Recently I was invited to try out the new menu at the Crossroads restaurant inside of the House of Blues in Downtown San Diego. All of the Crossroads restaurants have been revamped with a new menu from head chef Aaron Sanchez who can be seen on the Food Network in such shows as a judge on Chopped and Heat Seekers.
The new menu rolled out on August 15th here in San Diego ad will continue to be rolled out to other House of Blues cities over the course of the next few months.
I took my friend, Laura, and we met up at the House of Blues one recent Monday evening for a quiet dinner in the restaurant. Our waitress was very nice and told us about a few of the new featured items on the menu before we were left to decide what to get for our meal.
We started off with an appetizer of Chicken Wings ($9.99). There are three different sauces to choose from for your wings: BBQ, Jamaican jerk, or Buffalo hot sauce. We went with the BBQ for this dish. It also comes with a citrus horseradish slaw and a side of ranch dressing. The wings are large and have the wing and drumstick still together when served and it surrounds the slaw in the middle. The wings were just okay in my opinion – very saucy and messy. They didn’t have much of the “crunch” I’m used to when ordering wings but they were very meaty and a filling appetizer. I didn’t care for the slaw at all – I found it to be very tangy and honestly I’m just not much of a coleslaw fan to begin with! I don’t really care for cabbage…
We also shared the House of Blues Salad. This lovely comes with goat cheese, pecan, tomatoes, on mixed greens all tossed in a light vinaigrette. It was perfectly balanced – just the right amount of dressing and all of the ingredients tossed together nicely so you don’t have to trouble yourself with tossing. I loved the crunch of the pecans with the mix of goat cheese and the tomatoes were surprisingly sweet. The thing that did amuse me though was that Laura and I both avoided the frisée as much as possible.
Laura and I also have very similar tastes when it comes to food because we both decided to order the Chile Braised Short Ribs ($22.99) for dinner. This dish comes with an Andouille corn pudding and veggies (ours consisted mostly of sugar snap peas and snow peas). The short ribs were so tender! I thought that I might need a knife to cut through them but with one poke of my fork I found they were just as tender as could be. They have a Pasilla chile glaze on the short ribs, giving them a bit of a spicy edge. They practically melted in my mouth and I highly enjoyed the short ribs. The did get to be a bit spicy for my palate after awhile though and I asked our waitress if we could have some bread, and she obliged by giving us some toasted sourdough. This helped me to cleanse my palate a little and remove a little of the spiciness!
The corn pudding was also good – but I myself didn’t really taste the Andouille that was supposed to be in it. It had a thickness to the pudding and bits of corn were clearly seen and tasted in the pudding. It had a slight sweetness but I was expecting a creamier texture for the pudding.
For dessert, we were in a chocolate mood and decided to order the Chocolate Lava Cake. We got a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on the side to eat alongside our little cake (plus a big heap of whipped cream off of the side). It’s little, but super rich!
Here’s my overexposed flash photo to show off the oozing insides of the gooey chocolate lava cake. This lava cake didn’t disappoint – the insides were flowing with warm chocolate, it was incredibly moist with an intense chocolate flavor. The whipped cream and bits of ice cream helped to cut a bit of the richness but we sure did enjoy every bite.
We sat in a little booth near the bar. Our hostess first wanted to sit us in another spot, but I insisted on a table with more light! This is just a bit of the decor found inside the restaurant.
And the bar area, which has some of the happy hour specials listed in the middle.
I also really dug how these lampshades looked in the bathroom and the glow they gave off onto the ceiling.
After dinner, Laura and I were quite stuffed from our meal and with our leftover short ribs in hand, we took a walk around Downtown for a bit to try and ease our stomachs post-dinner. We ended up walking through Horton Plaza as well (since that’s where I parked). All in all it was a lovely evening, filled with some good bits of food and a nice, relaxing dinner. If you want to have a quiet evening Downtown, Monday is definitely the day to go!
Crossroads at the House of Blues
1055 Fifth Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 299–BLUE (2583)
