South Bay - Drive In, Pototoes & Dona's Filipino Food

After our awesome visit to makeout central, we headed westward on Coronado Street to have a quick bite to eat before having our ice cream. We passed by the last remaining drive in theatre in San Diego, the South Bay Drive In.

The first (and last) time Bert and I tried watching a movie there was for the movie "Wayne's World 2"! Holy fk! Ha ha, that was in 1993. It was raining that night and we'd never gone to a drive in together. Since we liked the first movie, we thought the sequel might be just as funny. We were wrong. First of all, we ended up leaving 30 minutes into the movie and getting our money back because we weren't able to get good reception on our crappy stereo system.  Secondly, the movie sucked hairy veiny zebra ballz too. What a waste of 30 minutes of our lives.

This is one of my favorite signs - This place is on the corner of Coronado and Saturn. Heh - "pototoes"! I love it.The prices have gone up little by little over the years. These things used to be $3 each!

As you make a right onto Saturn, you will see Jack in the Crack on the left, complete with unchanged 1970's puffy font (none of this newfangled "Jack" logo here - it's old school all the way baby!). There is a big parking lot for the Albertson's and Rite-Aid in the strip mall. Look for the stand alone building in the middle. Albertsons used to be Alpha Beta (remember that?) and Rite-Aid used to be Thrifty's where .15 used to buy you one cylindrical scoop of ice cream. If you had money to burn, then it was .25 for 3 scoops. Prices, obviously have gone up, and I haven't had ice cream there in years.

Look for these signs in that stand alone building and find a parking spot.  Looks like the former site of Lisa's Desserts changed into Dona's Hawaiian and Filipino Grill. Wait, let me back up. Dona's opened up in December of 2009 so it must have been something else before it turned into Dona's because I remember Lisa's was already gone during a recent visit earlier this year. The address is the same too (I zoomed on my photos). Click here to see and read an old post of mine from Feb 2008 about this particular strip mall. Now that was a mouthful, wasn't it? The t-shirt store with the nasty shirts is now gone by the way.

Like most Filipino food joints, this was a point-point (turo turo) place with steam tables galore. Since we got there at 12 noon, all the trays were freshly made and filled to the brim.  And what's with the "Hawaiian" in the name of this place? I didn't recognize any Hawaiian items here at all. It was strictly Filipino food from what I could see.  Another thing, their receipt had "Donna's" on it, not "Dona's". That really irks me - their sign is wrong, or their cash register printer thing is wrong. WTF people. Get it right. But spelling aside, let's get to the food, shall we?

At the far left was pancit, then longganisa, some sort of soup, then fried fish and pork afritada. In the lower right corner were bbq pork skewers. I snapped these pics on the sly while the lady was getting my rice. There's other stuff on the far left that I couldn't see but it all looked good to me. The tray in the middle (dark meat) was what I got, the dreaded Diniguan (pork blood stew), aka "Chocolate Meat"! Next to that was pork menudo (Philippine style not Mexican).

Here's a close up of that glorious pork bbq. In the upper right was bistec with grilled onions.

I have no idea what that food was in the lower left corner; maybe it was something "Hawaiian" but it looked kind of gray and unappetizing. Next to the bistek was beef mechado (a type of really rich beef stew). See that solitary tray on the counter (upper right)? That was sisig! I was so tempted to get that! Nice and sour, fatty, crunchily unctuous chopped pork belly with peppers and onions.

Next to the beef mechado was pork with onions, coconut milk and bagoong (salted shrimp paste) with long beans. Underneath that was a soupy chicken dish (sorry, don't know the name of it). The soup near the sisig tray was sinigang (sour soup) and beneath the soup was sliced opo squash with shrimp. There was another unidentified dish in the far right corner and more of that sisig below it.

There were some banana fritters on the counter (turon) along with packages of dried Philippine mango (you can get the bigass sizes of this from Costco, banana leaf wrapped rice cakes (suman), white rice cakes (putong puti), ube filled cakes (hopya) and peanuts.

See that sign? These are terms for Filipino street food: "Isaw" are intestines; "Adidas" is marinated "Chicken Feet"; while "Walkman" refers to pig's ears. Nice.  Hey, they forgot "Betamax" (curdled chicken blood cubes)!
 
Here's a closeup of their sign. We all got the 1 item combo with rice (except Bert upgraded to pancit, so it was $5 for him).

Here's Bert's 1 combo plate: Longganisa (sweet pork sausage) with pancit bihon. Now this was probably one of the better versions of pancit I've tasted. They had a lot of vegetables and chicken in here, unlike some places where it's all cabbage or celery and no meat at all. Of course, my mom puts at least four types of protein in her pancit (fish cake, chicken, sliced Chinese sausage and shrimp). The noodles were also cooked just right - not mushy at all like some places where you could tell they did a crappy rush job with making it. Each noodle was nice and long. I hate really short noodles. Bert liked his dish except he wished that they cut up the celery in smaller pieces.

Here's a cross section of that heart attack waiting to happen. Can you see the paprika tinged pork fat? That shit is good I say! (in moderation of course, heh)

Here is my plate because although I was eyeing that tray of sisig like Wimpy eyes hamburgers, I wanted this even more. For those of you that don't know, the word "dinuguan" is derived from the word "dugo" (pronounced 'doo-goh', accent on the second syllable), the Tagalog word for "blood".

Traditionally Dinuguan is made with pork meat and innards along with onions, garlic, peppers and that special ingredient, pig's blood. Yum, yum. I ordered it once just to freak out some non-Filipino friends. I don't think they appreciated seeing it and one person in particular didn't like the smell. Cough *pussies* Cough. To me, it smelled and tasted just fine. But back to Dona's version of dinuguan - it was pretty good but it was missing the mild peppers (not the bell pepper but that smaller yellowish green one, I think it might be the banana pepper), thus no kick.

This was TC's plate - the Pork Afritada (pork stewed in tomato sauce with onions, garlic, red pepper strips, peas and potatoes, or should I say, "pototoes"). We all had bits of each other's food, with Bert's longganisa being the hit of the day.

Of course, these were ginormous portions and we certainly didn't eat all that fkg food. Who do you tink we are? Lard-Ass Davy Hogans eating blueberry pie ("Stand by Me" reference)? No, we have more self restraint than that and we consciously shut down our "off switches" in preparation for dessert...No, not this, the Turrones de Casoy. This is a Pampangan specialty which is cashew nougat wrapped in an unleavened edible wrapper (kind of like a Communion wafer but not). I was so excited when I saw these and had to have a package. Heh heh, she said "package".

There isn't a lot of seating here. Just 3 small tables and 7 or  chairs. In the corner is a wire rack holding more Filipino snacks like fried pork skins (mmmm, healthy), fried corn, Chocnut (a horrible pasty thinly flavored Chocolate candy), Japanese snacks ("Hello Panda") and other food items (banana ketchup, sauce of lechon and more..

Was it even possible to even eat another bite?

Yes it was...

Oasis here we come!

The Wing - Montgomery Waller Park

After you pass Suicide Hill, make a right on Beyer Blvd where you can see The Wing from afar. This landmark is quite well known in the South Bay, their own "Inspiration Point" (remember the makeout spot from "Happy Days"?). Many don't know that The Wing commemorates John J. Montgomery, an early aviation pioneer, often unsung in history books. On August 28, 1883 Montgomery became the first person to achieve a controlled flight when he launched his glider plane from a hillside in Otay Mesa. In 1950, a 90 foot silverwing from a WW II plane was dedicated to this site.

There is even a nearby elementary school named "Silver Wing" as well as Montgomery High School, Montgomery Middle School (formerly Montgomery Junior High back in the day) in Otay Mesa, and in nearby Chula Vista near Palomar and 4th is John J. Montgomery Elementary School, all named after this dude that died during a test run using homemade equipment on Halloween 1911. There is even a section of I-5 named after Montgomery (I assume it's the southernmost portion of I-5 since he did live in Otay Mesa). Check out a very cool article on Montgomery here!

According to the article linked above, historians dispute that he was the first person to conduct a controlled flight in 1883, instead giving credit to the Wright Brothers in 1900.

Now make a left up Coronado Avenue. You will pass the San Diego-Otay Mesa branch public library on the right. The entrance to the Wing will be on your left. Wow, look at that dried out hillside. A fire disaster just waiting to happen.

For any readers who used to live in the South Bay over the age of at least 30, you may also associate The Wing as a notorious make out spot. You know, the place for hella horny teenagers to go after football games and dances to do their own Rose and Jack in a steamed up car and get high beamed by people like the our friend the Arsonist! Ha ha, but seriously, it was a major makeout spot until the city decided to lock up the gates at night. Then, people had to go get a room or get to third base somewhere else.   Don't come a knockin'...

Going up the hill to get in...

The hill with the Wing is actually a park whose official name is the Montgomery Waller Recreation Center. The first half of the name Montgomery comes from the aviation dude and the second half Waller from "Luckie Waller". In 1964, the family of Luckie Waller donated a parcel of land next to the site for a park named after her son.

From the top of the hill you can see Mexico in the distance and the neighborhood of Nestor. This whole area is part of an unincorporated part of San Diego (ipecode 92154). The shopping center below houses Northgate Market which used to be El Tigre and prior to that, Safeway. When I first got my drivers license, my mom would give me and my brother rolls of quarters to buy water for our water jugs at the vending machine on the side of Safeway. There was also a tiny public library in the corner of that shopping center. My dad used to take me and my siblings there when he didn't want to drive to the Chula Vista Public Library (farther). You can also see part of the trailer park too.

Panning to the right, you can see a big white screen from the South Bay Drive In Theater (it's in the last third of the photo, next to a palm tree). Those apartments or condos in the foreground are fairly new (to me at least) and were perhaps built in the lae 80's or early '90s.

There was a woman exercising in front of the commemorative plaque when we got there...

I didn't want to take photos of the plaque while she was there so we walked over to the playground so TC could burn off some energy. Of all the years I'd lived here, I'd never walked around the park. Bert was here recently last week when he took his mom out to get some morning exercise. He said the park was crowded with lots of senior citizens (many of them Filipino), mothers strolling their babies, and people walking their dogs. There are a lot of big open grass areas and sidewalks for walkers and bikers.

As I sat on a bench, I saw this...what? No Del Sol? [Del Sol is the name of the local Mexican gang down here; named after a main street that runs parallel to Palm Ave] Or VCV? [Varrio Chula Vista]

After awhile, I walked back to the sign because the lady had gone off to exercise elsewhere.

The last time I was here was back in the early '90s with Astroboi. I remember we took a lot of photos that day. I remember I had on my black and white striped rock and roll mini skirt and matching black and striped flats that I splurged $60 on at May Company. Man, $60 was a lot of $$$ back then to spend on shoes.

I think we went out that day to different places and took photographs. Funny thing is, I never noticed this plaque. Turns out the monument was put up in 1950 which makes it 60 years ago!

I was disappointed there wasn't more info on here other than the laundry list of names. There are more names of bigwigs than I care to see...

Another updwards shot of the Wing...

Bert spotted an interesting looking bird from afar. I'm not sure what this was, maybe a juvenile egret?  Look at it's really long beak - very interesting. It was kind of odd seeing this kind of bird at the park. Normally it's seagulls or crows.

At the base of the wing, there lines radiating from the concrete with dates and names. This one was 1900 Wright Brothers...It's really easy to miss because the names are hard to see. Each line corresponds to a date and the name of an aviation pioneer (they had Chanute on another part; there is a street named after him in a nearby neighborhood).

Parting view as we headed down the hill:

There's Northgate Market...

Next up, lunch!

More on Montgomery and the Wing here and here!

Suicide Hill

Inspired by a recent post by Darlene of My Burning Kitchen, we made our weekly trek down South, as in the area known as Otay Mesa, Nestor and the border of Imperial Beach. Bert and I both grew up in Otay Mesa. To kill time between our eventual destination (Oasis Ice Cream Parlor), we decided to visit a famous South Bay landmark, The Wing. 

But...before doing so, we headed east on Palm Avenue near the trolley tracks.  This is the intersection of Palm and Hollister.  San Diego movie buffs will recognize the opposite side of this intersection in a snippet from the movie, "Little Nikita" (1988) starring the late River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier (remember the 80's when the Russkies were always the bad guys? Except in "Back to the Future" when it was the Libyans"?!). The brief scene showed the "Palm Liquor" store as the trolley headed south to Tijuana.  This intersection was also the same site where my dad took all of us to see the runner with the Olympic Torch during th 1984 Summer Olympics.

Here's the imdb plot summary:

"Roy Parmenter is an FBI agent in San Diego; 20 years ago his partner was killed by a Soviet spy, nicknamed Scuba, still at large. Scuba is now trying to extort the Soviets; to prove he's serious, he's killing their agents one by one, including "sleepers," agents under deep cover awaiting orders. Roy interviews a high school lad, Jeff Grant, an applicant to the Air Force Academy. In a routine background check, Roy discovers that Jeff's parents are sleepers. He must see if Jeff is also a spy, confront the parents yet protect them, and catch his nemesis. Meanwhile, the Soviets have sent their own spy-catcher, the loner Karpov, to reel in Scuba. Alliances shift; it's cat and mouse."
Here's more info about the other sites in San Diego shown in "Little Nikita":

The Torrey Pines coastline
The Performing Arts Theatre
The Spreckels Theatre
G Street Pier near San Diego Bay
On board the Marietta, one of the boats used for the San Diego Harbor Excursion Line
Sea World
and the San Ysidro-Tijuana Border Crossing.

One of the film's climactic sequences is aboard the San Diego trolley which had a hostage exchange between the FBI and KGB.

Makes me want to rent this movie and watch it again!

Once you go past the trolley tracks, you head up this hill, once known as Suicide Hill. I'm not talking about the main road, but the higher one on the right...

Back in the 70's, there was only one way to get to IB from Otay Mesa...head west on Palm Avenue where it narrowed down into a 2 lane road. You had to make a left up a hill near the water tower. The grade is so steep that you couldn't see in front of you. When our family moved down south in 1977, my best friend N would tell me about how much fun it was going down on Suicide Hill. By the time we arrived in Otay Mesa, Suicide Hill was no more. It was closed off and a wider road for Palm Avenue was made. A small housing development was also built at the foot of Suicide Hill. Bert also remembers Suicide Hill. His family would take that road every Sunday on their way to St. Charles Catholic Parish. It's hard for me to believe that this used to be the only road to connect Otay Mesa with IB! Now you can also take Coronado Street (from Del Sol) which runs parallel to Palm.

I tried googling "Suicide Hill" along with San Diego, Nestor, Otay Mesa, South Bay and only came up with articles about suicides but not the hill itself.

Here's a wider shot of the old Suicide Hill...the suburbs to the left is Palm Pacifica housing development. Many of the streets have Hawaiian street names, (a few Filipino names as well). Those houses were built in the mid 80's.

Aaah, nostalgia...

On to the Wing!

Brother's Birthday Lunch

Hey so my bro turned the big Fucking Four Oh back in late August. Since he's a low key kinda guy, the sibs (me and my sis) plus my parents just threw him a small family party at our parents house.  I made Vietnamese wraps. Here are the greens for the wraps- lettuce, pickled carrot, cucumber, and springs of mint and basil...

which you ate with this, Vietnamese Chicken Salad with pickled red onions, sweet fish sauce, cilantro, mint, and rau ram.

There's the whole shebang - the square container had the hot water in which to dip the rice papers. There was also peanut sauce (storebought). Ha, you can see my Pyrex which I used to heat up the water. Plastic placemats courtesy of my mom.  My nephews were intrigued by this and all but one were willing to give it a go. One in particular, liked it so much, he had a few more rolls with TC giving him a tutorial on how to make them.

My sis ordered Fried Squid from Bert's Grill (Formerly "Lola's Grill" and formerly, "Toto's Grill") on Telegraph. Hell yeah, fried shit! Think of salt and pepper wings, but with squid. That's what this was like.

And because it was my bro's b-day, my mom had to made Pancit noodles (in this case, Pancit Bihon) - noodles for long life. She also made lumpia with ground chicken as the filling.

I just realized this is a pretty shitty photo - my mom's pancit is chock full of stuff. It's not that crappy weak pancit you get from some take out places where it's just filler with carrots, cabbage, and celery. Oh, all that is in there, but she also puts in sliced Chinese sausage, fish cake (cubed), chicken meat, and  tiny shrimps. She also throws in sliced green beans as well, so every bite has a lot of flavor.

My mom usually makes pinakbet for these kinds of occasions. My bro, sis, and I grew up loving pinakbet. Most Filipinos my age hate it. They don't like the bittermelong, the egglplant or the okra, but we do. There's also homegrown 'batao' (beans) as well as tomatoes from their garden. Everything was from their garden except for the okra. My mom has recently been making her pinakbet without bagoong (salted fermened shrimp paste) in an effor to lower her sodium intake.

My mom also broke out with the big guns - Adobong Pusit (squid adobo). She doens't bother taking out the ink sacs. Fk that - she leaves it in. Hence the nice dark color! TC really likes this. I like getting the squid pieces that have the egg sacs in them! Yum!  Not pictured were the carnitas my sis brought in from Northgate. She brought the whole thing - tortillas, rice, beans, guacamole and the fried ass pork! That was pretty good! There were so many good choices that night!

And that, in a nutshell was the food spread for my younger bro!

Labor Day...

Considered the traditional end of summer, Labor Day for old school fashionistas also signals the end of wearing "white shoes", but in Southern California, no one really gives a shit about that fashion rule. You can wear anything in San Diego! For the sports fans,Labor Day heralds the beginnning of the NFL and college football season. I detest watching football and consider myself one of those 'football widows'!

(info from wikipedia, "Labor Day"):

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September (September 6 in 2010).

The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike.The September date was chosen as Cleveland was concerned that aligning an American labor holiday with existing international May Day celebrations would stir up negative emotions linked to the Haymarket Affair. All 50 U.S. states have made Labor Day a state holiday.
With all that official explanation out of the way, let us view this awesome video about Labor Day by the one and only Chad Vader:

And if you were a Mork and Mindy fan, you may also recall and associate Labor Day with Exidor, Mork's mentally unstable cultish friend:

"The Venusians are Coming on Laaaaa-borrr Day!!!!"

Here's some info from the site Exidor@Everything2:

"Exidor was a reoccurring character on Mork & Mindy. Exidor was played by Robert Donner (best known for playing Boss Shorty in Cool Hand Luke). The name "Exidor" was likely a nod to This Island Earth's Exeter alien character.


Mork first met Exidor in Episode 4 "Mork Runs Away". Mork moved out of Mindy's apartment so she could date human males. He moved into a flop house. He noticed a sign on a door claiming the dwelling belonged to the "Friends of Venus". Mork popped in, hoping to meet some Venusians he used to know on Venus. Instead he met Exidor.


Exidor was a crazed leader of a UFO cult called the Friends of Venus. One of the problems with Exidor's cult was it had no actual followers. Exidor believed his cult actually had a large following but all the members were invisible.


Exidor believed a Venusian space ship was to come on Labor Day to take the faithful to Venus and destroy the rest of the earth. Exidor maintained a waiting list in his flop house room. He was the only tangible passenger on the list. Exidor's invisible donkey and regular traveling companion was also another passenger. At some point before the spaceship would take them to Venus Exidor believed he was destined to rule the world as a rock star. To that end he would take regular music lesson's at Mindy's father's music store."

Ha ha! I used to have a pair of those Mork rainbow suspenders back in the day!  And wasn't it ironic abou the OJ Simpson reference? Well, you can also add MURDERER to that list Exidor!

Hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day weekend!

And Superman, if you're reading this, "Happy Birthday!"!!!

El Ranchero Factory Taco Shop

Located in the strip mall off of Palm and the 805 (Palm down in Otay Mesa) is El Ranchero Factory Taco Shop. It's right next to El Ranchero Dulceria which sells Mexican candies, sweets and pinatas. The strip mall also has McDonald's, a barber shop, a dry cleaner and a liquor store (where I first bought alcohol once I turned 21, ha ha). This place is in our old 'hood down south. We were on our way to pick up TC at my parents but before getting her, Bert and I picked up some food to go...

I hadn't eaten here in awhile (it was pre-blogging days) and recently had the urge to go here since one of my friends told me their barbacoa was the next best thing to homemade.

It's your basic bare bones taco place serving burritos, and combo plates. They also had a lot of barbacoa offerings...

We'll have to try their raspados next time...

Bored while waiting for Bert...



Service was pretty fast...

We ordered the stuff to go and off we went to my mom's house to eat it.

Bert got the Barbacoa burrito...we took some hot sauces to go as well. The darker one was pretty spicy and I liked that more. Even though it will do some damage to me tomorrow, I still ate it with my stuff. Nice plastic placemats courtesy of my mom.

Cross section of the burrito. Too much flash. Like Bert's Marvel superhero shirt? Thank you Wal-Mart, $7.00 dude!  The verdict - Bert enjoyed it. Said it was very tasty and not too spicy. Except when he put on the darker hot sauce.

I was originally going to get a regular barbacoa taco, which was going for 2.25. But then, we saw the "Especial" sign - 3 for $3.79, so that is what I got instead.

The corn tortillas were nice and warm (soft too!). The meat was also juicy and flavorful. My friend's homemade barbacoa is much much better than this, but when you don't want to go through all that trouble to make it, I guess this would suffice. I'm sure there's more places out there that serve barbacoa better than this but it certainly didn't suck.

Yay! Three day weekend!!!