Well we've continued to try to explore King Street a bit further recently and last night came across a great spot off the main street a bit: Bilbo Baggins. Though some might find the name a bit odd for a cafe/restaurant with no affiliation to Tolkien's book, I love it (and I'm not even the big LOtR fan out of the two of us).
As you might expect from the name, the inside is a bit cozy with low ceilings, and small floor space, but I really liked the atmosphere (with the exception on one particular customer whose obnoxious shouting voice seemed to indicate that she wanted to be the attention of not just her own conversation, but the entire bar--but I can hardly fault Baggins for that).
The service was a bit ditsy (I had to repeat both drink orders to her), but definitely friendly. It had a nice hole-in-the-wall neighborhood feel to the place that I really enjoyed.
The best part of the place, however, was easily the beer selection which comprised a 3-page long list of beers from all around the world. I get the impression that an extensive international beer selection is much more commonplace on the East Coast than it was in California which is a bit ironic since most of the domestic beers the places list are in fact from California, even San Diego specifically. I'm a sucker for Belgian beers and I was certainly not disappointed by my selection, neither in flavor nor expense really. In fact, though many would probably view this as almost blasphemous, when I'm spending less than $10/glass on a drink, I realized that I much more appreciate truly high quality beer than a glass of wine for the same price.
The food looked very interesting as well. Certainly not the typical pub fare that I've been seeing prevalent around DC as you can see from their lunch specials. Although very original, I can't yet comment on the quality since the couple next to us left quite a bit of their appetizers uneaten. Who knows though, they might have just had boring palates.
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