Mystery Restaurant, Cups, & Stone Brewing Co.

Dave and I are on the road. We left this morning at 10:11, heading south. We set our new GPS to a La Jolla cupcake shop I'd read about in Edible San Diego, called Cups. No deadlines, so we took our time driving down the I-5.

Guess where we stopped for lunch?

(Sawdust on the floor)

Here's another hint:

(Hard-boiled eggs in beet juice)

Okay, it's in downtown Los Angeles and has been there so long that my parents went there when they were dating in the late 1940s.

Phillipe's

Phillipe's opened in 1908. They are known for their French dip sandwiches and cheap coffee... and delicious pies, and pickles, and potato salad and their hot mustard. The lines are long and you sit at long tables to eat with lots of other people. It's walking distance from the train station and right on the edge of China town.

Afterwards, GPS lady got us back onto I-5, heading for "lay joe-la." Honest, that's what she said. She clearly needs some help with pronunciation. (Her Santa Barbara street names are equally difficult to decipher.)

We arrived at Cups just in time for a tea snack.

My cupcake choice was Caramel Apple (spicy apple cake, apple compote filling, a light airy caramel frosting, and thin slice of apple). Dave chose the Brulee-J (custard filling, crunchy glaze on a vanilla cake, topped with a raspberry).


Each day there are about 12 flavors to choose from. It looks like they have good coffees too. It's a lounge so you can sit at the counter, lounge on a cushioned bench inside, or sit on benches outside. They have a pup patio for canine fans as well. They source organic and as local as possible. Their chocolate comes from Sweet Earth Chocolate in San Luis Obispo.

We Yelped some local hotels and decided to drive on to Escondido where the Holiday Inn Express is $20 cheaper than the one in La Jolla. And it's on the road we are taking to the Anza Borrego desert tomorrow.

I used the Edible San Diego website to scout out a restaurant for dinner. Several were closed on Sunday. We settled on Stone Brewing Company because they had baby back boar ribs in appetizer portions. I ordered a glass of smoked porter to wash them down.

Rich and flavorful. Delicious, but I only drank about a quarter of the glass and was glad I wasn't driving.

Time for bed. We have a viola player in the room next to us who must be practicing for an audition. What a treat to listen to the silky rich soothing sound of a professional violist.

There's a camel dairy farm in Ramona on our route tomorrow, but I don't think they take walk-in visitors. They make camel milk soap and sell camel milk chocolate online. It's called Oasis Camel Dairy. I'm hoping someone in the town sells their soap. Mountain Meadow Mushroom Farm here in Escondido sells compost, but not on Mondays. Oh well.

Must sleep.