Addison - Del Mar, CA

Dinner - Friday, February 17, 2012

Addison, the Grand Del Mar's fine-dining restaurant, claims more awards than you can shake a stick at - among others, it bills itself as Southern California's only Forbes five-star, AAA five-diamond restaurant. These are certainly not accolades to be sneezed at, but somehow we'd never felt compelled to visit in the past 20 months living in San Diego. One can tell from reading our blog that classical French cuisine rarely makes it onto our radar these days, in no small part because we were completely spoilt by our last trip to France a few years ago.

It was only when searching for a restaurant to celebrate our anniversary that we began to consider Addison. Sadly, our friend Elizabeth Harcourt, formerly one of their sommeliers, relocated before we could make good on a promise to visit her there. However, she did put us in the care of Addison's head sommelier, Angelo Ingrati, who made sure we were well-watered and who came up with some inspired wine pairings for the evening.

A Simple Supper with Gavin Schmidt - San Diego, CA

Dinner - Friday, February 10, 2012

A Simple Supper is an underground dinner club run by Jorie Kopycinski, who has been working with Gavin Schmidt (ex-Blanca) of late. As is the norm for these pseudo-clandestine affairs, correspondence is carried out with Jorie via email, and the location of the dinners changes frequently.

When we found out that Gavin was leaving our sunny climate to return to the Bay Area at the end of February, we immediately made reservations for this final dinner - a last hurrah, if you will. And so, we found ourselves (and ten or so like-minded strangers) at a curious house with a gorgeous kitchen in downtown San Diego on Friday night.