San Diego - Foodie wasteland

Whenever I go to Los Angeles or the Bay Area or New Orleans I always spend a good amount of the trip filled with melancholy over the lack of a food culture in San Diego. There is just no getting around it - For a big city San Diego has strangely poor food. Just that. San Diego sucks for great food and food culture.

And the worst in your face example of this is Mexican. How can we have worse Mexican food when we're right on the Mexican border and the biggest demographic here is Latino? It feels like bizarro world when I need to drive further from Mexico to find great Mexican restaurants.

Yes, there is some wonderful Mexican food here. Super Cocina, El Pescador, La Fachada and others are really good. But 1) after you get past those few, things get thin quickly, and 2) there is nothing here that touches the breadth of authentic Mexican restaurants in LA. In San Diego we just have nothing to match up with LA eats like Guisados, Ta-comiendo, Monte Alban, El Huarachito, Babita, La Casita, Chichen Itza, Guelaguetza......... Etc, etc, etc, etc.

And don't even get me started on authentic taco trucks. San Diego has 4-5 in the entire metro area, Oakland has more than that on one street. Do we hate great cheap food or something?

It's sad to get the feeling, as I did, in the SF Mission district that some of the average Mexican food there is better than some of the top 10 in San Diego.

Oh well. I'll still enjoy tacos here. It just doesn't seem fair.