jake’s birthday at west coast barbecue / la mesa – san diego, ca

I’m starting off my birthday week by finally writing about Jake’s birthday dinner from earlier this month!

For Jake’s birthday, his mom, Carin, took us out to a barbecue place called West Coast BBQ that she had recently visited and wanted us all to try. A night of barbeque for us!

[a peek at the menu]

Jake and I shared the “BBQ Feast for 2” dinner.

[BBQ Feast for 2 – BBQ Beef, Smoked Chicken, Pulled Pork, Beef Ribs – $22]

The dinner consists of all of the above! Tons of meat for one price. I really think more than 2 people could each this much food.

For the ribs, we could have chosen pork spareribs, baby back ribs or beef ribs. Jake let me choose which type of ribs and I went with beef. Beef ribs are by far my preference in most situations. I like how beef ribs are meatier and juicer. The ribs here at West Coast BBQ were falling off the ribs. I could pretty much take the meat and pull the bone right out. The barbeque sauce here at West Coast is of the sweeter variety and it’s sauced up on the ribs and meats for you.

I liked the beef ribs here. They were very tender and juicy. I would have like less sauce on the ribs though and maybe have the sauce on the side so I could put on the amount that I wanted on the ribs.

[BBQ Beef]

This is the BBQ beef. It had a nice smokiness to it. I don’t consider myself any kind of expert when it comes to barbeque but I liked this well enough. It was tender and had a good flavor.

[Pulled Pork]

The pulled pork was also pretty good – it’s also got a good smokiness and a nice, tender flavor.

[Smoked Chicken]

This is the smoked chicken – a shot of the chicken breast. This was just okay – it got a bit dry on the inside, but that seems to usually happen with white meat. Eating the chicken with a little extra barbeque sauce helped out here and saved it a bit in the end. We ended up taking most of the chicken home since it was our least favorite meat in the bunch.

[Western Style Chili – Chili full of Ground Beef and just the Right Spices]

We got to pick 4 sides to go along with our dinner. Jake picked 2 of them and for one of his sides he got the chili. He just thought it was an okay chili – he thought it a bit too loose and that the flavors weren’t quite there.

[Wedge Fries – Crisp, Homestyle Potato Wedges]

Jake also ordered the wedge fries. I took a nibble of one. It pretty much just tasted like a plain baked potato. It really could have used some seasoning on it to give it a bit of flavor.

[Red Potato Salad – Chunks of Red Potato in our Sour Cream and Dill Dressing]

I got the potato salad for one of my sides. It was pretty creamy and I liked the texture of the salad. The only herb used in the salad though is dill. If you’re anti-dill, then this is not the potato salad for you. Dill doesn’t really bother me, but I felt the dill was maybe a bit too strong. I still loved the creaminess though and the tender potatoes in the salad.

[Sweet Potato Fries]

The sweet potato fries were my favorite side of the bunch. They were perfectly crisp on the outside and had a nice creamy inner texture.

[BBQ Pork Ribs Plate]

These are T.’s BBQ pork ribs. He finished them all. Jake had a bite of them and also liked them, but I didn’t try it.

[French Dip Sandwiches]

This is Carin’s french dip sandwich. I didn’t try it and I don’t remember what she thought of it, but hey, I like sharing photos.

West Coast Barbeque is a pretty good little BBQ shop offering a bunch of different barbeque to their patrons. It’s saucy and sweet and they’ve got some good deals here. They also do carnitas here which I’m interested in trying sometime. They don’t offer any other Mexican dishes, just the one, so I’m pretty curious about those.

The also have cobblers and cupcakes for dessert. We actually got cobblers to go to eat later. We didn’t eat them that night because we had this waiting for us at home:

Homemade carrot cake. I used this recipe from  Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy. It was moist, creamy, luscious, delicious. It quickly became Jake’s favorite dessert. Happy birthday to Jake!

West Coast Barbeque
6126 Lake Murray Blvd.
La Mesa, CA 91942
619-462-3663

Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday, 4PM-8PM