bridges bar | grill | bay / college – san diego, ca

Bridges Bar | Grill | Bay is a new bar/restaurant that opened near the College Area. It’s a “San Francisco” themed bar, though I don’t really remember anything particularly “San Francisco” about it. Though, I could have just been oblivious since it was so loud in here that I didn’t feel like lingering.

I managed to pick up a deal for Bridges on LivingSocial. Jake was my date one Friday evening and we ventured over for dinner.

The place was packed and rocking on a Friday night, with almost all of the tables inside taken. There was a band playing and the music was quite loud and Jake and I opted for a seat outside next to the fire pit for a little bit of a quieter spot.

[fire! fire!]

Since we were outdoors, the only lighting I had was the fire and the streetlight.. so bare with me and these strangely lit photos.

[gilroy garlic fries – $7]

The menu describes these as fries covered in “Roasted Garlic”. Hey, if you’re just going to saute the garlic, don’t put “roasted” on the menu.  It’s cool. We understand. You’re making the menu look hip. But there’s no roasted garlic here, just cooked garlic – which, to me, is different than roasted garlic.

Am I nitpicking?

They are really garlicky though, to their credit. The garlic was not well coated all over the fries since there were huge clumps in some places and no garlic in others, but again… nitpicky?

In the end, it’s just a big bowl of shoestring fries with garlic tossed on.

[ginger teriyaki chicken wings – 6 pieces – $6 | 12 pieces – $10]

Bridges has six different flavors available for their wings and they have some pretty interesting flavors, such as Chinese Salt & Lemon Pepper (not sure what makes it ‘Chinese’ though), Louisiana Spicy Fried, Classic Buffalo, Mango Haberno BBQ, Sweet & Sour Sriracha and our chosen flavor, the Ginger Teriyaki.

The Ginger Teriyaki flavor was recommended to us by our waitress and it was the most interesting flavor to me of them all. I actually really liked the sauce – the ginger was very pronounced with the teriyaki making for a nice sweet contrast to the wings.

The only sad part was that a few of our wings were a little undone… which made me feel like I was going to get food poisoning (luckily neither of us did). Jake pointed out to our waitress that the wings were undone and she took the wings off of our tab.

[bacon pepper jack macaroni – $8]

I hearts macaroni and cheese a lot. If I spy it on a menu in an interesting flavor combination, chances are very high that I will want to get it and stick into my mouth. Cheese is one of the best things on earth and paired with pasta, it’s like magic. Jake and I honed in on this dish right away. Pepper jack made me think, “Hmm, is that really the best idea for your one and only cheese choice?” but the “bacon” part won me over into wanting to try it.

I should have listened to my gut here. The pepper jack cheese sauce was so underwhelming here. It had a little bit of spice from the peppers and some jalapenos. It was very creamy but it just was lacking something. It needed another cheese, something sharper, to really amp up the flavors. Without that, the macaroni just fell a little flat, making it a disappointing dish.

[chicken littles – $9]

Since we were going all appetizers that evening, I wanted something a bit more substantial for dinner and picked the “Chicken Littles” slides – fried buttermilk battered chicken breast patties with thousand island dresses, jack cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion.

These little sliders were super cute! The little buns are just so darling! The buns were toasted (yay) and the chicken was a little heavy since it had a thick batter on it – but it crispy and juicy and pretty yummy overall.

Since we already got fries, we asked to substituent fries for tater tots. There was no extra seasonings or flavoring on them – just your basic tater tots. They weren’t super crispy either, just so-so. We asked for a side of ranch with these and were charged an extra 25 cents for the ranch.

Now let me say a little bit about the service here… we were out on the patio, away from the major crowd inside. Service was a bit on the slow side throughout the meal which didn’t bother me since Jake and I had no where else to me and were just enjoying the evening and watching the fire pit. At the end of our meal, she gave us the bill… and then we waited. And waited. And waited for her to come back over and get the bill. The patio had mostly cleared out by then except for four college guys sitting across from us at the fire pit. Our waitress smiled at me without coming over and proceeded to flirt with the college guys, sitting with them and talking to them for awhile while we still sat waiting for her to get our check. She finally came over and I gave her the LivingSocial information… and then we again, had to wait longer for her to get the check done. Probably took 30 minutes just to get out the door after getting the bill and by that time I was so irked at having to wait that I just wanted to get the heck out of there. Uurrrgghhhhh.

tl;dr – the service was bad and I was an unhappy girl. Blah blah.

Bridges Bar | Grill | Bay
4800 Art St. (off El Cajon Blvd.)
San Diego, CA 92115
(619) 501-9448