Following the saying “Life is uncertain, eat Dessert First!”, I have to tell you about my dessert experience in San Diego. This is one of THE best experiences we have had in a long time and well worth having as a first, last or ONLY course!
While enjoying a relaxing visit to San Diego, I began fantasizing about a rich, delicious, satisfying dessert, with my thoughts mainly on my all time favorite: Tiramisu, (and acutely aware of our ‘relatively’ close proximity to Newport Beach and where one of my favorite places to have Tiramisu is located). I perused the local listings in the hotel room table-top book for San Diego eateries that might look promising for the kind of dessert I was fantasizing over.
There were a lot of intriguing restaurants but none mentioning desserts of the kind I was lusting for, until I read “Extraordinary Desserts”…Well now! That is definitely a possibility– two locations: the original in the Hillcrest area and a second in Little Italy which also offers small meals (sandwiches, salads, etc) — Looking promising, especially if I can justify a rich dessert with a salad for lunch! ..and an equally satisfying restaurant experience (the setting and experience need to equal the food for the best results!).
We hadn’t made it a destination yet but it was certainly on my mind as we were out and about San Diego. (Hillcrest was an option but I was justifying the dessert with a light lunch!)
This particular day, we had tentative plans to meet up with our son & his wife for the evening and wanted an early lunch and light fare, so a salad and sharing a dessert sounded perfect! Trouble was, I didn’t remember the name or address of the extraordinary dessert restaurant, only that it is in Little Italy, and we didn’t even know where “Little Italy” was.
We discovered the location of this little Italian ‘berg’ quite by accident while making our way from a fun shopping excursion at Cost Plus World Imports in the Gas Lamp district to explore “Old Town” San Diego before meeting our son. There on the map I saw “Little Italy” and it was within a few blocks of where we were – such luck!
We found a parking place on a side street, fed the meter, and started walking, heading to India street (the ‘main’ street of Little Italy–at least this is where the “Little Italy” sign spans the street).
This is charming — small little restaurants with mouthwatering “Italian” aromas of garlic, oregano,- pizza-, etc. wafting onto the street. There are men sitting out in front of their stores having animated conversations in Italian, houses with brightly painted picket fences–all of it right out of the movies sets!
I’m thinking we should be able to recognize a dessert-focused restaurant easily but so far none of these are much more than pizza places. I am focused on finding dessert and wondering now, how I will recognize this apparent cornucopia of desserts–and there are so many little places!
Tommy has been offering a few small conversational tidbits – 
something about a client he remembers being connected to Little Italy and India Street and wondering if we could locate him, when we realize that right there across from us on India Street in LIttle Italy is a sign for his client’s business!
The client is in, and pleased to see us, but just heading out of the office, so our visit is brief with a quick hello and explanation of our being in San Diego and, more specifically, of being in Little Italy at lunch time. He knows of the extraordinary dessert restaurant but suggests we go just across the street to Buon Appetito for (in his opinion) ‘great food and the BEST Tiramisu’, and then ‘walk it off’ in search of the other restaurant which, it turns out, is a considerable distance – still in Little Italy but several blocks away. We would NEVER have just come across it!.
