The Best Places In San Diego!

PBS Fans of Yan Can Cook rejoice with the opening of his Yan Can Restaurant at San Diego International Airport. Chef Martin Yan has hosted over 1,900 episodes of his Emmy Award winning Yan Can Cook shows on PBS since 1982. You may also be familiar with one of his 28 cookbooks or line of kitchen tools.

Lindbergh is the first airport in the world to host a Yan Can Restaurant. It is located in Terminal One before you reach the security line. The 1,750 square-foot restaurant will feature traditional favorites such as Kung Pao chicken, Mongolian beef and specialties including chicken lettuce wraps, veggie spring rolls and crispy pot stickers.

Are you a fan of his shows or cook books? Let us know. Have you tried out the new restaurant? Give the rest of us some feedback.

Mark your calendars for March 12 - 14 if you would like to learn directly from the world’s greatest minds and how they have made an impact on our lives.

San Diego’s environment, especially Torrey Pines Mesa, has always attracted the brightest minds in the world from Jonas Salk (polio vaccine) to J. Craig Venter (human genome). It is only fitting that San Diego is home to the Kyoto Laureate Symposium’ for the 23rd Annual Kyoto Prize Winners.

The Kyoto Prize is the Japanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The awards for ‘Advanced Technology, ‘Arts and Philosophy’, and ‘Basic Sciences’ come with $470,000 and a 20-karat gold medal. This year’s winners include (more…)

Do you remember the Super Bowl XLII commercial about an oboe playing grocery bagger plucked from obscurity and turned into a NFL starter? The ad, sponsored by the NFL, seemed a little hard to believe. I was curious to know if it was a true story.

The next day my cousin called to say, “Hey, I worked at Ralph’s on Montezuma Mesa with the a guy that was in a Super Bowl commercial!” Well, that answered my question. Both the plucker (Ephraim Salaam), and the plucked (Chester Pitts) were students at San Diego State and now both play for the NFL’s Houston Texans.

As for the oboe playing, (more…)

It’s whale watching season in San Diego! I’ll tell you about my amazing whale of an experience at the end of this post. More importantly, be sure to look for a glimpse of the Gray Whales over the next two weeks as they return from their breeding grounds in the Gulf of California back to the shores of Alaska. Gray Whales are only found in two regions of the world, Northeast Asia and our own coastline. Fortunately for us, they are only visible from shore as they pass the Southern and Central California coastline. (We San Diegans just seem to be in the right place for everything.)

The 12,500 mile ‘California’ Gray Whale migration is the longest known migration among mammals. They head south past San Diego starting in the latter part of December and then return north past San Diego up through the beginning of March. The best place from land to catch a glimpse of the whales is Cabrillo National Monument. To get a closer view, there are several boat tour companies that offer morning and afternoon trips. I highly recommend you obtain advance reservations as the tours often sell out. If any of you have recommendations on which tour companies to use, please share them in the comments.

As for my whale of a story, (more…)

This will be the first of a several part series on why San Diego is such a great place for movie lovers. Today, I’ll tell you how you can get a private showing of films from major and independent studios before their public release.

A friend has been telling me about this great group of people who meet on a monthly basis not only to get an early glimpse of first-run movies but to listen to guest experts, including actors, directors, and studio representatives, discuss the films in detail. A couple weeks ago, the director of ‘Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037′ presented his feature-length documentary, which followed the making of a Steinway concert grand piano from forest floor to concert hall. After the showing, guests were treated to a viewing of the actual Steinway built during the filming and a professional performance on a concert grand piano.

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Hurry and vote to make San Diego a wildcard city on Monopoly’s World Edition! There are two wildcard spots open to fill the board with 22 cities. Nominations for the wildcard spots end on Thursday, the 28th. The top 20 vote-getting wildcard cities will then be entered in a run-off starting Friday, the 29th to determine the final two. You can vote every day. So, let’s make sure we get San Diego into the top 20 wildcard cities!

The other 20 spots are reserved for several dozen cities pre-selected by Monopoly. You can vote on these as well. Voting does require you to register your email with a password. However, their terms and conditions note that you will not receive any emails other than a registration activation for this contest.

So, get voting and let’s get San Diego on the board! Let us know if you’ve voted. I hope to tell you on Friday that we made the top 20!

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Update:  Well, the top 20 cities were revealed and only one U.S. city, San Francisco made the wildcard list.  Thanks to all of you who voted and emailed to let me know.

Do you eat breakfast on a daily basis? Apparently, 73% of us start off the day with this morning ritual, which puts us #1 in the country. No other city topped 70%.

The Jimmy Dean survey analyzed the breakfast habits of more than 6,000 people. Cereal is still the top choice but eggs and egg sandwiches are closing in as the second favorite option.

So, what are your favorite breakfast spots in San Diego?

I’m a cereal eater myself. Although it doesn’t count as a breakfast spot, my favorite cereal comes from our own La Jolla based Kashi Company. They now have the support of Kellogg’s marketing muscle to help make it a household name across the country.

Here are my favorite breakfast spots. I know there are a lot more I’m not aware of so send in your recommendations! (more…)

San Diego has arguably the best hospital room in the world. I can tell you about it from my first hand experience. We are lucky in San Diego to have world class hospitals. We are even luckier to have first class facilities.

Last month, I had the the fortune of staying for two weeks in the Mother Theresa room at Scripps Clinic. Not only had Mother Theresa blessed the room with her presence (apparently on a couple of occasions) but she also took calls from POPE JOHN PAUL II during her three week stay as noted in this New York Times article.

However, even Mother Theresa’s presence might not have been enough to hold me over for a two week stay in a hospital. Fortunately, this was no ordinary hospital room. Check out the view:

Yep, (more…)