San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
I mention this because I recently assumed an elephant’s lot in life—at a restaurant called The Living Room Café and Bistro. The Living Room is skwunched between every other eatery along Old Town’s tourist-laden main drag, but not a one of ’em can boast anything close to the restaurant’s colossal salmon sammie ($7.95). This is not a sandwich—it’s a two-story house with multi-grain wheat bread for a roof, and the lettuce, tomato, onion and vinaigrette protrude from every window. Even as you know you’re doing your waistline no favors, you cannot stop eating this monster amid its succulence and tremendous size—until, like me, you arouse everybody’s curiosity when you pop the button on your belt-less pants in the middle of a Guinness and frantically hoist them up your bulbous frame the rest of the night. Everybody, including 75,000 tourists, saw my discomfiture. And, to their immense credit, nobody said a word all evening. Nonetheless, I was at my elephantine highest weight in quite a while, and I paid an elephantine price.
The Living Room (livingroomcafe.com, 619-325-4445) is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 7 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays at 2541 San Diego Ave. (there are also locations in La Jolla, Point Loma, the College Area and National City). It’s a wonderful eatery in this city’s equally wonderful tourist mecca—and on the days I go back, its many amenities include an exotic pet.
