Kona Pacifica Kafe

[Closed several years ago and is now Mea Kwan Thai restaurant as of 2011]

After our brunch at Villa Capri, we walked a few storefronts down to:
The website on their business cart wasn't working (wtf man). We were curious to try this place out. The owner is the lady who does Kona Kakes which is in Mission Valley next to that really lame Vietnamese restaurant behind Hooters. Well, she owns this place and it just opened last week and you could tell they didn't have it quite together yet. The place was bright and airy with tropical scenes galore on the walls. The photo below is their (empty) sushi bar area.

There was a cash register up front with a display case. The one on the left was a bit sparse. I was expecting the owner's famous tropical cakes, but instead there were prepackaged macadamia nuts in baskets. The display case in the middle had assorted cold drinks and the last one on the right was empty.

We sat near this wall. There was a huge lunch party towards the back.

The service was spotty. There were three waiters helping us but I think there were too many fingers in the pot. No one knew what the other was doing. I know they were probably trying to be helpful but shit, one guy asked us if we got our waters yet when it was clear by our EMPTY tables that we had NO water, which had been ordered more than 10 minutes ago. So, we finally got our waters. We also got free cake samples. This was a big let down because the samples were served on paper plates. We also got plastic forks (not pictured), For such a new and relatively upscale area, you would have expected regular plates to go with the silverware, even if the food was supposed to be "island style". Lest you think I'm a big grouch for griping about this, when I took my earlier photo of the display cases, I glanced over at the neighboring tables and saw people eating from clear plastic takeout boxes and they weren't just leaving either. Very tacky. Okayyyy, I know this place is new and maybe, just maybe, they didn't buy plates yet! Maybe they didn't want to wash any fkn' dishes or something. But eating from a to-go box? Not classy at all.

Anyhow, the cake samples included Tropical Splash (pineapple and macadamia), pineapple, plus Chocolate "Dobash"pudding cake. Here's another gripe...I asked one of our waiters why the chocolate pudding cake was called dobash. He said he didn't know, but would find out. He later came back after I reminded him that I was really curious about knowing and he did follow through. He said it was "semi sweet chocolate pudding cake". Well, that's one of the ingredients. I asked him how "dobash" was spelled and what the origin was. He spelled it the way you see it written here but didn't know of the origin and guessed that it was Hawaiian! Not! Then, he said, "Maybe it's Russian?"!!! Aargh! Idiot!

Ohhhh my God! I wanted to shout, "Get out of my face dude!". Hence, since I couldn't rely on the ig'nant staff, I resolved to look this up at home. There were a lot of entries for "dobash", which if spelled in French should be "dobache". Turns out that it's a bastardization of the word "doberge" (taken perhaps from "D'Auberge). Here's Wikipedia's entry on Doberge cake. It's supposed to be a thin, multilayered cake with pudding inside. Here's a recipe I found for Chocolate Doberge Cake. According to the many entries I saw about this type of cake, it's a New Orleans thing.

Our birthday recipient ordered a slice of the guava cake served in a...yes...a plastic to go container. Way to go people. I didn't care for this because I'm not a guava fan. My friend said it was okay. Another friend who tried it liked only the cake but not the filling or the frosting (buttercream).

Here was mine...the Chocolate "Dobash" or "Dobache" or "Doberge" whatever! It was actually pretty decent but nothing so spectacular that I would rave for days on end. I had a tiny bit and saved the rest for Bert and TC to sample later.

The Tropical Splash... none of us could taste the macadamia nut in here. Maybe it was ground up? Not pictured was the Kafe's most popular cake, the Caramel Macadamia Nut. It looked the same, but the cake was lighter in color. It sounds like it would be super sweet, but it wasn't.

I think this place needs to work on better service, more informed waitstaff and better dinnerware! Plastic boxes look cheap cheap cheap! Spend some money on some china! It's fine if you want to take your damn leftovers home, but to eat out of these seems really tacky. We're in Eastlake, not the trailer park. Maybe I'll check this place out after a few months and see if they get better.