Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
An unexpected fusion
Chopsticks in a Mexican restaurant
Sliced bits of cream cheese in a Mexican styled fried rice, along with spicy crab, avocado, micro cilantro
There are plenty of items I expect to find on a Mexican restaurant menu, but here’s one that I don’t: fried rice.
I’m at King and Queen Cantina, the upscale casual restaurant that took over the Romesco Mexiterranean Bistro’s Little Italy location last year, after that spot briefly replaced Bracero Cocina before that. It’s been a tumultuous couple of years for Baja Med restaurants at the corner of Kettner and Beech, so finding an entirely different sort of Mexican fusion catches me off guard.
Granted, I had to look past a lot of tantalizing dishes to spot it. The first page of the menu offers a litany of tacos, burritos, asada fries, asada plates, and a couple of burgers. I don’t know what inspires anyone to flip the menu in the face of all that, but I do it, and immediately get lost in descriptions of ceviche tostadas and shareable fajita platters tossing out terms like saffron rice, garlic chipotle butter, and guajillo achiote vinaigrette.
Only then, tucked at the bottom of the back page, do I see a small section dubbed “Japamex at King and Queen.”
I’m not sure I want to call anything “Japamex” out loud, but I am attracted to that fried rice, and I believe with good reason. It combines spicy crab, egg, cream cheese, sesame seeds, and avocado. I’ve had a lot of those things on the same bagel before, but not mixed with radishes, carrots, scallions, and micro cilantro, and there certainly wasn’t any rice involved. This mixed up dish is also flavored with what the menu calls “Chingon sauce” and “Chingon black sauce" – chili and ponzu sauces.
Crab fried rice with the addition of avocado would be interesting enough on its own — kind of a spin on a California roll. But the smooth tang cream cheese somehow cinches it for me, acting as the glue between two culinary traditions that don’t traditionally use a lot of the spreadable American invention.
The $15 dish is gone way too fast, before I can even come to grips with the fact I’m using chopsticks in a Mexican restaurant.
Here's something you might be interested in.
An unexpected fusion
Chopsticks in a Mexican restaurant
An unexpected fusion
Chopsticks in a Mexican restaurant
Sliced bits of cream cheese in a Mexican styled fried rice, along with spicy crab, avocado, micro cilantro
There are plenty of items I expect to find on a Mexican restaurant menu, but here’s one that I don’t: fried rice.
I’m at King and Queen Cantina, the upscale casual restaurant that took over the Romesco Mexiterranean Bistro’s Little Italy location last year, after that spot briefly replaced Bracero Cocina before that. It’s been a tumultuous couple of years for Baja Med restaurants at the corner of Kettner and Beech, so finding an entirely different sort of Mexican fusion catches me off guard.
Granted, I had to look past a lot of tantalizing dishes to spot it. The first page of the menu offers a litany of tacos, burritos, asada fries, asada plates, and a couple of burgers. I don’t know what inspires anyone to flip the menu in the face of all that, but I do it, and immediately get lost in descriptions of ceviche tostadas and shareable fajita platters tossing out terms like saffron rice, garlic chipotle butter, and guajillo achiote vinaigrette.
Only then, tucked at the bottom of the back page, do I see a small section dubbed “Japamex at King and Queen.”
I’m not sure I want to call anything “Japamex” out loud, but I am attracted to that fried rice, and I believe with good reason. It combines spicy crab, egg, cream cheese, sesame seeds, and avocado. I’ve had a lot of those things on the same bagel before, but not mixed with radishes, carrots, scallions, and micro cilantro, and there certainly wasn’t any rice involved. This mixed up dish is also flavored with what the menu calls “Chingon sauce” and “Chingon black sauce" – chili and ponzu sauces.
Crab fried rice with the addition of avocado would be interesting enough on its own — kind of a spin on a California roll. But the smooth tang cream cheese somehow cinches it for me, acting as the glue between two culinary traditions that don’t traditionally use a lot of the spreadable American invention.
The $15 dish is gone way too fast, before I can even come to grips with the fact I’m using chopsticks in a Mexican restaurant.
Comments