My wife and I had a gift coupon for the Chart House restaurant in Encinitas, California, last night. (Technically, it’s in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, south of Leucadia, which is south of Carlsbad, directly on the coast.)
My wife had read a good but not enthusiastic review of the restaurant.
So, for that reason — and because this blog is bidding to be the only source of information that you’ll ever need on any topic (“When Sic et Non speaks, the thinking has been done,” as it were) — I would like to register my own opinion, with which my wife concurs. (As, of course, being a good Mormon woman, she must.)
We like to share dishes. So we each ate about half of everything, each dish, that we ordered. And, since this was essentially the only meal we ate yesterday, and since we had a gift coupon that was pretty generous, and since we were celebrating something, we ordered a fair amount of food.
First, we had the Crispy Shrimp as an appetizer, followed by one Tomato, Bacon, and Blue salad, which we split. Then we had the Dynamite Halibut and the Key West Spiced Sea Bass. And we followed that up by sharing a Hot Chocolate Lava Cake.
I don’t know what the reviewers were thinking whose opinions my wife had read.
This was, we both thought, one of the best seafood meals we’ve ever had. And we’ve had them in Hawaii and at Ports O’Call in San Pedro and on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco and in Monterey and in Seattle and in Boston and even at Market Street Grill in Salt Lake.
All of the dishes were extremely good, with the exception of the Hot Chocolate Lava Cake, which was merely quite good.
And the view was tremendous. We were seated by the window, and the restaurant is located right on the beach. We haven’t had a better sea view from a restaurant anywhere. Not even in Maui.
Finally, while I’m gushing: Our server was named Heather. And she, too, was unusually good. Very personable, friendly, and helpful.
A man at the table nearest us was explaining to his dinner companions that he had never seen the restaurant so quiet and relatively empty, so we assume that early reservations would normally be in order, although we didn’t make ours especially early this time, and that, usually, it might be good to come at off hours.
Anyway, based on this one experience, I highly recommend the Chart House restaurant in Encinitas.
See? Sic et Non is worth every single dollar of its subscription price.
Posted from Carlsbad, California
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