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by ML

The Endless Road Trip — San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 7. Pork, It’s What’s for Breakfast

“Part of me really has a hard time looking at someone straight in the eye after they tell me they don’t eat bacon and not laugh….”

This is what my friend told me he added to his online dating profile after meeting too many women who didn’t eat meat. I don’t know what’s worse; the fact that these women exist or that he kept meeting them. Regardless, I found a place he should probably take women on dates.

I walked into Imig’s Kitchen and Bar in the Lafayette Hotel & Swim Club expecting run-of-the-mill breakfast that you so often get in a hotel restaurant, even if it was in San Diego. I was pretty tired and haphazardly ordered the braised pork and applewood smoked bacon hash (above), which the menu told me contained the hash, plus poached eggs, chile de arbol, and hollandaise on a crispy corn tortilla. My lovely dining companion, BS, went with the breakfast sammy: grilled country bread, eggs over easy, arugula, avocado, prosciutto, oven roasted tomatoes, fontina and chive pesto:

Brussels Sprouts. Bacon. Pizza. Yes.

I’m going to make a confession: pizza is not really my thing. Most of the time it’s just kind of… boring. Bread with sauce and cheese, big deal. You need to do something pretty cool with pizza to get my attention.

Here is an instance of one such attention-grabbing pizza. My friend Sarah is pretty obsessed with Martha Stewart (I mean, I’m a pretty big fan, too — holler, Martha!) Sarah saved a recipe for Brussels sprout & lemon pizza from the March issue of her magazine, and being a Brussels sprout lover, I was into it. It’s also cooked on the stovetop in a skillet, which intrigued me. So we went ahead and made our version.

Carb Attack: Mac ‘n’ Cheese Grilled Cheese

As some of you may know, our very own gansie has been on a mission to find the best grilled cheese in DC. One place she hasn’t yet ventured is my kitchen. What you see above is a mac ‘n’ cheese grilled cheese. Only you ESers would appreciate something as beautiful as this and wouldn’t mind that it means you have to hit the gym or an extra hour or two (or in my case actually going for once).