tilly's skillet: eating around the gas lamps in San Diego

woo hoo look what they have in cali!

recently i traveled with my husband to san diego...he for work...me using airline miles...to work from the hotel room and try and have a little fun in the evening. the weather never got out of the 60's...so much for relaxing by the pool on the weekend....only thing left to do when we both finished a long day of working was to poke around and find something decent to eat.....we stayed in the gas lamp district so plenty of tourist traps to pick from...but also some lovely, friendly people and really good food choices too.....(many of the friendly people i met were transplants from florida that were also freezing in the 60 degree weather......)

Dinner at the Merk Bistro the hostess was so friendly and genuine she talked us into eating there...and the food was so yummy we came back the next nite!
pictures and reviews after the jump

nite one:

we started with the bread.....it was half a loaf of the most wonderful local whole grain sour dough with two flavored butters....one with citrus and truffle...not my fave...butter number two was smoked bacon and maple butter with jalepeno...OMG this was to die for...needless to say no pics of the bread...it was gone in a heart beat...it was devine!!!!

Pork porterhouse chop with succotash

spaghetti bolognese chunks of carrots were too big

the pork porterhouse was a tiny bit chewy on one side but the flavor was perfect and the veggies were fresh and wonderful....the bolognese was heavy on the carrot chunks but nice flavor and pasta was spot on.

the next nite we ate at the same table but it was a bit dark (so the pics did not come out)...I had the half roasted chicken with swiss chard and lars had the half pound burger with fries.....no bread...had to save room for the awesome place across the street....Ghirardelli ....as if i did not get enough of that delightful hot fudge in Florida....happy to find they have one in San Diego.....

the place is actually more charming than the one in orlando (which is insane) i had my usual dark hot fudge sundae with chocolate chip ice cream and lars had reg hot fudge with vanilla....