opera cafe & patisserie / sorrento valley – san diego, ca

Last month I met up with CC of Pink Candles at Ridgemont High for lunch near my work. I picked a place I hadn’t been to in five years: Opera Cafe & Patisserie. I’ve been trying to get my co-workers to go here but it hasn’t quite worked out in my favor yet… so I figured CC would be cool with it!

I was only able to do iPhone photos that day since I lent David my camera for his Harry’s post. Pretend these photos are more awesome, okay? Thank you.

I met her pretty early to beat the lunch rush. Opera Cafe is located in this little food court off Mira Mesa Blvd. near the 805. It’s the smaller one, the one without the McDonald’s. But this place gets PACKED at lunch time and the spots are all these tiny little spots so I feel like I’m going to hit another car all of the time. Going early negates all of that though and we both parked right next to the front of Opera Cafe.

[grilled steak & baked brie sandwich with caramelized onions and fennel on focaccia bread / $9.80]

This was the only thing I had eyes for that afternoon. Steak and melted baked brie sounded like complete and total heaven to me and it turned out to be so yummy! I think I have some kind of love affair with brie. You put brie on an item and I immediately want it for my belly. The steak was very tender and delicious and it was fun that this was an open faced sandwich. As such, I ate it with a knife and a fork!

The funny thing about this is that if you read my post from five years ago, you can see that the “next time” I visited I wanted to get the Steak & Brie sandwich. I’m glad my wish finally came true five years later, haha!

[french fries with garlic & saffron aioli / $2 upcharge]

I didn’t feel like a salad that day (which is the standard accompaniment for this dish) so I asked for fries instead at an additional charge. I got the garlic/saffron fries – which just means that I got a cup of sauce on the side (which I am more than happy with – I hate sauce on my fries). The sauce was super flavorful and yummy with the fries. I got like an obscene amount of fries, I wish I could have just gotten half this size! CC helped me eat some of it and we both agreed the sauce was pretty tasty.

[croque monsieur with ham, gruyere cheese and bechamel sauce / $8.80]

CC shared a bit of her Croque Monsieur with me – I thought it was really excellent with the melted, bubbly cheese all over it and the creamy bechamel sauce. How can you wrong with those two things? The salty ham helped to balance it all out. Really yummy!

[exotic assortment (from top left): mango cake, strawberry cheesecake, pistachio nougat cake, tiramisu, elderflower & raspberry cake / $7]

Naturally after ogling the dessert case, CC and I decided to share some desserts. They had these cute little dessert assortments with a tray of mini desserts. We got them both because… well, it was for “research”. Yes… research. I picked the Exotic Assortment because I was drawn to the sparkly colors, haha.

CC and I split these all in half, so it wasn’t really a ton of dessert. Just a little taste of each one. Of the exotic ones, the Pistachio Nougat Cake was my favorite. It had a nice pop of flavor and was creamy and delicious. The rest were also good, but the Pistachio one was my favorite.

[chocolate assortment / $7]

I realized looking at this I couldn’t remember what was what from CC’s Chocolate Assortment! I do love that brush of gold sparkle on top of the cake on the bottom right – I *think* that’s the Opera Cake. The chocolate mini’s were good, but overall it wasn’t quite as fresh and flavorful as the mini exotic desserts.

Overall it was great to see CC again and to have a delicious lunch. They have a lot more tasty looking desserts and I want to try out some of their macarons some day. There’s a lot of good looking things on their menu so I’ll definitely be back!

Opera Cafe & Patisserie
9254 Scranton Road
San Diego, CA 92121
(858) 458-9050

In addition to the nice lunch, CC gave me a goodie bag filled with candies and other treats! Here’s a bunch of various sweets and snacks. I ate the de la Rose that same afternoon since it’s my favorite and I also tried the item next to it – Aldama – Milk Candy Wafer. It honestly reminded me of eating a communion wafer but with caramel in the middle… it was weird, haha. There were more snackies in the bag that I forgot to photograph and they are now totally gone. Everything was delicious and fun to try!