One event that Grant and I look forward to all year is the Best of San Diego Party hosted by San Diego Magazine. The event takes all of the best restaurants in San Diego and has them provide samples or tastings of their cuisine. Like the previous few years, we went with the Newman/Baker/Brandel clan and ate and drank like gods. The location was a bit different this year as it was across the street in an empty field as compared to the permanent structure at Liberty Station.
My personal favorite food item was Puesto’s shrimp taco, which is opening a location in Mission Valley soon! My other two favorites were the pork and shrimp dumplings for the Dumpling Inn and the ice cream from Ann’s Dry Cleaning. All of the food was delicious and I expect us to continue participating in this event for the foreseeable future.
The next day, Grant, Lara, and Michael and I hopped in a car and began our trek to Los Angeles for Cinespia’s Slumber Party at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery. Louis drove and was going to meet us up there. Traffic was a nightmare and it took us about 4 hours to make it Los Angeles with one pit stop at Raising Canes for lunch. Finally, we made our way to our hotel—Westin Bonaventure Hotel to get ready for the evening. The hotel has been used in multiple films and it was really neat walking around remembering random scenes from movies. It also didn’t hurt that the hotel reminded us of the movie with placards.
The pool for the hotel was on a rooftop on the fourth floor. It was really neat lounging in a pool with skyscrapers surrounding us and made from some really cool photos. Time wasn’t our friend due to the late arrival so we were only able to stay for a little while. After getting cleaned up, we all piled into the Mini Cooper to go pick up a sandwich from a local place that Lara choose. The last time that Lara navigated was in Colorado and we ended up at a Yogi Bear Park in Colorado Springs. Instead, of a spa and resort in Denver. This year, she took the lead to find the food and while the directions were great the restaurant was closed. Of course, we are going to tease her about this for the rest of her life.
Instead of sandwiches, we ended up grabbing Little Ceasers, which is right outside the cemetery. The event opens at 6:45 pm and you rush through a graveyard to an empty plot of land where a projector is set up. If you get there late you have to set up next to a mausoleum. You set up chairs, food, drinks and have an evening with hundreds of other people watching 90’s movies. This year’s movies were Never Been Kissed, I Know What You Did Last Summer and JawBreaker.
We got a decent spot and watched the first movie. People provided their own commentary throughout and we laughed at how ridiculous the movie has become over the years. After the first movie, a DJ was brought in and a dance party erupted at the cemetery. Definitely, something you are only going to do in LA. After a bit of time, Pizza Hut, who was a sponsor of the movie showed up to provide the audience with free pizza. This, of course, created a frenzy of people wanting to grab and snatch, but eventually, we got one of the pizzas. To our surprise, it was still hot! Way to go Pizza Hut on that one.
The second movie began right at midnight. Another movie that doesn’t hold up well is I Know What You Did Last Summer. The acting in the movie is atrocious and the plot has so many holes in it that you cannot remember why you thought at one point in your life this was a good movie. At the end of the movie, the DJ came out again, but the majority of the people left. Everyone was tired so we retreated to our hotel room and fell right to sleep.
Next morning we got up and went to the Grand Central Market, which was about 10, 12, 14, or 15 minutes away from the hotel. Anytime we looked at a map for directions it would change so needless to say it was reasonably close. The majority of us wanted to try Eggslut, which is an egg-centric food stand offering egg sandwiches. Of course, this place had the longest line in the entire market, but we wanted to try it so we waited. When the sandwiches arrived—they were okay. I deconstructed mine and thought it tasted better separate than all together.
On the way back, we went through a tunnel. A strange man was on the other side of the tunnel and he randomly stopped walking midway through the tunnel. We continued walking. It turns out he was getting out a syringe to inject himself in the arm with some sort of concoction in a water bottle. Needless to say, LA has a drug problem and we got to witness it firsthand. We drove back following this strange occurrence and made it home in about 2 hours and 15 minutes.