Dinerwood on the Road: Another Tommy's Restaurant? San Clemente, CA

I go down to San Diego a couple of times a year. Along the 5 freeway, driving through San Clemente, I always see a large roadside sign for Tommy's Family Restaurant. I make a note to remember to make time for it on the next trip--I never do. A few weekends ago, as Dinerwood friend Greg and I were returning from Comic-Con, I was finally able to do it--and that's only because my GPS cocked-up the directions to the place that I was actually looking for.








Tommy's has a lot going on in the concept department: "Family Restaurant," "50's Diner," and "Hollywood at Tommy's" signage is located all over the building. It had to have started out as a regular roadside restaurant and then slowly over the years shifted into a hodge-podge 50's diner.

Do note that the sign by the door says "authentic." It's a pet peeve of mine--see, words have meanings. After experiencing, just a few days earlier, a coffee shop that really did seem authentic, Tommy's had a lot to live up to.



When Greg and I pulled into a parking spot facing the building, and I saw this staring back at me--I knew something was seriously wrong.

I would like to believe that the intention there was to do an "authentic" 50's diner. It seems that at some point the owner of Tommy's said "oh, what the hell" and it became a den for pop culture hoarding.



An explosion of Hollywood and mid-century history seems to have left its debris all over everything at Tommy's. It was all too much. Every inch was covered with a photo, movie poster or checker pattern. Every surface large enough had some knick-knack or statuary reflecting an area of pop culture that existed between 1950 and 1985.

I actually did like the embroidered names on the booth seats. They all seemed to be on theme for the 50's.



For example, we sat in the Clark Gable booth. He was past his prime by then, but it still worked.

Then I looked over to my left, toward the counter, and saw something kind of horrific.



No, it wasn't the pictures on the back of the counter stools that seemed cut out of magazines and then glued on, or the Elvis bust with the real leather jacket and life-like hair and SKIN!



It was Spiderman.

Give it a moment.

If you are a real comic nerd, give it an extra moment.

Then realize that it uses the new jagged Spiderman font they created in the 90s, and not the classic original curved font. If it had been the classic, I could have been on board. He did debut in the 60s, which is almost like the 50s but...you know...later.

They had a standard diner menu with additional Mexican (of course) and Greek sections. Greek is a type of food that I always like, but am never in the mood for. Although, I was curious to try it since, like I talked about in the other Tommy's Restaurant review, if a place puts a lot of effort into a whole different genre of food, that usually means that's what they really want to be serving. That, however, burned me last time and the Mexican breakfast there sucked.

We decided to order sandwiches and then split them.



Greg, inspired by a very gorgeous photo in the menu, ordered the pastrami sandwich with an order of chili cheese fries. I would not have expected to find good pastrami at Tommy's, maybe decent at best, but this ended up being really good. Not the quality of a deli or a place like The Hat, but definitely one of the best at a regular restaurant. It wasn't too dry and it wasn't greasy wet. I actually think they mixed little bits of actual bacon into it. The chili cheese fries were very good. They had an appropriate amount of chili smothering the steak fries, so you could still pick them up with your fingers, but could use a fork if you were inclined. I would have liked more chunks of meat in the chili, though.



I ordered the pork tenderloin sandwich, which I expected to be more of a Cuban-style sandwich. And I was wrong. Nowhere on the menu did it mention that the tenderloin was breaded and fried. I'm pretty sure it was not in the "Hot" sandwich section either. This really threw me off.

To assemble my sandwich, I had to cut the tenderloin, since as you can see from the picture, it wasn't the right shape for a french roll. I took a bite and tasted...Filet o' Fish? By god, the pork sandwich did taste like the fish sandwich from McDonalds. I like Filet o' Fish, but I like it when I order one...and it isn't made with pork. Just to make sure I wasn't walking around with some crazy taste buds, I gave Greg his half and encouraged him to try it.

He took a bite and thought for a moment. "Tastes, I don't know. Not bad...but-"

"Like a Fillet o' Fish?"

"What?...well... okay, I can see that."

It must have been the batter they used. It wasn't awful, but I wouldn't recommend it. The french fries, even not covered in chili, were good.

I'm glad I was finally able to sate my curiosity with this place. Unless someone I was with really needed to main-line some aging pop-culture, I don't think I'd go back anytime soon.

Food: Decent
Service: Attentive
Price: $9-$14. (Too much.)
Pie: None.

Tommy's Family Restaurant
1409 S El Camino Real
San Clemente, CA 92672



She has no hand!

Dinerwood on the Road: Rose's Sugar Shack, San Clemente CA

Everything seemed so perfect. The sun was shining, a cool breeze was blowing off the ocean, official Dinerwood Photog Charlie Chu had returned for a weekend trip, and we were eating at a diner. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

And nothing did, for several hours.



I did a little bit of research for our trip down to Del Mar, California and found a cute little diner called Rose's Sugar Shack, just off the freeway. The waitress asked if we wanted to sit inside or on the patio. It being such a lovely day, we decided to sit outside.



It did seem to take way too long for the waitress to get to us initially. I have no clue how busy it was on the inside, but for the first ten minutes we were there, there was no on else sitting on the patio. She did apologize, which was nice.

This gave us a lot of time to peruse the menu. It's certainly not a dense menu, with nothing surprisingly or seemingly unique. The prices were about a dollar or two higher than I would have liked, but since it was a beach town, I just accepted it. I figure I'm paying for the luxury of a nice ocean breeze while I eat pancakes.



Which is what I did. I got a simple bacon, eggs, pancakes breakfast. Everything tasted okay, but just okay. There in that beautiful setting, I wanted something equally beautiful...or at least tasty.



Chu went with his default order of corned beef hash and eggs. The hash was slightly better than canned. The pieces of toast were nice, thick slices, which was good.

An easy summation is: We ordered, we ate it, we left. It was a rather disappointing but adequate place to eat. Everything was fine, until about two hours later.

Chu and I were at the fair in Del Mar. I was all set to go crazy with some fair food. A turkey leg was a must, but that's not really crazy. Deep-fried twinkie? Been there. Hash brown coated hot-dog? Done that. Apple fries? Nailed it shut. I wanted to try something new, something exciting! Would it be this deep-fried butter? I think yes!

It was while walking up and down the food lanes looking for this deep-fried butter that I started to feel it. It started as a low rumble and then a gurgling and then a wrenching and then... well, let's not get into it here in polite company.

Considering the only food in my stomach was from Rose's Sugar Shack, I knew the culprit. Fortunately for him, Chu went unscathed. Prior to this, I had felt rather indifferent toward Rose's Sugar Shack. This clearly tipped my opinion to the downhill side. I didn't feel right again until nearly twenty-four hours later. This severely impacted the rest of my weekend.

Food: I got sick. Chu didn't. So.. let's call it "risky?"
Price: $7-$10
Service: Okay.
Pie: None.

Rose's Sugar Shack Cafe
2319 S El Camino Real
San Clemente, CA 92672

It turns out the deep-fried butter is kind of crap. I imagined as something kind of like the cornmeal mush from Stox restaurant: frozen stick off butter, rolled in batter, and then fried just long enough to soften the butter. Instead, it's a stupid churro stuffed with butter. What the hell?

Our friend Jovi of the Rad Dudes podcast did try the deep-fried butter. A video of the aftermath can be found here.