Return to City Tacos, Caffe Calabria and West Coast Tavern

The dance troupe had call time at the building in the late afternoon and after dropping off TC, Bert and I headed over to North Park to get some early dinner...

I found this interesting, this trolley and water tower sculpture seen on a wall as you exit the 805 offramp (coming from down south) to University Ave). Back in the pre-WWII days, a trolley line used to exist in North Park...

It was in fact, the #7 line which ran from University Ave to North Park which was our destination.

We weren't sure if we wanted to try Swami's (their menu was too healthy and boring). Junz was kind of pedestrian and we wanted to have something light. I remembered City Tacos from last summer so that is what we tried.  On another note, see the monster riding a dinosaur? That's the building that houses the now defunct Wang's (which Mary recently posted on back in March). I wonder what will take over that spot?

It was pretty empty when we got there, which was good. No lines means no wait.

For a more clearer description of their tacos, please check out their menu online:

You'll notice tacos here are $3.50. At least it's a flat rate unlike Tacos Perla where the price of the taco depends on the ingredients. Here, it's all the same price, granted these tacos are a bit pricier with more flavor combinations than the average 'Berto's joint.


I grabbed a table on the outside patio while Bert ordered our tacos.  All tortillas were flour.

Lovely to look and and even better to eat.

Taco descriptions are taken straight from their website. When I was looking it up, I was comparing the list of ingredients to what we actually ate and there were quite a few omissions.
Camaron - Serrano chile egg battered shrimp with grilled calabasitas (a type of Mexican zucchini with light greenish/white skin) and corn topped with a creamy tomatillo sauce.

Mahi al adobo - Seared mahi filet topped with mango habanero jelly (I didn't really detect that though) with chipotle cream sauce and chopped mangoes.  I wonder if they meant to update their menu description because there wasn't any jelly like anything at all in this. Hmmm.

Chorizo Asado - Grilled pork chorizo with pineapple (it's supposed to be caramelized but it's not) with melted Oaxaca cheese.

El Especial - Sauteed shrimp, octopus and squid, Oaxaca cheese, tomato concasse (a fancy way of saying rough chopped tomatoes/I had to look up this French term), Panko fried snow crab (also missing), diced cilantro and serrano chilies.  Perhaps they got rid of the crab since it was too problematic to include since it has to be fried (I'm just surmising).

Of my two tacos (shrimp and mixed seafood), I enjoyed the shrimp the best. I loved the calabasitas and roasted corn. Everything was as described.

Bert enjoyed both of his tacos, which included the sweet additions of fruit.  I thought the chorizo one was tasty.  The taco I liked the least was the tuna and I was a bit disappointed (after the fact) that there was no Panko crab.

By the way, our tacos were enjoyed with a variety of salsas and condiments from their salsa bar.

My favorite sauces were the creamy chipotle and the cilantro serrano cream. Condiments included chopped red onions, cilantro, jicama, and cucumber slices. They also had tajin.

We actually went back to watch the performances Friday night at the BPC2015PAC but left at 8 pm as Philippine singer Martin Nievera's show started. TC stayed back with the troupe to load costumes and props and to watch the rest of the concert. We ended up picking her back up at the building later that evening.

So...alone again we were. We were hungry again  so we headed back to North Park. The reason was two fold. Dinner plus coffee. Although we'd been to Caffe Calabria many times in the past, never have we had their pizza. They fire up their imported oven only after 5 pm.


My macchiato (with sparkling water) and Bert's mocha with almond milk.

Our Quattro Stagione pizza which had four kinds of cheese, prosciutto, olives, mushrooms, tomato sauce and fresh basil. It was ready within minutes. Literally. Bert loved the crust. He even ate mine. It was so thin and the toppings were spread on perfectly (not too thick or sparse).

Believe it or not, we still had room for dessert. Just around the corner from Calabria was West Coast Tavern, at the bottom floor of the historic North Park Theater.

We hadn't been here since our anniversary two years ago. There was a dessert we wanted to try back then but didn't since I had already bought our anniversary dessert. This time, we would have it.  But first, we did not realize there was a cover charge. I guess I'm old and live in a cave. I didn't know restaurants had cover charges. I only thought that applied to night clubs.

Anyhow, the cover per person was $5. The amount would be deducted from our food bill, that was a bit redeeming. We ordered the pistachio bread pudding with caramel sauce and shared the Coronado Brewing Company Blue Bridge Stout which we'd tried before during a Bay food crawl last Fall and a revisit at the Coronado Brewing Co. in Imperial Beach.

The dessert was good for a few bites but proved to be too much of a good thing. I ended up eating half of the ice cream and about a third of the stout which went well with the dessert since it tasted like coffee.

Bert is the pistachio fan, so he really enjoyed this bread pudding studded with pistachios.

I'm glad that we were able to finally try this dessert.

Previous visit to City Tacos:
June 2014 with TORC during our North Park foodcrawl last summer.

Previous visit to Caffe Calabria
April 2015 during my bday foodcrawl with Bert

Previous visit to West Coast Tavern
Juky 2013 Our 18th wedding anniversary dinner

Information about the old streetcar system in North Park:
North Park History NorthParkMainStreet.com
and History of Streetcars in San Diego SDVintageTrolley.com

You're welcome.

Bert wants to try the lamb tacos next time at City Tacos. I could go for the vegetarian one as well as the chile relleno. As for the chicken or carne asada, I'd rather get them at a TJ style joint down south, like Tacos el Poblano or el Gordo (which I still haven't been).