Have Your Cake and Partie Too
Plus: New Baseball Coach at USD, Book Reviews, the Via Las Cumbres Mystery and Upcoming Community Events
Now that things have pretty much opened up, we are again on the prowl for different, off-beat places to write about. This need to prowl is what recently found us driving through Kearny Mesa in search of interesting food. While driving around our favorite street, Linda Vista Blvd/Convoy, we crossed over Balboa and happened upon a place we had not seen before. In big letters it had written across the façade of the building, Cake de Partie. Intrigued, we circled the block and found the building with a parking lot right beside it. We decided to be adventurous and went in, not knowing what to expect, but thinking it might be a children’s birthday party venue.
To our surprise, it was a rather large space set up for social distancing, with a counter at the front for placing orders, and tables and chairs arranged for inside dining and outside dining as well. A table was set up in the middle that had a menu taped to it. Thinking we were going to have a good dessert, we were again surprised that the menu was a sort of Asian fusion with not only desserts, but a variety of menu items as well. There was a large array of desserts such as pancake soufflé, (tiramisu, creme brulee, chocolate banana), crepe cakes (thai tea, green tea, mocha, ube), ice blended drinks, craft sodas such as lychee rose, hibiscus pomegranate and more. There were also many coffee and tea drinks including organic teas. There was a variety of chicken wing dishes, small plates, salads and rice plates. Entree dishes included Tom Yum chicken or shrimp, Tom Kha chicken, spaghetti dishes such as carbonara and basil crab. While researching on line, we learned that Cake de Partie is indeed an Asian Fusion, Desserts Café, owned and run by Chefs Pat and Molly.
The order staff told us the restaurant has been there about 4 years. She and the cooks were masked and very friendly in taking our order. The crepe cakes looked more than fantastic, and Steve ordered the Thai tea crepe cake for $8.00. I opted for the fried shrimp with spicy mayo.
The crepe cake is make up of about a million layers of crepes so thin you cannot believe it. (I was later told it was at least 30 layers) It was very moist as it is infused with Thai tea. This dessert comes with a little dish of additional Thai tea as if the cake was not moist enough. Steve described the cake as light and airy and really liked it enough that he is ready to have it or another delicious dessert again. Other especially tempting looking desserts were the Tiramisu pancake soufflé, chocolate banana pancake soufflé and the mocha crepe cake.
My shrimp dish consisted of about 5 perfectly cooked large shrimp on a bed of lettuce, and a small bowl of spicy mayo. It had just the right amount of heat for me (meaning not extremely hot) and was enough for a light lunch even though I gave up a shrimp to my co-editor. The spaghetti dishes looked really good, but the only one without meat is the Spaghetti Basil Crab and that is the one we decided to try in the future.
So, a week or so later, we again drove to Cake de Partie and ordered the Spaghetti Basil Crab. This consisted of a dish of noodles, red onion, mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes, basil, and crab meat in a spicy soy based sauce. It was listed as spiced 3 out of 5, and it was plenty spicy and tasty. The serving was more than enough for the two of us as a light lunch. We both enjoyed it very much and declared it a true Asian fusion dish.
Needless to say, we plan to soon return to Cake de Partie to check out the rest of their menu.
4685 Convoy St, San Diego 92111
858-987-0033
Hours:
Mon – Tue Closed
Wed – Thur 12:00pm – 11:00pm
Fri – Sat 12:00pm – 12:00am
Sun 2:00pm – 10:00pm
New Head Baseball Coach Takes the Helm at USD
The University of San Diego (USD) recently hired its fourth head baseball coach in the history of the program. With the resignation of highly successful head coach Rich Hill (to take a similar job with the University of Hawaii), USD didn’t have to look far for a replacement, hiring assistant coach Brock Ungricht to lead the Torero baseball team. Ungricht is familiar to local baseball fans, not only because he has served as USD assistant coach for the past three years, but also because he was a star baseball player for Mission Bay High School and San Diego State University. Of utmost importance for Linda Vista Update readers, he also served one year (2009) as head varsity baseball coach for Kearny High School. The Komets won the league title that year!
In addition to the above experience, Ungricht also played professionally in the New York Yankees organization, served as a scout for the St Louis Cardinals, and spent six seasons as an assistant coach at Stanford University.
As new head coach, Ungricht inherits one of the top Division I baseball programs on the West Coast---a program that that gets to play its home games at USD’s Fowler Park, considered one of the finest collegiate ball parks in Southern California.
We were eager to introduce Coach Ungricht to our readers, so we asked the new head coach a series of questions as a way for everyone to get to know him. He was kind enough to respond to our request. Please read the questions and answers below:
—What favorite childhood memories do you have of growing here in San Diego?
Playing baseball, going to Padre games, going to the beach, and of course eating Mexican food.
— Which individuals have had a positive influence in terms of your athletic career and your pursuit of a coaching career?
My parents (my dad was a long time coach at Mission Bay High/in SD County Coaches HOF) Tony Gwynn, Dennis Pugh (long time Mission Bay HS head coach)
—How did you enjoy your brief head coaching tenure at Kearny High?
Loved it! The kids were looking for some leadership/mentoring and we had a very successful season in 2009. Something I will never forget.
—What do you want to accomplish as head coach of USD’s baseball program?
Win WCC championships and host regional. Fowler Park has a great atmosphere for post-season college baseball.
—What’s the outlook for your team’s 2022 baseball season?
We are returning a good amount of our team that went 33-12 a year ago.
—What are some of your favorite eating establishments here in the San Diego area? Any in the Linda Vista area?
JV’s Taco Shop. I have been eating there for years!
—Anything else you would like to say to our readers in the Linda Vista area and surrounding communities?
Thank you for the support of USD baseball. We look forward to seeing you come out to Fowler in the spring of 2022. Go Toreros!
***
The Linda Vista Update wishes to thank Coach Ungricht for taking the time to answer our questions. We wish him good luck in his new duties.
Summer Reading Book Reviews
We once again asked two of our enthusiastic LV Update readers to provide some entertaining summer reading recommendations. Here are the books Martha B. (Sooley) and Marla M. (Midnight Library) recommended you take along on your summer vacation or trip to the beach.
John Grisham’s new novel Sooley is a big departure from his usual bestselling courtroom dramas. The book’s main subjects are big time college basketball and the devastating violence which plagues South Sudan as seen through the eyes of Grisham’s central character Samual Sooleymon (Sooley). Sooley is a 17-year-old, prodigiously talented, South Sudanese dirt-court basketball player, who was raised in poverty by a loving family. He is chosen to make a trip to the US with a team of talented young Sudanese basketball players and receives a full scholarship to attend University here.
The novel highlights the murderous violence, refugee camps, near starvation, and desperate need for humanitarian aid in South Sudan, as Sooley hears news of his family and native village being ripped apart in his absence. The situation in South Sudan is not publicized much in the US; reading this book should make any reader here very grateful to live in this country.
Grisham is a compulsive story teller, and Sooley also contains many passages about human kindness, exciting basketball game descriptions, and more. If you like John Grisham’s writing, you will probably find this book worth reading, even though it is far from a typical John Grisham novel.
Midnight Library is reminiscent of an all time classic movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Norah Seed is lonely and depressed. She receives a plethora of devastating news in a very short span of time . The unfolding events drives her to suicide. Instead of dying, she awakens in the Midnight Library amongst scores of books and stories that she is able to enter herself into. Her dream like state catapults her back to her life past and an exploration of regrets. Through the books, Norah travels into a life of what could have been and into a world of what the future might hold. It is intriguing following Norah and trying to predict what path she takes.
****
The LV Update thanks our two book reviewers for their recommendations!
Commentary
The Via Las Cumbres Demarcation Line
History is replete with famous geographical demarcation lines. These lines have been used to establish prominent geo-political borders and manage territorial agreements and disputes. For example, American school kids learn about the Mason Dixon line—the demarcation line between four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (then part of Virginia). At the international level we’ve had the Radcliffe Line, which was used as the controversial line between India and Pakistan at the time of India’s partition back in 1947. There has also been the Military Demarcation Line, which in 1953 established the current border between North and South Korea.
However, I want to add one more famous line of demarcation to this list. I call it the Via Las Cumbres Demarcation Line—Via Las Cumbres being a street in the southwestern region of Linda Vista. This particular demarcation line may not be as famous as the dividing lines mentioned above, but it does indeed possess a significance worthy of local LV resident attention. I contend that once you have studied this issue of local demarcation, you can then determine for yourself if the continued use of Via Las Cumbres as a political demarcation line helps or hinders the Linda Vista community.
At first glance, there may not appear to be anything remarkable about Via Las Cumbres. Yes, if you walk, jog, or bike up this thoroughfare you might note its steepness, but that’s not too unusual of a feature; there are, of course, a number of steep inclines in this area. At the top of Via Las Cumbres, where it intersects with Linda Vista Road, you’ll find educational-related institutions on both sides, with the University of San Diego to the west and the San Diego County Office of Education, Twain High School, and Francis Parker School to the immediate east. And if you are a Taco Tuesday fan you may appreciate the presence of three establishments located at the corner of Friars Road and Via Las Cumbres—Kiko’s Food Truck, Mr. Peabody’s, and Los Panchos --that offer great deals on delicious tacos. In other words, tacos and educational institutions abound on both sides of Via Las Cumbres. In this regard, one side is not too distinctive from the other, right?
Yet, for some reason, city and state governments have both gone out of their way to assign Via Las Cumbres a special political importance over the past decade. Though it runs entirely through Linda Vista, and is straddled on both sides by Linda Vista residences, the street of Via Las Cumbres has been used to help demarcate the boundaries for San Diego City Council districts, State Assembly districts, and U.S. Congressional districts. Check it out…Via Las Cumbres serves as a boundary between City Council Districts 2 and 7, between State Assembly district 78 and 79, and between the 52nd and 53rd U.S. Congressional districts. In the process, these city and state entities, have chopped up the community of Linda Vista in two, making portions of our community smaller parts of different political districts, and thus possibly diluting its political influence/stature.
Is it fair that the Linda Vista community is divided in two? Does Linda Vista deserve to be the sacrificial lamb when it comes to redistricting? Does such demarcation dilute our community’s influence? Or is it possible we are actually better off being represented by more than one representative at each of these three levels? LV residents have been pondering these questions the past ten years, ever since the last redistricting effort occurred.
If you are interested in weighing in on this matter at the City Council level—if you are perhaps of the mind that Linda Vista should be part of one district—be aware that the city of San Diego is currently in the process of redistricting its council districts, based on the results of the 2020 census. The members of the city’s Redistricting Commission are responsible for putting together the redistricting plan. The Redistricting Commission website is located here. This organization has a deadline of December 15 for submitting their redistricting plan, which may be difficult to meet since the Commission is still awaiting the latest census figures.
According to the Redistricting Commission website, the City Charter “requires that the districts be drawn to provide fair and effective representation for all citizens of the City, including racial, ethnic, and language minorities. Additionally, to the extent possible, they preserve identifiable communities of interest.”
Some local residents strongly believe Linda Vista should be considered such a “community of interest” and stay intact. In regard to our community being currently divided in two, they have long offered the proverbial political question… “What are we, chopped liver?”
San Diego residents can partake in the redistricting process by viewing committee meetings and submitting their comments. Redistricting Commission meetings take place on the third Thursday of the month at 3 p.m. Public comments can be submitted by using the Redistricting Commission Public Comment form located here.
Whether you are for or against Via Las Cumbres being used as a political demarcation line, or if you have a strong opinion either way regarding our LV community being divided in two, submitting a comment to the Redistricting Commission may be worth your time, as well as the community’s.
Upcoming Community Events
—FridayTeen Nights: The Linda Vista Recreation Center will be hosting Friday Teen Nights from now until August 27. See the below poster for details.
Movie Night. The Linda Vista Recreation Center will be hosting a Movie Night on July 16. See the poster below for details.
Subscribe to the Linda Vista Update
If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to the Linda Vista Update. Just click on the below “Subscribe now” button. Once you do so, you will be on automatic distribution for all future posts. Keep informed! Join our growing readership!
The Linda Vista Update publishes informative, interesting, and fun news about Linda Vista and its neighboring communities.