I moved to San Diego at the beginning of the fall semester. While I’ve spent many weekends here when I lived in Orange County, I never ventured beyond the downtown strip of restaurants and bars along Fifth Avenue each time I visited. Now that I’m a permanent resident here, I’ve slowly branched out to the various neighborhoods this city offers and have discovered the hidden and not-so-hidden jewels of San Diego along the way.
One of these gems is Hash House a Go Go on Fifth Avenue in Hillcrest.
If you venture there for the first time on a weekend, using (as I did) your trusty GPS to guide you, here is one simple tip to know you’ve found the right place: Simply look for the massive crowd of people milling about on the sidewalk. That’s the Hash House. I would recommend getting there about an hour before the onset of any hunger-related crankiness because you will have to wait.
According to the cheerful host in charge of taking names, dispensing pagers and general hungry-mob crowd control, the 35- to 45-minute wait is typical on Saturdays and Sundays, regardless of the time (although when I left the restaurant at 2:30 p.m., the crowd had magically dispersed, so you may have your best chance at a shorter wait time later in the afternoon). In any case, there are jugs of water and coffee at a table on the sidewalk for waiting guests. And ladies, there’s an adorable little store a couple of blocks down called Buffalo Exchange. You’d be surprised how much shopping you can get done in a 35- to-45 minute wait for your table.
The crowd at Hash House varies from families and friends to couples, and the atmosphere is casual. I sat on the patio to enjoy the beautiful Sunday afternoon weather of a Southern California winter, but there’s also plenty of seating indoors, including a full-service bar. The wait time provided me with not only enough time for a quick shopping spree down the street, but also a chance to peruse and select what I wanted for breakfast.
A word on menu selection: Go with your gut. Seriously. The first item you see that makes your stomach growl should be what you order. If you keep looking at the eatery’s massive, two-sided tablet of a menu (and everything on it sounds divine), you’ll never be able to pick anything. Any dish that contains artichokes is golden for me, so I went with a “Hash,” which included fresh mushrooms, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes and fresh spinach, complete with potatoes, scrambled eggs, fruit and a biscuit.
It is a popular belief among men that size doesn’t matter. Well, the cooks at Hash House clearly subscribe to another popular belief: Bigger is better. Just when the portions look too big for one person to consume in a single sitting, they add a little more food to the plate. The plates, incidentally, were bigger than my head, just to paint a picture.
The portions are huge. The woman at the table next to me ordered a hamburger I’m pretty sure I’d have to deconstruct in order to eat, which teetered precariously over her French fries almost to the point of toppling to the floor. My own skillet of food was delivered fast and fresh and piled high. I was thrilled to see they did not skimp on artichoke hearts (as places often do, I’ve found).
Hash House must be a regular spot for most of its crowd because I was the only one on my phone snapping pictures of the food that had just been placed in front of me. I downed the rest of my coffee, took a deep breath and dug in. After the first bite, I could safely say Hash House is not only worth the wait, but also worth a late arrival to my second job.
Next time I go back there—because this will now be a monthly tradition of mine—I plan on tackling something from its waffle section and enjoying a mimosa or two. I’ll just have to plan it on a day when I don’t have to hightail it to work immediately after my meal.
Overall, this is what I found at Hash House: The service was wonderful, the food was delicious and the pricing was reasonable. Yes, the wait time can get a little out of control, but this is not a place you should go to if you’re in a rush. This is the perfect weekend restaurant to go to when you want good food, atmosphere and enough leftovers to last you about two more breakfasts.
I will continue my exploration of the neighborhoods of San Diego, but Hash House a Go Go has become an instant favorite of mine.
