Khan’s Cave is an Asian-fusion restaurant, I think. It’s about the best way I know how to describe it. They have mostly Asian dishes, some American dishes and a couple of Italian dishes on the menu. They also have a “Lounge Bites and Tapas” menu and offer a happy hour and they have a bar. Phew! That’s a lot of stuff for one place smack dab in the middle of Kearny Mesa.
I went here with my friend Laura and we got there right before the Happy Hour ended and since we were so rushed, we didn’t take the time to really look over the menu. Our waiter hurried us into ordering, saying he needed to get the order in before the deadline. So we both quickly ordered and waited for our food to arrive.
After being rushed through ordering, we finally got to sit and enjoy our surroundings. It really is a lovely little restaurant. The lounge/bar area has some twinkly lights on the wall and ceilings and red lamps glowing down definitely giving it that “lounge” feel. It’s decorated with an Asian motif throughout the restaurant and it’s stylish and a nice place to kick back. It’s much nicer inside than out. When you pull into the parking lot of this place you’ll probably think, “Uh oh. Restaurant in a boring strip mall. Help me!” But the atmosphere makes up for the drab outside of the strip mall.
We received our food fairly quickly. I got the 6 ounce Top Sirloin Steak and Fries ($9 happy hour price, regularly $11) off of the Tapas menu. That’s all you get – fries and meat. I was content with this though because I wasn’t super hungry at the time and a little bit of steak sounded nice. While it looks like it was charbroiled to death on the outside, it was a perfectly good medium on the inside – a good amount of red showing, so it was tasty in my mouth. Fries are fries and are usually good as long as they’re cooked all the way, which these were. Nothing special about the fries.
Laura got the Seared Sesame Ahi sandwich ($9 happy hour price, regularly $12), also off of the Tapas menu. She thought it was good. I don’t remember if she had anything else to say about it, but I do remember she liked the sandwich. They also offer the seared sesame ahi without the bun on a salad instead and sans the fries.
At the end of the evening when we got our check, we noticed that the happy hour prices hadn’t been applied to our meal. I asked our waiter about this, since he made it a big point of rushing us to get it in time for the happy hour price. He said something about the computer putting on the price or some such and that he had no control over it, but offered to give us one of the meals for the happy hour price. This was a bit irksome to me, since I felt so rushed to order in time to make it for the happy hour price and we didn’t even get it for both meals.
I would like to come back at another time with plenty of time for happy hour (or on a Wednesday – happy hour prices are effective all night on Wednesdays) and try a few of their other menu items. Some other things that sounded good were the Ginger Glazed Shrimp Basket, Garlic Wok Baked Chicken Breast, and the Seafood Pad Thai. Oh, another day my friends.
Khan’s Cave | Tavern and Grill
9350 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. (near the 15)
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 279-9799
