Early 25th Wedding Anniversary Dinner at the Bali Hai

It feels so weird to be blogging again...

I didn't miss it too much but it's good to be back. Earlier this evening, Bert and I went out for an early dinner...


This dinner was quite special because it is our 25th anniversary.  That is a long time. This is half of a century!   We are not even half of my parents' record (will be 53 years the day after ours!).

Mind you our REAL anniversary will be July 1 but we were celebrating it early this weekend.  This dinner at the Bali Hai was my sister's gift to us.

Restaurants opened up to dine-in services with distancing several weeks ago. You are not allowed to enter unless you were wearing a mask.  I noticed that the banquet room below was opened for dining with the tables spaced quite far apart.  We were pleasantly surprised to be seated outside with a beautiful view of the skyline and the bay.  Despite the gray clouds, it wasn't as chilly as we thought it would be. Plus, there were heaters by every table. Waiting for us was a large round table (which normally seats 6) with chilled champagne ready to be corked.

It really was a treat to be enjoying dinner with my husband in this beautiful setting.

Same appetizer sampler that we got last year - Coconut shrimp, beef skewers, lumpia (but this time with spinach and cream cheese/I prefer it with meat) and ahi poke with won ton chips.


It was good to have a little of everything but I wish there were more of the coconut shrimp!

This was their Ribeye with mushroom sauce and a fried egg on top (maybe their take on a fancy loco moco style dish?). OMG, those mushrooms....


We requested it medium (but one piece seemed more done than the rest). I also asked for the egg to not be completely runny. The mushrooms were a nice touch. The gravy was also delicious. The rice on the other hand (not pictured) looked like it was pre-scooped and kind of mushy so I passed on the rice.

This was the same pan fried sea bass we had last year, corvina bass served with Szechuan style vegetables. There was supposed to be a ponzu sauce, but if there was, it must have been minimal.  The piece was sizeable but could have used some sort of sauce on top  because it was dry. Still, it was quite meaty and tasty.

Since we had champagne earlier, we shared one cocktail. This was the San Diego Sling, consisting of Cutwater Spirits, Old Drove gin, sloe gin, triple sec, pineapple and lime juices, a splash of Sprite, sweet & sour, bitters and grenadine.  A LOT OF GRENADINE. Yikes.

We tasted mostly pineapple in this drink. It was refreshing but a tad on the sweeter side.

Complimentary dessert - This was similar to the one we had last year, which was a very light cheesecake with a buttery crust topped with fresh berries and drizzled with sauce.

It was ok but Bert wanted to try their other offering.

So we ordered the Caramel mocha cake - Devil's food cake, coffee mousse, salted caramel filling and chocolate crunch. Now this was more like it.

We both agreed that this was the better of two desserts - the white chocolate dome had to be cracked to get to the goodness within...

I still remember our wedding like it was yesterday.  It's hard to believe that 25 years went by that quickly.

Did you know he was painted gold last year? We went last winter and apparently, the Bali Hai had celebrated 65 years.  We went in January for our friend Tatonka's birthday brunch and the gold paint was mostly gone (some bits were still stuck in crevices though) and he was back to being brown.

Previous visit to Bali Hai:
July 1, 2019

June is nearly over and am looking forward to what July has to offer...