Flamingo Cafe, Chula Vista

Ian Dryden

When you’re tired of making the rounds at the bars, when you find yourself starving for a sandwich after the final showing of Star Wars, when you want a good States-side breakfast after returning from south of the border, where can you go? If your eating habits are like most of the San Diegans prowling through the night, chances are you’ll end up getting that sandwich or sipping that coffee at a franchise restaurant—Denny’s, Jack-in-the-Box, Sambo’s, or Boll Weevil. But if you’re tired of look-alike restaurants and want to try something different, what can you do?

“It gets pretty lonely out there,” says Charles Kotlan, author of San Diego Restaurant Menus, and a patronizer of late-night eateries. There isn’t much after-midnight trade in San Diego, and what business there is has been almost entirely snapped up by the franchise establishments. However, there are still a few independents in the county catering to early a.m. appetites. Meal selection varies widely (as do prices and quality), but the following restaurants offer something different.

SAN DIEGO

• Sheldon’s
• 4711 Mission Bay Drive, Pacific Beach Open 24 hours.
• When Sheldon’s first opened in 1930, it was little more than a sandwich shack serving barbecued hamburgers and something called A-B-C beer. The shack has been replaced by a gleaming stone-and-glass structure, the menu has grown, but sandwiches are still big here. There are 23 varieties to choose from, priced from the 75-cent American cheese to the $2.95 steak sandwich. Home-baked pie a la mode costs 90 cents.

• Rudford’s Restaurant
• 2900 El Cajon Boulevard, North Park
• Open 24 hours.
• Despite the wood-grain paneling, cushioned counter seats, cozy booths, and new carpeting, Rudford’s looks much like the roadside cafe it once was 37 years ago. The menu calls it “The Good Food Place Always Open,” and the steady late-night clientele seems to confirm it. The food is straightforward, American, tasty, and moderately priced. A la carte samples: grilled pork chops $3.55, fried oysters $3, and half chicken $2.60. Other selections: hot beef sandwich $2.60, and the steak sandwich for $2.50. A breakfast of two eggs, potatoes and toast costs $1.25.

• Pot Pourri
• Town and Country Hotel 500 Hotel Circle North, Mission Valley
• Open 24 hours.
• Considering the number of hotels, night clubs, and restaurants, Mission Valley hotel row has few after-hours restaurants. Still, if you get hungry there are a couple of spots to go. The Pot Pourri has a varied menu, but crepes are the big item. A few examples: crepes with beef liver $3.50, crepes La Jolla (crabmeat, avocado slices) $4.45, crepes stroganoff (tiny pieces of beef, mushrooms, sour cream) $3.65. There is a selection of delicatessen sandwiches, including corned beef $1.95, pastrami $1.85, and knockwurst $1.65.

• Mission Valley Inn Coffee Shop
• 875 Hotel Circle South, Mission Valley
• Open 24 hours.
• Across the freeway from the Pot Pourri, the Mission Valley Inn favors more traditional coffee-shop food. Good bets here, according to one waitress, are the grilled pork chops with apple sauce ($4.75), and the deep-fried Eastern scallops ($3.10). A wide selection of breakfasts and lunches is available, but if baked desserts cure your insomnia, consider this place therapeutic. Selections include Boston cream pie, cheese cake, cake of the day, bread pudding; plus cherry, apple, chocolate, and coconut cream pies.

• Sonny’s Luncheonette
• 822 Fifth Avenue, downtown
• Open Monday through Saturday, 24 hours.
• “The place to be in,” boasts the menu logo. And it’s true. In the early morning hours Sonny’s throbs with activity, a place where the downtown people congregate. Sonny’s offers a full selection of entrees starting at $ 1.85. A real bargain is the pie a la mode at 60 cents. Open Sundays until 6:00 a.m. when, says a weary waitress, “ we start pushing ’em out of here.”

• Julio’s Mexican Restaurant
• 4502 University Avenue, East San Diego
• Open until 3 a.m.
• Candlelight dining featuring a complete Mexican menu. Specialties include carne asada and chile rellenos. Bargain: try the half-order cheese enchilada ($1.75); it includes rice and beans. For a late-night coffee or a full meal, Julio’s is just the place. Breakfast served anytime.

• Nappy’s Restaurant
• 1830 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, Ocean Beach
• Open 24 hours
• Nappy’s was, until recently, a Denny’s Restaurant, and though the decor remains the same, a few changes have been made. “The food prices are cheaper, the menu has more variety, and there’s not as much pressure on on,” says Connie, a waitress who has worked for both. A sample of the complete entrees: New York Cut steak $6.25, beef liver $3.15, roast sirloin of beef au jus $3.25, and scallops $3.75. Nappy’s offers 20 varieties of hot and cold sandwiches, plus eight different ways you can order a hamburger. Connie recommends the “Gourmet” sandwich, a generous offering of meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato, served with choice of soup or salad. It costs $2.25.

• Jimmy Wong’s Golden Dragon
• 414 University Avenue, Hillcrest
• Open until 3 a.m.
• For two decades this restaurant featuring Cantonese-style food has been a fixture in Hillcrest. The narrow eating room is cozy, and the prices are reasonable. Far Jy dinners, including egg flower soup, chicken almond chow mein, Jow Wun Ton, egg foo young, fried shrimp, and fried rice and tea costs $4 per person (two persons or more). If you want something less than a full meal, try Chinese-style scrambled eggs (scrambled eggs, mushrooms, barbecued pork, bamboo shoots, and green peas) for $3. Or perhaps the oyster beef (beef strips sauteed in oyster sauce) for $3.25.

SOUTH BAY

• Keith’s Family Restaurant
• Second and National, National City
• Open 24 hours.
• This booth-and-counter restaurant offers food with a distinctive country flair. “It’s real down-home cooking,” says a New Orleans-born cabbie and Keith’s regular. “It’s not Antoine’s, but for three bucks you get a good piece of beef.” The special here is the fried chicken dinner: half a chicken, cut into four pieces, with farm-style chicken gravy, vegetable, and homemade biscuits ($2.85).

• La Bella’s Pizza Garden
• 373 Third Avenue, Chula Vista
• Open until 2 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday.
• “We do more business between ten and two in the morning than we do for lunch,” says Joe Rizzo, manager and chief cook at La Bella’s. So what’s good? Joe is partial to pizza in general and the mushroom-pepperoni in particular. La Bella’s also serves up full-course spaghetti, ravioli, rigatoni meals, not to mention lasagna, veal cutlet parmesan, and manicotti dishes. Prices are reasonable: a large pizza is $4.25, while spaghetti dinners begin at $1.95. Flamingo Cafe 396 Broadway, Chula Vista Open 24 hours.

• Flamingo Cafe
• 396 Broadway, Chula Vista
• Open 24 hours
• The decor is vintage truck stop cafe, the food decidedly southwest. Pork chops are $2.95, chicken fried steak $2.75, both look good.

EL CAJON

• Kozak’s Restaurant
• 401 W. Main Street, El Cajon
• Open 24 hours.
• Ann, one of the waitresses who holds down the night shift at Kozak’s, is a forthright woman. She wears a cute, clip-on button on her uniform that reads “SMILE,” and she is not hesitant to say what’s good and what’s better left alone. The clam chowder is homemade and it’s great. “It’s served up until 2:30 a.m. and later, sometimes, if I can keep the busboy from yanking the bucket,” Ann says. The best entree on the menu is the roast sirloin of beef au jus, which costs $2.95 and is worth every penny. There’s also chicken fried steak ($2.75), breaded veal cutlet ($2.75), and the vea? parmigiana ($2.95), but they don’t measure up to the roast sirloin. Kozak’s adjoins the Char-Glo Room, where you can buy drinks and listen to an organist and saxophonist into the wee hours. Kozak’s is rarely at a loss for customers.

NORTH COUNTY

North County is not a good place to be seized by hunger. “I’d be surprised if any restaurants stay open after midnight,” says Betty Johnston, who for three years wrote a restaurant column for the Vista Press. “You’d think there would be plenty of restaurants staying open late, but not so. There’s just what you see from along the freeway—Sambo’s, Denny’s, Daisy’s.”

One restaurant, the Seahorse Coffee Shop, in Oceanside, experimented with staying open 24 hours, but gave up. “What do you get?” grumbled one patron. “Just a bunch of drunks who make too much noise, or some guy who buys four cups of coffee and pays for one.”

Pickings are admittedly slim, but there are a few spots worth mentioning.

• Sandy’s Restaurant
• 510 W. Mission, Escondido
• Open 24 hours.
• The interior is, in the words of assistant manager Elaine Lewis, “plush, brown vinyl. The usual coffee shop decor.” Lewis says one item not to be missed is the Monterey omelet. Made with Ortega green chili and melted cheese, it is served with hash browns and biscuits ($2.50). One other attraction: Sandy’s adjoins the Fiesta Lounge, and patrons enjoy the convenience of taking meals inside the lounge, or bringing their drinks out to the restaurant.

• Rustler’s Roost
• 271 North Highway 101, Solana Beach
• Open 24 hours (Friday and Saturday only).
• Management, seeing the need for a late-night eatery, has come up with the “candlelight breakfast.” The kitchen stays open, but for omelets only. There are approximately 180 different omelets to choose from, each made with 3 eggs and served with home fries or grits, biscuits with country gravy or toast. Prices begin at $1.50. The manager says the candlelight breakfast is a big success and draws patrons from as far away as San Diego. “There’s no place for ’em to go,” he moans. Unfortunately, there are no plans to extend the late hours beyond Friday and Saturday.