Confidential

Here is some confidential information for you: the Pheasant Glass team will be traveling up the West Coast from San Diego to San Francisco - following the Pacific Coast Highway - over the course of the next week and will be reporting on various culinary adventures as time permits and wherever Internet connections can be found.

While in San Diego, we discovered another top-secret location that we need to tell you about: the Confidential Restaurant and Loft is a hip bar located on Fourth Street in San Diego that features a fantastic mix of music, excellent food, and drinks.

All food is served tapas-style, meaning that the portions are small and meant to be shared with friends - and you probably want to start ordering 5-6 dishes for a table of 4. The drink selection is quite exquisite and I would recommend a White Orchid Martini (see photo above) for starters. It's Grey Goose vodka with elderflower syrup - not something you get to try every day.

The lobster bisque is very intense - almost an explosion of flavors - and comes with some delicious foam on top - it is served in a small cup, so you probably want to have one soup per person rather than sharing. Sadly, however, they were out of oyster shooters on the day we were there, but those sounded delicious, too, at least from what we could read in the menu....

It is also this unfortunate absence of oyster shooters as well as the missing-in-action  carpaccio that resulted in a one-point deduction from the maximum possible score for an otherwise quite memorable dining experience that night.

A few more notable dishes include the hearts of palm salad (pictured above) and the amazing Coca-Cola basted baby back ribs (on the right), as well as the salmon, and the deconstructed pizza.

The service was fast, friendly, and competent, rounding off an altogether top-notch dining experience that was accompanied by hip music. So whatever top-secret business brings you to town, make sure you conduct it at Confidential on Fourth Street in San Diego.

Our rating: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ◊ (4 out of a possible 5 diamonds).