(805 north towards the 8 exit)
Three fourths of the Educator GF's were present to celebrate KD's birthday this partially sunny moring...
D was recovering from an ailment at home (we would later visit her) so it was just me, KD (our birthday celebrant) and TORC (our trusty driver). I was in the backseat, navigating and snapping a few occasional random shots like this one, as we rounded the bend from the 805 onto the 8-West. The white domed structure used to be Todai, a all you can eat Japanese buffet and is now defunct.
Back in the 80's, this was known as Lehr's Greenhouse, a place I'd never eaten at, but it was known to be a "fancy" place when Bert and I were in high school. It was a "garden-themed" eatery that also showcased live music. I'd been wondering about the history of this place and I found this "Whatever happened to..." article. This link to a fan fb page shows the sad and grafittied demise of the building).
This what it used to look like as Lehr's before Todai put a fake whale's mouth at the entrance.
(image from the Disappearing San Diego fb page)
We missed our turn and had to make a U-turn and drive past Les Girls...
You can't miss this sign!
Note that it was quite sunny compared to the day before in which San Diego experienced high winds and massive downpours which flooded neighborhoods all over San Diego. The wind also ripped many trees from the ground, many of which toppled into the streets, into a house even as well as reports of trees crushing cars.
I'd already been to Modern Times twice already and yes, this was my third but TORC and KD's first. I thought they would get a kick out of going to San Diego's only brewery with an in-house cafe/roastery.
We were fascinated by their pourover station which was mechanized. We had never seen this contraption before. This was the Poursteady, a "pourover coffee machine combining precision motion-control with unprecedented speed and reliability" (lifted verbatim from their website). It was interesting watching the metal spout swirl around and pour into the cone.
One of these days, I'll have to purchase some of their Black House stouts at their mini mart and maybe even a bag of beans (we did enjoy it while at Global Coffee Trading).
Our drinks - D's house coffee (the Black House pourover), TORC's mocha and my go-to drink, a cortado (with macadamia nut milk again).
TORC really enjoyed her drink while KD didn't quite like hers. She put in milk, cream and sugar and by the time she did that, it was no longer warm.
Latte art was a bit on the sloppier side, but the drinks (at least mine and TORC's) were pretty good.
In addition to our hot drinks, I also ordered the flight for us to share. This time, the Ethiopian was avaiable (it was subbed with Cascara last time, that post linked at the end). The other two cold brews were Black House, Heavy Weather and their horchata slushie. Of the four cold brews, TORC and KD enjoyed the horchata slushi the best. It was the opposite for me. As appealing as a coffie slushie was, I'm not too keen on the cinnamon and rice milk. I liked the darker cold brews especially the Heavy Weather. The Ethiopian had that bright floral essence along with blueberry notes; it was too "flowery" for me but not undrinkable.
The cold brew flight was presented in a vintage cigar box with a lid (just like their beer flight served at their North Park location). When Bert and I ordered the flight a few weeks ago, the box was "lidless". I was afraid I would drop it actually, while walking it to our seats.
We were literally ready to leave for brunch when all of a sudden, a few drops began to fall...Then it started to pour relentlessly for quite a few minutes.
Plaques by the door next to black velvet paintings of the company's bigwigs.
The rain finally stopped and we ventured out to TORC's car, parked along Hancock St.
Trying to get to the freeway, we passed by a place called Hancock's Cafe...You can see where the owner's political loyalties lie. No shown were life size statues of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis out there.
I'm not sure I'd want to eat here though (for larfs, you may choose to read, or not, the polarizing reviews on that four lettered site)
[Update - Lo and behold Cathy has been to this eater, ONE DECADE AGO]
Previous visit to Modern Times Cafe:
January 2017 - Includes my first two visits
KD's Birthday Crawl last year:
"KD's birthday brunch @ Ocean Pacific Grille", January 2016 [Update - Sadly, Ocean Pacific Grille is now CLOSED as of December 2016. Chef Andres is now at Roy's]
We, the gals enjoyed our time here. They enjoyed the ambiance/atmosphere at Modern Times. Our barista was really nice and even gave us a few recommendations of her favorite roasters and eateries. My original plan was to go to the Nest in OB and have brunch and dessert nearby, but because it's quite close to the beach, I was afraid of being too close to the ocean especially if a storm were to creep up on us. Was this weather CRAZY OR WHAT???
Up next...brunch, coffee and dessert!
4 comments:
This looks like so much fun. Need to go back to that neighborhood ( and the Swap Meet) soon.
It was quite fun, rain and all! The weather kind of dictated our routes that day. No OB, so this place and Normal Heights it was.
Oh that pourover contraption looks interesting!
It really was neat seeing it in action. I'm used to seeing them hand pour.
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