Review - Empirehouse Urban Palate

yea, its an old house that was turned into a couple different shitty restaurants, and everyone is saying that this is the one thats breaking the curse. meh. theres a different between breaking the curse and not going under. i feel that this place is just gonna float on top of the water, barely. i hardly consider that "breaking the curse". allison and i went in today for a nice lunch, and when we go to the front door, the girl who obviously worked there just kinda smiled at us as we walked in the door and didnt really tell us anything about seating ourselves, or she would be right with us, she was too much into the conversation she was having with the two artsy fartsy guys sitting out front. so we sat ourselves outside in the sun and waiting for menus, which came in a few minutes. now the menu is pretty much all over the place, but thats not necasarilly a bad thing, i mean theres plenty of places that can do muliple different kinds of fare and do them right. so it was a little difficult for me to decide what i wanted to try, which ill admit, is my own fault because i can never make up my damn mind. allison opted for the Grilled Cheese, where at 6 bucks you can choose two different kinds of cheese from their list, and can add an additional cheese, or assorted veggies for 1 dollar,  and meats for 3 dollars. she wanted havarti, white cheddar, and gorgonzola. and it came out like this

the bread was nicely toasted and the cheese was good, but i mean come on, its grilled cheese, how bad can it be? and then on the side is a spear of house pickle. and then that big wide open space on the plate is just empty. so im really curious as to why you would plate it like this. with so much room on the plate and one pickle? no dipping sauce, or other various accoutrement? for 7 bucks, sandwich, and piece of pickle. interesting. as for me, i wanted to get a burger, and i decided against all my previous knowledge of "house specialty" burgers, went with the exotic sounding Zenmai Burger (8 bucks)

apparently zenmai is a marinated japanese fern shoot. and they paired it with havarti cheese and lettuce. hm. i was intruiged by the zenmai and also by the supposed "house formed - cast iron grilled" burger. yea....ive had cast iron burgers before, and this, was no cast iron sear. well, maybe there was a sear on it, but i couldnt tell because of the quarter inch thick flavorless patty. by house formed im guessing they mean that they buy a huge 5 pound buld stick of ground beef, and form it into patties. sans salt and pepper, and heaven forbid they put anything else in there either. the zenmai was just whatever, i think it doesnt really belong on a burger. and for 8 bucks, you also get one of those special little house pickle spears that are so expensive to make that they only put one per plate. we also wanted something to split so we just ordered a plate of tater tots, just to smack on.

they were tater tots, not house made or anything, but fried nicely. they came with "worchestshire" ketchup and garlic aioli. nothing to write home about. and at 5.50 for an order, id rather just go buy a bag of tots at the store for way less and bake them at home. now another problem i had was this. alot of people seem to be stoked on the happy attitude and talkative nature of all the girls that work there, but i feel differently. mainly becuase most of the time they were talking to me, it seemed like they thought i was 5 years old. "HEY GUYSSS mmm was it YUMMY????" "ooooh are you all done with that??? okie dokie ill just take this away for yaaaaaa" so on and so forth. it got kinda obnoxious.

final word is, if they dropped the price of everything on the menu by a buck fiddy, everything would be better ten fold. but for what you get, the prices are pretty steep. oh well. we shall see how this place plays out. check it out if you want...

Empirehouse Urban Palate
127 University Ave
San Diego, Ca, 92103

www.empirehousesd.com