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Sex in the City

Dish

APHRODISIAL ANTIPASTO? Acqua al 2, the oddly named Italian eatery on lower Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter, offered a Valentine’s Day menu of purportedly aphrodisiac dishes that, the restaurant claimed, would “arouse the lust” in diners who devoured the four “seductive” courses. Featured ingredients on the hot-to-trot shopping list included familiar stuff like garlic, mustard, strawberries and, no surprise, chocolate . . . Some municipalities have banned restaurant promotions that favor one gender over the other, but not San Diego, where The Wine Lounge at Fifty-seven Degrees near the Cop Shop in East Village recently offered women half-price pours between 10 p.m. and midnight. No matter which side your shirt buttons on, if you like wine and haven’t visited this nifty little hideaway, get a move on.

ACTUALLY, IT’S NARCISSISM: “Is it voyeurism if you’re looking at yourself?” ask the business cards for Universal, the certain-to-sizzle club opening any day at University and Vermont in Hillcrest. Created by Endev, the nightlife impresario behind the Gas lamp’s lava-hot Stingaree, Universal will feed scene-makers in a dining room called Dish (which would make a dandy name for a restaurant news column). Endev head chef Antonio Friscia has concocted lunch and dinner menus that range from prim-and-proper lobster mac ’n’ cheese to the questionably titled “Daddy’s Pimped-Out Egg Sandwich.” When necessary, weekend brunch guests can seek relief by tossing back the “Sure-Fire Hangover Cure” of pepper vodka, raw egg, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauces, bacon grease (how yucky, even if it is applewood-smoked) and organic tomato juice; surely it’s the organic juice that guarantees the cure.

WORMWOOD CAN BE SO GALLING: If you must go down drinking, head to Currant Brasserie, Jonathan Pflueger’s good-looking restaurant at 140 West Broadway. Absinthe, long banned in France and the United States as the true demon likker, is legal once again, and the Currant bar pours it the old-fashioned way, with a sugar cube and spoon in the glass.

ALMOST AS HAPPY AS A CLAM at his new EastLake eatery, Joe Busalacchi vented a few beefs while chewing the fat recently at Trattoria al Lago. “Someone needs to educate diners on how to behave in restaurants,” he complained, adding, “I want to put up a billboard in the entrance that says, ‘If you’re in a hurry, please come back another time.’ ” Busalacchi well understands hospitality is the bedrock that underlies the restaurant biz, a truth ignored by greedy operators who prod servers to up the check any which way they can. When a guest ordered a Manhattan at a popular joint, the server’s instant query, “Is Maker’s Mark okay?” suggested this was the house booze, although the premium brand would have doubled the drink’s price. When called on his underhanded ploy, the server played innocent.

RESTAURANT CLOSINGS rarely seem newsy, since popular places don’t close. Sad to say, Bud’s Louisiana Food Shoppe, Bud Deslatte’s great Cajun-Creole place on Kettner Boulevard, has shuttered its doors. One might reasonably credit the demise to cramped quarters and a lack of ambience, since the irreproachable grub truly sang. The new tenant in the diminutive space, Just Burgers & Lounge, takes an organic approach to well-garnished, half-pound sandwiches made with free-range beef, but how successfully will they fare against the big bad burgers flipped next door at endlessly atmospheric The Waterfront? . . . Burgers so dominate local dining that some eaters must regard meals as the daily grind. Neighborhood, the handsome burger bar in East Village with exceptional food, conceded burgers aren’t just for dinner by condescending to open for lunch between noon and 2 p.m.

Side Dish

The Tail That Wags the Dog

REMEMBER THE COTTON PATCH, the swanky Midway eatery that until the mid-1980s served superb steaks and much hearty down-home fare? Its success gave birth to the Boll Weevil chain (beef left from trimming prime steaks was ground and sold as burgers next door at the first Boll Weevil). As the chain spread like weevils (the comparison is apt), the Cotton Patch gradually lessened in importance and was closed. Well, Anthony’s Star of the Sea Room once was not merely the flagship of Anthony’s restaurants but also San Diego’s flagship restaurant. Memories, memories; it closed the other year, and after renovations (and a never-fulfilled announcement the stellar bayfront eatery next to the Star of India would become a reasonably priced Ghio’s Steaks & Seafood), it has been reborn as Star of the Sea Event Center. Accommodating 120 for a meal or 175 for a stand-up reception, it has discarded Mama Catherine Ghio’s signature fare in favor of a you-choose list of eight caterers that includes the French Gourmet, TK&A Custom Catering and Simcha San Diego Kosher Catering. Outside the windows, San Diego Bay continues to shimmer by day and night.

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