The Tilted Kilt

Not gonna lie.  The Tilted Kilt is not your run of the mill Gringo-like joint.  The Gringos tend to roll indie style.  We like places we feel have great ambiance, a deep sense of substance, a true measure of individuality.  And The Kilt — well, it’s got a clearly corporate feel to it.  No question about that.  You walk in and know what they’re about: a commercial Celtic-American themed sports pub, where the food and drink are served by hot chicks.  Cuuuuue … military dudes, frat dudes and sports geeks.

For all that — as long as we’re keeping it real — I suppose there’s nothing wrong with having your cold beers (and they have plenty) served by beautiful girls in knee high stockings and plaid kilts.  We hung for an hour with our crew, and we had a great time.  And although there are like 30 or 40 Tilted Kilts in the U.S., here is what you can count on from each and every one: (more…)

No two ways about it, The Gringos love The Corner.  If either of us lived in San Diego’s East Village, we’d absolutely make it a regular haunt.

East Village has that slick metropolitan feel you often find in the down town areas of America’s great cities.  The Corner takes that metro vibe and adds an industrial angle to create a fabulous urban interpretation of the classic American burger joint.  For all that styling, though, it’s utterly chill and totally inviting.  They themselves describe it as built “for the neighbors, by the neighbors” – a great founding philosophy.

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No two ways about it, Pacific Beach’s Tap Room is simply a gloriously gringo place.

For starters, they feature two of our favorite things, pizza and beer.  The pizza’s are hand tossed and delicious, the beers are many and varied.   Secondly, its got good ol’ down home, unpretentious charm.  And third, there are three Gringo Rules we pretty much live by in our travels:  1) go where the locals go  2) eat where the locals eat  3) drink where the locals drink.  The Tap Room most definitely meets all three of those requirements.

For our purposes on this trip, we focused on their beer selection.  We had just enjoyed a late breakfast at PB’s World Famous (highly recommended; incredible Bloody Marys; they get their own segment someday), and we were in a mood for new San Diego beer discoveries.  The Tap Room is known not only for their incredible total beer selection, but for their strong offering of San Diego’s local breweries, in particular.  Since we were looking for a solid sense of local flavor, it was pretty much a mandatory stop.

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