Description: It was pouring rain on New Year’s Eve, putting a damper on our plans to participate in festivities downtown. The idea of scouting around town for a nice restaurant for dinner wasn’t particularly appealing, either. Luckily we remembered an attractive bistro just a few blocks away that we’d spotted the previous evening. Our luck and timing were both good when we arrived at
Ortega’s, as the restaurant was gearing up for a private party later that evening but was still serving customers. Soon we were seated in the nicely decorated main room featuring large wicker lanterns in the high-beamed ceiling and wrought iron and leather furniture.
Ortega’s is a fairly new venture started by Juan Carlos Ortega, a restaurateur from Puerto Nuevo, and John Haughland, a retired San Diego police sergeant. They’ve already established a fairly steady clientele, so the wait for a table can be over 30 minutes on busy nights. Reservations are recommended. The bistro features recipes from Ortega’s hometown, a seaside fishing village in the Baja peninsula. The grilled 1-1/2 pound lobster is the restaurant’s signature dish (that’s Pacific lobster, by the way, the spiny, clawless kind). The Baja-style lobster dinner comes with handmade hot corn tortillas, fresh salsa, rice, and pinto beans, not the refried kind. It’s very light for Mexican food.
Our son Greg habitually requests lobster when we go to nice restaurants, and we habitually tell him he can’t have it. He was surprised when we told him to go ahead and order it at Ortega’s. The price was so reasonable, there really wasn’t a reason not to splurge.
Our meal started with a generous basket of thin tortilla chips and a tasty homemade salsa. The reasonably priced Cabrillo margarita ($6), which was Jack’s choice, features good-quality tequila and triple sec, but I opted for passion-fruit ice tea. My tea and Greg’s Coke were replenished continuously.
Jack and I both started with soup, mine a savory black bean and pumpkin soup thick enough to use as dip for the chips, while Jack opted for tortilla soup. Both Jack and Greg had variations on a theme of lobster, Jack had the half lobster and shrimp combo and Greg the half lobster paired with tender beef filet medallions.
I was in the mood for something completely new, so I ordered banana-encrusted huachinango (red snapper). This was a delicious pick. The snapper fillet was smothered in a not-sweet carapace of seasoned banana and atop a bed of red rice, which was, in turn, surrounded by a thick pool of roasted tomato sauce with a swirl of green cilantro sauce as a flourish. The fish was very tender and the flavor married well with the banana and subtle spices of the sauces.
The rain had abated by the time we finished our meal, allowing us to stroll once again through the lively Hillcrest District. We counted ourselves as lucky to have found such a pleasant spot to enjoy our New Year’s Eve dinner.
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