13th Blogiversary Toast at Greystone Steakhouse

This Tasty Life has just turned 13!

It’s crazy to think that back in 2006, Alyssa and I started this blog to write about food. We started food blogging the same year Twitter began and Facebook was made available to everyone to use (not just college kids). 2006 is the year that the Wii came out so people could accidentally throw remotes at their TV’s while they virtually bowled in their living rooms. In 2006, I hadn’t met Jake yet! 

I don’t blog as regularly as I used to but I still try and do a few posts a month when I can and I’m glad you’re still around to check in with me from time to time.

A toast to you, my friends, for sticking with me all of these years!

And a toast to This Tasty Life for helping me remember my meals of the last 13 years! 

And that brings me to today’s post that helped me celebrate the blogiversary with these fine glasses of champagne. Greystone Steakhouse invited me to come in for a meal and I took Jake along with me to celebrate.

Greystone Steakhouse is located off 5th Avenue in Gaslamp Quarter. We visited back in 2016 when we were here for Mardi Gras.

We were again seated along the edge with a view of the grand stairway.

We started our meal off with the same crusty warm bread that we had three years ago. The butter is just the right temperature so it spreads easily on the warm bread. The butter had a bit of a sweetness to it that I liked along with the bits of fresh herbs. 

Greystone Steakhouse treated us to the meal so the only thing we requested was the Ribeye and some mac n cheese. We probably wouldn’t have ordered the Calamari [$17.95] on our own since Jake won’t eat it, but at least I got to indulge in it! The calamari is very lightly breaded here – you can see there are just wee little bits of panko here and there on the calamari. The tentacles were the crispiest part and I ate more of those than the rings. I would preferred if these had a tiny bit more breading to be a bit crispier. If you enjoy the flavor of calamari more than the texture you’ll enjoy this version. It also comes with two dippings sauces, one marinara based one and the other was a spicy-ish aioli. I liked the marinara one better!

The next dish we got was the Portobello [$16.95] which is stuffed with artichoke, gorgonzola cheese, spinach, belly pepper, roasted tomatoes, and a bechamel sauce. This was again a Mary only dish but I was happy to dig in! I love portobello mushrooms and I haven’t had one stuffed quite like this before! The gorgonzola was a little potent (but not as potent as full on blue cheese) and it lent a bit of tanginess to the dish. The mix of veggies with the creamy bechamel was wonderful and I dug the overall flavor of this dish. I couldn’t finish it though as the gorgonzola started to wear on my taste buds and started to make it a bit too rich for me. But I still love the idea of it and anything covered in bechamel will certainly be delicious. 

The next thing to come out were some salads. One was the Organic Greystone [$13.95] with lettuce, caramelized walnuts, bosc pear slices, and a blue cheese dressing with croutons. The menu states there’s supposed to be tomatoes and bacon but we didn’t see them on this dish.

Jake isn’t a big blue cheese fan, so he kept moving the chunks of blue cheese to my plate. I preferred this salad of the two we got as I liked the varying textures of the nuts and croutons along with the sweetness of the pear slices and that touch of blue cheese. 

I had the BLT Wedge [$13.95] which comes with iceberg lettuce, blue cheese, hard boiled egg, cherry tomatoes, and applewood bacon with a blue cheese dressing. It’s also supposed to have red onion which I didn’t get but I did get a lot of carrot slices for some reason. Jake put so much blue cheese on my plate that I had to start ignoring it which is too bad because it was a really nice blue cheese. I should have stolen more pears off his plate to counterbalance the blue cheese! 

The main entrees came shortly after and they ended up splitting the Rib Eye [$57.95] for us. Which is too bad since it doesn’t make for as good of a photo, but that’s okay. Steak is for eating, not photographing, right?! 

Ribeye Closeup! Now that I look back at it, I would say (and Jake commented) that this was probably slightly overcooked – closer to medium than medium rare. Despite that, it was still quite a tasty ribeye steak. There was a good amount of marbling on the meat so we had a nice mix of the fatty bits with the leaner parts of the steak to make for a tender and delicious steak. Jake commented that he really liked the bits of black pepper on top that gave it a nice seasoning. 

This is the Wild Boar Pasta [$32.95] that has rigatoni, wild boar sausage, portobello mushrooms, fennel, tomatoes, and goat cheese. We both really loved the wild boar sausage. It had a wonderful flavor to it and was tender and surprisingly not gamey at all. It just tasted like a yummy pork sausage! I liked that it tasted like it had a gravy on top of the pasta, but the manager, Sara, informed us there’s no additional sauce added to this dish. Neither of us were really fans of the goat cheese on top – I would preferred Parmesan myself – but it’s cool to see them trying something different. I liked the mix of sausage with the mushroom as well and found this to a hearty and comforting dish overall. I’d eat this again without the goat cheese! 

We got a side of the Pancetta Macaroni and Cheese [$13.95] with our meal as well. I commented that I wished it had more salt, and Jake told me that he thought it was salty. Later we figured out that somehow I didn’t eat any pancetta bits while Jake had them all, which really explains a lot. Maybe he was sneaking all of the pancetta away from me! Besides that I thought this was a middle of the road version of macaroni and cheese. The shells were the right texture, there was plenty of cheese and it was a bit creamy, I just wished that the seasoning was a bit more even on the dish – without relying on the pancetta. 

Last but certainly not least was DESSERT.

They brought us this Chocolate Mousse Cake for dessert. I didn’t see a dessert menu so I don’t know if that’s the official name of it, but no matter what you call it, it was delicious! I was full at this point but I have a separate dessert stomach and none of this dessert went to waste. There’s an Oreo cookie crust on the bottom with the velvety smooth chocolate mousse and a bit of whipped cream on the top with chocolate shavings and chocolate sauce drizzled all over the plate. Jake pretty much only ate the whipped cream since he found this to be too much for him. But I loved it! I didn’t think it was too sweet and I loved how creamy and velvet-smooth the mousse was. A perfect dessert ending for me! I should have gotten Jake a bowl of vanilla ice cream or something. He would have loved that.

The highlights for me were the portobello mushroom, the wild boar sausage in the pasta, and the ribeye. And of course dessert!! We had lovely service and the staff was attentive and Sara was especially lovely to talk to. We will be back!

If you’re looking for a nice meal for a celebration, or you’re just jonesing for a steak, give Greystone Steakhouse a try. When you go, mention that you saw this post about Greystone on This Tasty Life and get $20 off your meal of $50 or more. This offer is good for 30 days from this post. 

Greystone Prime Steakhouse
658 5th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101

Disclaimer: I was invited to dine at Greystone Steakhouse on behalf of the restaurant. Our meal was complimentary and I was not further compensated for this post. All opinions stated here are my own.