Saturday, February 12, 2011

Pubcakes and Charisma!!

Oh man, I've become way behind on this blog!

Last Saturday, Captain America, some of my girlfriends, and I went to the grand opening of Pubcakes, a new cupcake shop that uses beer in their recipes.  The grand opening included a beer garden, but that is not a permanent fixture.  I ordered the "beer for breakfast" which has maple cream cheese frosting and bacon bits in the cupcake.  The frosting was better than the cake, but the cake was pretty good, too.  It wasn't too beer-y.  Captain America ordered the "Irish car bomb", which was very good and very chocolaty. 

I've already pre-ordered a dozen of the minis for Valentine's day (I ordered two of each variety).  Also, there was a coffee shop.  The special was a mango iced tea, which was pretty good.  I had a hot chocolate, which was very good.  The only downside to Pubcakes is that it is located waaayy east on El Cajon Blvd., which is not a part of town that I frequent that often.

For dinner, we joined another set of our friends and headed to Hillcrest for Italian.  Coming from the east coast, I have very definite opinions on Italian food.  We went to Charisma Cucina Italiana.  One of our friends had the green linguine special, which was very good, another friend had the eggplant Parmesan, Captain America had a black spaghetti with shrimp, and I had the clams and white wine sauce.  I found my meal to be very salty, which sometimes happens with clam dishes. 

We also had all four desserts, including a tiramisu, cannolis, a custard dish (the waiter was off-the-boat-from-Italy, and we couldn't figure out what he called it, but it was very good), and a peach tart.  The desserts were very good, but the tiramisu was different.  If I thought I was ordering a cake, I would say it was moist and lemony, which is a strange description for tiramisu.  The service, atmosphere, and prices were great, and some of the food was fantastic, but not everything.

I am definitely going to go back to Pubcakes, I can't say the same of Charisma, but it won't be off the list, either.

No comments:

Post a Comment