for roses. He had drawn a rope around the anchor and she wanted a chain. He said that was not possible because it wouldn't look right or something. So they did kind of settle on something, but there was this banter the whole time. The whole 4 hours. He took a while to do the drawings, that was a lot of the time. And he took a while to prepare, but that was okay. I prefer someone taking their time to ink my body than to rush through it, right?
So, after, we went to our friend's apartment to deposit my BFF there. Our friend was graduating the next day - valedictorian - from law school, and BFF was going to the graduation and then flying out right after. It was a short but eventful visit!
Costa Brava
1653 Garnet Ave
San Diego, CA 92109
858-273-1218
open daily 11am - 12 am
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