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Tiki Central / Tiki Travel / San Diego Area (mostly vintage) Bars and Restaurants

Post #229490 by mikepattonisgawd on Sat, Apr 29, 2006 10:21 PM

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I'm a newbie, but I just wanted to give my 2 cents on the SD restaurant and bar suggestions.
1st off....don't eat at Hob Nob Hill.
I used to work there, and they re-use their butters and jams (ya know the ones that come in the orange peels?). I have watched people dig into the jam, lick the knife, and then put it back in the jam. This is the very same jam that they made us re-use!

Anyhoo... my vote for favorite taco shop in SD has to go to Pokez.
http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profile/111155
It's downtown on 10th and E st.
Back in the day bands would play there right in the middle of the dining room. They'd push the tables out of the way and the band would just stand in the center. They also have cheap vegetarian mexican food served by overworked, tattooed waitresses that seem to find a way to turn their excruciating rudeness into a necessary part of the Pokez experience.
Seriously...we went there once and the bitchy-ass waitress that we regularly had was actually marginally nice, for once. Well, the truth is that we ended up being kinda disappointed! Her shitty attitude had truly become part of the schtick for us. (go figure!)
My favorite part is that there's usually some vintage vinyl spinning on a set of turntables right there in the dining room. (Where else can ya find a dj spinning records at 11 am on a tuesday?)
Add to all of this the fact that they serve sangria by the pitcher (being that it's attached to a sangria bar next door called The Rosary Room, http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profile/247969/ a place that looks like it simply had to be decorated by Perry Farrell!) and you've got the makings of San Diego's finest taco shop!

Another bar that I wanted to add to the list that I haven't seen mentioned is on Kettner Blvd. and it's called The Waterfront. http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profile/88643 Not in any way a tiki bar, but still a great vibe. It's actually the oldest bar in all of San Diego (if you look at their liquor license it says "permit no. 1"). The drinks are relatively cheap, the jukebox has tons of Faith No More, (judging by my username, you can safely guess that this may be important to me!) and the hot, tattoo-d bartendars usually had my drink already waiting for me when I walked in the door. (They'd see us walking down the street out of the open shutters, and they were clever enuff to always remember what us regulars drank!)

Jeez...I wish I was in San Diego now!!!

[ Edited by: mikepattonisgawd 2006-04-30 03:01 ]