bourre southern bistro

Last night Jake and I went out for a “just the two of us” dinner. Jake wanted to stay closeby, thwarting my original idea, but I picked something nearby that I had bookmarked on Yelp. It was a Southern style bistro serving creole food and the item that caught my eye on the menu was “blueberry cornbread”. Certain items catch my eye and make me want to try them immediately and that was the item for me! Off we went to visit Bourré Southern Bistro.

Bourré Southern Bistro is located in a little nondescript strip mall across from the Kroc Center and just a few stores down from another place we really like called Carnitas Las Mischoacanas. It’s quite literally in the corner of the strip mall, next to a Karate place and a crematorium (weird, I know). There’s also a Dollar Tree and the other side of the strip mall is kind of barren, with a bunch of empty stores and one place that simply says “WIG” (I wish I had a photo of that now that I think about it). It’s very easy to miss this place and you can’t really see it from the street. It honestly doesn’t look like much on the outside.

Jake and I were led to a table on the nice outdoor patio. They were hosting a special event so the restaurant was packed inside!

We didn’t mind, though. It was very pleasant and there was a nice breeze wafting in through the pulled up garage door. By the time we left, the whole patio was full. 

It felt very cozy outside and I loved the strung lights hanging above us. We felt like we were sitting in a little outdoor cafe and even had French jazz music playing softly over the speakers. Bourré (boo-ray) is a trick-taking game (similar to Spades) that is played in Louisiana, which explains the playing cards on the walls outside. In French, bourré means “stuffed” – as in, you’ll leave this restaurant stuffed with food!

The menu has quite a few delicious choices and Jake and I waffled between a few of them before making our final decision. 

Our entrees came with these cute little summer salads that had strawberry dressing and a tiny bit of creamy goat cheese. 

[strawberry cornbread]

I was a little sad to discover they didn’t have the blueberry cornbread anymore, but they swapped the blueberries for strawberries so I wasn’t really THAT sad. In season fruits, yes please! The cornbread also comes with your meal and we got these shortly after our salads. I wish they had served these with butter but actually they were also good on their own. They were also NOT warm which I think would have made them more outrageously good, but I loved the flavor and the easy crumble to them. 

[louisiana meat pies / $7]

Jake and I easily chose the Louisiana Meat Pies for our appetizer. 

You get three little meat pies which are made with puff pastry. They are filled with a ground meat mixture of beef, pork, and turkey sausage and then baked. Jake and I both thought that the outside could have been a crispier. They tasted like the outside was not quite ready, or the oven was set a little too low. On the other hand, the meat filling was completely delicious. The meats were mixed with a nice spice combination that made it very flavorful and quite yummy. If the outside was less soft I would have loved them more, but I really enjoyed the filling in these meat pies.

[catfish / $16]

Catfish is luckily one of the few seafood items that Jake actually likes. It has a flour and cornmeal breading and it deep fried for that crispy oh-so-crunchy exterior. The catfish wasn’t as sweet as other dishes I’ve tried but was still quite good. Jake made the mistake of drenching a piece of catfish in tarter sauce for me so I made a terrible “oh-god-what-did-you-do-to-me” face at him and he immediately gave me an “untainted” piece to counter balance it. I love him. 

[stuffed pork chop / $18]

I usually never order pork chops at restaurants. 95% of the time the pork chops are overcooked and make me very sad. But something in my gut that day told me to DO IT. So we DID IT. And boy am I glad we did because this was honestly one of the best pork chops I’ve ever had. EVER.

It is a double cut pork chop stuffed with yummy, delicious dirty rice and topped with a glazed maple demi sauce. OMG. I’m drooling just thinking about this pork chop… The pork chop is still on the bone and is perfectly grilled – it was tender, sweet, very moist and very juicy. It’s the pork chop of my DREAMS. The dirty rice was also very good filled with bits of ground meat plus yellow and green peppers. I totally ate around the green peppers and I still really enjoyed it. I could barely eat any of the delicious mashed potatoes because there was so much food on this plate. Luckily Jake and I shared this as well and true to its name, I left this place STUFFED. 

We had a nice surprise at the end of the meal when our very nice waitress asked if we had any coupons or discounts. We asked what coupons there were and she told us there are Yelp and Entertainment coupons! I checked and on Yelp there is a $25 off $50 discount and in the Entertainment book (I used the mobile app) there was a coupon for buy one entree get one free, up to $18. We were thrilled that she told us about the coupons AND that it was actually available in the mobile app. SCORE. 

It was a wonderful meal with excellent service and I know that Jake and I will be back – if only to eat that pork chop again!

Bourré Southern Bistro
6523 University Ave.
San Diego, CA 92115
619-542-9954