San Diego Uptown News news and information about the heart of San Diego

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

If you haven’t been to La Vecindad in the heart of Hillcrest, you’re missing exceptional preparations of pork and pozole from a Mexico City family, not to mention cheerful cocktails that taste as pretty as they look.

As for the tacos constructed with house-made corn tortillas, which practically melt in your mouth, they’ll likely send you into a cartwheel as well.

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

Don’t assume the song “Fools and Kings” by reggae rockers Fighting Gravity was the inspiration for the namesake restaurant that opened two months ago in Mission Hills. The new globally-inspired kitchen borrows instead from a line in the 1948 tune recorded by Nat King Cole called “Nature Boy.”

The poetic lyrics are posted at the restaurant’s iron-gated entrance as an inspirational prelude to the welcoming and diverse meal experience you’ll discover inside. Be sure to read them before settling in.

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

I’m not from Chicago, but in repeat visits to the Windy City I’ve packed my gut plenty of times with its iconic deep-dish pizza, mustard-y Vienna Beef hot dogs and juicy Italian beef sandwiches. They’re the “big three” dishes (plus others) that Chi-town transplants Brendan and Lauren Hodson have been slinging with precision at Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria for the past 13 years.

Locally, nothing else really compares.

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

There is much to absorb at Kindred, a bustling plant-based restaurant and cocktail bar that pays exceptional detail to food, mixology and design.

Whatever your dietary preference, if you haven’t dropped in for at least a shrewdly crafted intoxicant to wash down a bowl of popcorn seasoned brilliantly with dill, chives and garlic-chili “cologne,” you’re about three years late — just as I was.

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

Few cafes in San Diego are entrenched in the residential sections of the neighborhoods they call home. Mama’s Bakery & Deli on Alabama Street and El Comal on Illinois Street come to mind, although both sit a stone’s throw away from commercial thoroughfares.

Mystic Mocha takes you deeper into an area lined with houses, trees and sidewalks. It’s a colorful little place with a Bohemian feel famous for its crafty, homemade muffins and assorted coffee drinks using beans from Café Moto.

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

Two graduates of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) just took over the kitchen at Garlic Shack, a peculiar but alluring little eatery that makes no apologies for messing with your breath.

Garlic in one form or another finds its way into about 75 percent of the dishes across an American-Asian menu from which you’ll discover steamed burgers, the item that mainly led me here because of its obscurity — at least within San Diego.